The candidate’s interest in the field of addiction and criminal justice interventions stems from his experience as a practitioner and senior manager in substance misuse services over a 15 year period from 1989 until 2003. During this time he was involved in providing, managing and developing services for people with enduring and complex needs, of which involvement with the criminal justice system was a key feature. The candidate during this period was also involved in training professionals to work with addition and multiple complex needs, was an accredited practice teacher for social work and probation students, and involved in higher education teaching for the Schools of Social Work and the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Southampton. On having taken up a full time academic career in 2003 the publications which form the body of this submission both outline and analyse the candidates scholarship and research in conceptualising, research and teaching the evidence, ethics and outcomes of interventions to address addition within a context of complex and multiple needs. Central to this work has been the development of an applied social science perspective concerning the relevance and complexity theory to understanding addition as a complex adaptive system and the necessity of the whole systems approaches to providing a framework for policy formation, the management of service delivery and the practice of interventions. It will be argued that in the delivery of interventions to address addition, complexity theory challenges our ontological, epistemological and methodological assumptions of casual and linear relationships in the delivery, practice and outcomes from those interventions. It will also be argued that application of complexity theory represents a new heuristics for overcoming what we have been hitherto unabridged fault lines in social science methodologies.

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This thesis examines the role of the probation system in the social reintegration of offenders in NWFP, Pakistan. Probation is the punishment most widely associated with rehabilitation and helping offenders to lead law-abiding lives. The probation system in Pakistan has a colonial origin. The Probation Ordinance of 1960 has its origins in the Criminal Procedure Code, 1898 (Amended 1923) passed into law by the British Colonial government. The passing of the probation law in 1960 was part of General Ayub Khan's attempt to modernise Pakistan. The central argument of this thesis is that the meaning of punishment changes when it is taken out of its cultural setting. The punishment of probation has no equivalent in Pakistani culture. Throughout this study, it was found that probation was perceived differently by the probation officers in the Reclamation and Probation Department (RPD) of NWFP Pakistan, the judicial magistrates who are empowered to grant probation orders and the offenders placed on probation. The result is a deluded system which was founded upon the rehabilitation ideal but which tries to offer an 'advice, assist and befriend' service. The empirical data showed that even that support was not provided. Probation officers measured their success in terms of how many people they were able to persuade judicial magistrates to release to them on probation. This made their job resemble that of the 19th century missionaries in England – 'saving souls'. It is argued that the problems of the RPD are due to lack of political support for the probation service in Pakistan, evidenced by its lack of identity and infrastructure. This has meant that the RPD has not 'evolved' enough to be able to meet its goals of rehabilitation and reintegration of offenders.

Crime and community have been inextricably linked since New Labour came to power in 1997. The relationship between high crime and community decline is not new and there is a wide range, of criminological theory that explores the link between disadvantage, urban decay and crime rates. Yet under New Labour, community decline has been reframed as moral breakdown. This has led to a battery of rhetoric and policy, designed to instil moral and social responsibility. This thesis explores the intellectual and normative roots of this standpoint and its impact on strategies of crime and disorder. A critique of this approach is constructed by exploring the influence of Amitai Etzioni’s (1995) ideas on New Labour. This critique draws on sociological, research about both community and late-modernity to argue that the moral community is at odds with contemporary social conditions. Drawing on theoretical perspectives about late-modernity, this critique is extended to debunk the notion that criminality can be understood in terms of immorality. Instead, a psychosocial model based on Anthony Giddens’ (1991) work on identity and Stephen Lyng’s (1990) concept of ‘edgework’ is formulated. This framework considers how the risk-taking ingredient of rulebreaking provides emotional highs that give individuals a sense of connection with, and control over the anxiety-provoking and unpredictable conditions of late-modernity. When looked at in this way, crime can be understood in terms of the social and cultural conditions that shape human relations. The search for self-identity is at the heart of contemporary social theories about how people both experience, and adapt to the conditions of late-modernity. This thesis concludes that intimacy is therefore a more appropriate concept than community for understanding and responding to crime.

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This thesis is a socio-legal study of police and prosecutorial decision-making in the context of special measures support for child witnesses in criminal proceedings. It presents the findings of an empirical research project conducted with the Crown Prosecution Service which examined the implementation of Part II of the Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act 1999. Under that Act children may be assisted to testify in criminal proceedings though any feasible combination of: video-recorded evidence; live television link; screens; communication aids; intermediaries; and giving evidence in private. Using a small-scale, primarily qualitative, study involving semi-structured interviews with Crown Prosecutors, this thesis investigates how the attitudes, beliefs, motivations and work practices of the police and prosecutors affect the provision of special measures to children. It does so in the context of a highly directive legal framework which purports to curtail prosecutorial and judicial discretion. The thesis explores the problems that child witnesses encounter within the criminal justice system and the legislative and policy response to their difficulties. It then presents the findings of the current research study in relation to, first, the video-interviewing patterns of police officers and, second, the rate of prosecutors’ applications for special measures. In addition to the statistical data, the thesis explores prosecutors’ own reflective accounts of the factors which shape police and prosecutors’ decision-making. The thesis concludes that where the rules on special measures are highly prescriptive, we have witnessed a radical expansion in their use for children, but that the rigid system has drawbacks which raise pressure for reform. Reform proposals must be carefully considered in the light of infrastructural weaknesses in inter-agency liaison and information-management identified in this thesis. We might also be wary that reform will undermine the criminal justice system’s recently consolidated cultural acceptance of special measures for child witnesses.

The basis to Freud's view that men and women are essentially separate entities with their own unique psychological construction and human potential which arises from their anatomical differences, will be challenged from the paradigm of object relations theory and related research from attachment theory. It will be argued that while a substantive understanding of gender development and the related issue of spousal abuse are influenced by such important factors as patriarchal domination, social oppression, socialized roles, and economic inequality between the sexes, these forces are considered to have a secondary psychological effect when compared with the formative influence of early object relations. The object relational paradigm to be outlined is that it is the distinctive emotional impact of the contents and attitudes that occur between the members of each family that establish the blueprints for subsequent feelings about oneself and others, from which particular relational patterns with others are pursued and acted upon within the larger social structure. Freud may be credited for his recognition and pioneering systematic investigation into the central importance of the unconscious in the development and functioning of human beings. Beyond this being a theoretical entity that is devoid of any scientific rigour which cannot be tested, proven, and therefore accepted as a legitimate therapeutic modality, information will be offered that suggests otherwise. Spousal relationships in which abuse constitutes a chronic pattern of interaction between the persons involved is understood to occur within contemporary North American society as a collusive arrangement between two emotionally impaired individuals. The argument will be made that they enter into an unconscious dialogue wherein each perpetrates and perpetuates the hopes and disappointments of their own and their partner's past intrapsychic relational experiences. Incarceration alone does not serve the emotional needs of young offenders, but instead, generally provides conditions which advance what is accepted, within this paper, to be a frequently disturbed psychic structure. The emphasis within the Canadian correctional system seems to emphasize incarceration over rehabilitation with the expectation that punishing those who break the law will result in an abstention from such acts in the future. The argument will be presented that in addition to ensuring public safety through imprisonment for some, there is mounting evidence which demonstrates the success of treatment programmes both within and outside of correctional institutions for those who break the law, and whose primary emphasis is on treatment and rehabilitation rather than detention and retribution. Contrary to therapeutic intervention being carried out as an adjunct to existing penal institutions, or that it be directed principally at the conscious acquisition of skills and information, it is proposed that such efforts are best administered within 2 comprehensive therapeutic environments. Further, it will be argued that rather than the previous and current emphasis which is directed primarily at a cognitive and behavioural level of the offender, it is the emotional foundation of the individual which has a direct influence on their long-term behaviour. Therefore, this aspect should constitute a fundamental component of the treatment program for the forensic patient for which psychoanalytic psychotherapy may play an important role.