Illegal drug use IS a much discussed, publicised and researched area of criminology. However, there has been little interest in its mature users. It is this subsection of illegal drug users that is investigated in this research. As the first generation of widespread and popular drug users is reaching late-middle age, this is becoming a fast growing and fascinating area of study. As the size of this drug using subsection is set to grow in coming years, the lack of existing research in this area is becoming more and more apparent. Existing research related to the area of drug use among older adults tends to be out-of date, predominantly American based, and looks largely at alcohol use, prescription misuse, and over-the-counter abuse. Equally, there is a lack of community based research in this area, which relies heavily on samples taken from the criminal justice system and treatment centres. This research aims to address these deficiencies. To create therefore as complete a picture of this little investigated social phenomenon as possible both quantitative and qualitative research techniques are incorporated into the research. Quantitatively, secondary data analysis is used to explore the British Crime Survey. Univariate, bivariate, and multivariate techniques are used to analyse the data set, including hypothesis testing and logistics regression. For the qualitative component, the research uses snowball sampling to conduct face to-face in-depth interviews with adults over the age of 40 involved in recent illegal drug use living in the community. Overall, this research shows that older recent illegal drug users exists, it produces a profile of older recent drug users, including demographic and criminological characteristics, and illustrates the drug using careers of older drug users, showing how they incorporate drug use into their lives. Ultimately, it provides evidence that contradicts the notion that illegal drug use is an activity reserved exclusively for the young and shows that drug use does not exclude having a long, happy and productive life.

This study examines the continuing viability of the New Town Idea – an influential post-war Town Planning Model – in relation to current government imperatives that all future urban developments contribute to crime prevention and the diminishment of fear. The study advances an 'urbanism from below' by considering how residents of Harlow, one of the first built New Towns, experience their everyday environment and the impact it has upon their perceptions of crime, fear and disorder. By focusing upon the 'lived experiences' of a whole urban environment and its compatibility with human need, the study offers a 'Humanistic' approach to Environmental Criminology. It should, therefore, interest not only those responsible for current and future urban development but also those hoping to move Environmental Criminology beyond a narrow concern with risk reduction. The thesis suggests that the New Town Idea, as manifest in Harlow, is a weak foundation for establishing a strong urban public realm. This is probably a major reason why the town has a crime rate incommensurate with the idea's original utopian aspirations. Nevertheless, the same idea succeeds in enhancing a 'sense of place' which residents of Harlow experience in a way that reduces fear of crime. Especially important is the experience of 'mystery' and local familiarity within a context of environmental legibility and coherence that simultaneously satisfies ontological and bio-psychological human needs for security and risk. Thus, the study concludes that the New Town Idea, contrary to the claims of its many detractors, does retain a partial viability. Some important modifications to the Idea, however, are necessary. The study finishes, therefore, by suggesting that the New Town Idea may successfully combine with the principles of New Urbanism in the development of towns with both 'safe' and pleasurable environments.

No description available.

Men's violence against women is an endemic social problem within all societies and cultures. Feminist research and activism has maintained that to challenge and prevent men's violence against women, changing attitudes and behaviour are key. Previous studies looking at the attitudes of young people and male violence have focused upon those over the age of 14. The inclusion of the perspectives of eleven and twelve year olds offers an original contribution to the age-old problem of male violence against women. The main aims of the research were to confront and challenge the 'everyday' occurrence and acceptability of the social problem of men's violence against women; and to challenge the perception that eleven and twelve year olds are too young to 'know' about violence or to offer opinions on it. The fieldwork took place over a period of six months involving 89 young people in five primary schools in Glasgow using participatory methods to engage and empower the young people. Qualitative methods were used; exploratory questionnaires, discussion groups (taking place among self selected friendship groups) and vignettes. It is argued that young people's own position within childhood directs impacts upon how they conceive of, construct and understand violence. Therefore young people's understandings of men's violence needs to be theorised within a framework that illuminates the temporal, spatial and gendered elements of their accounts. This is achieved by developing a transitory framework to illustrate what young people define and name as 'real' and 'unreal' violence. A theoretical typology is then constructed to explain the three main techniques used by the young people to understand violence: they naturalise violence (as a prerequisite of 'abstract' male identity); they normalise it (to the extent that they do not recognise it in their own experiences) and they justify most examples of male violence as an anticipated consequence of the (accepted) gender inequities endorsed within heterosexual relationships. The findings of this research demonstrate the need to give a voice to young people and listen to how they understand and articulate on the subject of men's violence against women. The findings highlighted that where gender divisions and stereotypes were perpetuated, the young people were less likely to challenge men's violence against women. Also the young people's invalidation of their own experiences of violence (including minimisation of sibling violence) is illustrated here alongside boys' use of violence and expectations of gendered privilege. Therefore, the promotion of gender equality and the reduction of gender segregation is key. The role of preventive education and awareness raising in tackling young people's attitudes is highlighted as a necessity in dealing with this social problem.

No description available.

This thesis reports the findings of conversation analytic studies exploring women's experiences reporting abuse to the police and to professionals working in a care centre for abused women. The focus of the thesis'is on the women's interactions with the police and, more specifically, on instances in which difficulties in reporting become apparent. Research suggests that only a minority of cases of violence against women are reported. Women's Police stations were created in Brazil to address the problem of women not being taken sed,ously when reporting domestic violence and to encourage women to report. However, reporting rates of this violence are still low and the experience of reporting abuse has not become unproblematic. Drawing on a naturalistic data set of over 36 hours, this study· contributes to the understanding of women's experienced difficulties in reporting their abusers, covering issues which range from them being denied a police report even when their case is considered to be 'policeable' (Chapter 4); difficulties regarding how the police interactions are conducted which reveal a problem about how.women are not informed about the police procedures nor the consequences of their report (Chapter 5); and clashes of perspectives (between officers and complainants) and how those misalignments are addressed in interaction (Chapter 6). Moreover, it discusses methodological issues (such as translation and ethics) with the aid of fragments of actual instances of interactions (Chapter 2); shows culture is manifest in talk by presenting clashes between the 'world' presupposed in the official forms and the 'world' of the complainants (Chapter 2), and in the way that references to the abusers show the cultural understanding that women suffer violence at the hands of men in close relationships with them (Chapter 7). In technical terms, this thesis contributes to responses to yIN Interrogatives in Brazilian Portuguese (Chapter 3) and to the study of repair and of technologies for dealing with misunderstandings and misalignments in interaction (Chapter 6). Overall, ~his thesis conn:ibutes to the, understanding of problems of women reporting abuse in Brazil, to the services or abused women in Brazil by providing some suggestions to improving the interactions, and to conversation analysis.

The literature was reviewed in the areas of : stress and anxiety; crisis theory; decision making and behaviour change; coping and control; and previous studies of spouse imprisonment. The purpose of this study was to examine spouse imprisonment as experienced by a sample of women whose partners were serving sentences in Scottish prisons. It was also intended to identify factors which might be implicated in how the individual perceives, and responds to the event of spouse imprisonment. The nature of this study was exploratory, and a number of research questions were posed. These were: whether the nature of problems faced by the partners of imprisoned spouses had changed since the last major British study in the area; what factors influenced the way in which the women responded to the problems; what was the nature of the relationship between anxiety and how the women dealt with problems; and what was the relationship between length and stage of the spouse's sentence and the women's perceptions of their problems. 123 female partners of imprisoned men were interviewed using a semi-structured interview technique. Ten percent of the respondents were interviewed a further three times over the subsequent twelve months. It was concluded that the respondents in this study suffered from a variety of problems in the areas of finance, children, relationships with the wider community, relationships with the male partner, and dealing with the prison and other authority. The frequency and nature of these problems were little different from those reported in much earlier studies. Five factors were identified which accounted for much of the variance in perception of problems and reactions to them. The factors were: General Anxiety, perceived control, locus of coping strategies, spouse history, and attitude to communication with the spouse. General anxiety was found to have an influence on a wide range of problem areas, and reactions to problems. Perceived control had a wide ranging effect also. The influence of each of the other factors seemed to be confined much more to single problem areas.

This thesis attempts to throw fresh light on the nature of present day deviance and social control by providing a historical perspective. It is postulated that there has been incessant panic about "crime" for some two hundred years. Alarm of this kind is reflected in systematic mass imprisonment, by which, in turn, such feelings are themselves perpetuated. Accordingly, in this thesis, both historical and sociological techniques are utilised. The sociology of moral enterprise being the point of departure for this thesis, Chapter One discusses this literature in so far as it is relevant to the thrust of the enquiry. Chapter Two, using a long run of court records and other sources, looks at some of the final manifestations of a less obsessive attitude towards lawbreakers, in the eighteenth century, when Britain was still only on the threshold of industrialisation. Social control, as exemplified by prosecution in the courts, was then a matter for individuals, rather than a function of the state. Similarly, there was no generic concept of "criminals" as a class: only individual lawbreakers were recognised. Chapter Three examines the ideological underpinning of "crime" as perceived in a capitalist society. Particular attention is paid to the development of the nascent press, notably the ordinary of Newgate's Account, the Gentleman's Magazine and the London Magazine, as a means of disseminating panic. This is complemented by an examination of the writings of prominent ideological entrepreneurs, such as William Eden and Martin Madan, who were animated by, and themselves exacerbated, this same concern. Chapter Four traces the way the prison was presented as the cure for crime. A case study of Gloucester Prison, drawing on unpublished manuscripts, allows comparison between aims and actualities: many of the problems facing modern prisons emerged in this initial experiment with incarceration. Chapter Five discusses essential elements of continuity in the perception of crime and punishment from the late eighteenth century onwards. The growing involvement of the state is traced, from the very beginning of mass imprisonment. In conclusion, it is suggested that customary views of social control, in which imprisonment features conspicuously, in the course of time have obtained a degree of mystification which places them beyond questioning or ready understanding. The historical perspective adopted in this thesis marks an attempt to de-mystify not only the prison as an institution but also general views about "crime" with which its existence is associated.

This thesis attempts, to present the daily life of the bread salesman in such a way that certain key theoretical issues are explored and elaborated. This is done with an eye to allowing an ethnography to appear in the reading made by others, but I have been more concerned to produce a theoretical understanding of "fiddling”, that is, blue-collar occupational theft from customers. The analysis is based upon extended, periods of participant observation and unstructured interviewing. The analysis looks first, in Chapter Two, at the ‘moral career’ of the recruit salesman (how he is taught to fiddle), and then, in Chapter Three, at the everyday occupational structural support for fiddling which can be derived from the social context of 'service'. Chapter Four then looks at the wider industrial and economic context of occupational theft, and at possible theft types. Chapter Four includes a discussion of other (theoretically related) "part-time" crimes, and tries to show that the managerial tolerance of "inventory shrinkage” allows the deduction and theoretical proposal of both a "hidden economy", and a system of "invisible wages". Chapter Five returns to Wellbreads, the studied bakery, to see how the salesmen seem to combine possible theft types in a "portfolio" of techniques, the practice of which under guise of one of variously available "characters" protects their identities both practically and psychologically. Chapter Six considers the effect that brute occasions of enforcements have on these "partial" identities, and locates fiddling normatively as a subterranean subculture of 'business' itself. Chapter Seven, the conclusion, attempts to link up, and re-express intermediate conclusions, and suggest that they all find intelligibility in a context then defined as that of Commercial Social Control.

This is an empirical research study of contemporary court room practices in Scottish sexual offence cases where the complainer is a young female under the age of 17 years old. The data was collected primarily by means of incourt observation of 94 sexual offence cases heard in courts across Scotland over a three year period. The data includes both contested criminal trials where evidence was led, and also 'guilty plea' cases where the accused pleaded guilty in advance of a trial and no evidence was led, but where there was a plea in mitigation by the defence on behalf of the accused. This study explores how the question of young female sexuality is perceived in the court room. Sexual offence cases involving young complainers constitute a key site for investigating a series of ambivalences about the sexuality of young women and girls, wherein it is simultaneously seen as a source of danger and a focus of protection. Specifically, the study is concerned with the use of sexual evidence. It describes the trial processes of examination and cross-examination, and the giving of evidence by young female complainers. In particular, it documents the ways in which sexual evidence is introduced by means of representations that draw on images of female sexuality. By so doing it shows the ways in which ideas about young female sexuality pervade the court room in the processing of sexual offence cases. In searching for the ideological basis of contemporary court room rhetoric in such cases, the study locates the late 19<SUP>th</SUP> century as a time when prevailing ideas about young female sexuality became incorporated into legislation which raised the female 'age of consent' and created a set of statutory sexual offences which, virtually unchanged, forms the cornerstone of contemporary sexual offence legislation in Scotland. In addition to documenting sexual evidence, the study is also concerned with the <I>use </I>to which such evidence is put in the trial. Centrally, it examines the relationship between the images of young female sexuality to the crucial legal questions of the relevance, admissibility and deployment of evidence, and the substantive elements of the sexual crimes and offences which are the subject of the criminal trial. Currently, Scottish legislation limits the use of sexual history and sexual character evidence concerning the complainer, unless such evidence is deemed relevant to issues in the trial and it is against this development that the use of such evidence is assessed.