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An investigation was carried out into all drug-related deaths that occurred within the Strathclyde Police region of Scotland over the 17-year period, 1985-2001. Deaths involving heroin, methadone, dihydrocodeine or cocaine were the focus of this thesis. In total, more than 1,000 cases were reviewed. By extracting data from the toxicology report and police sudden death report, changes in patterns and trends of drug misuse were highlighted which coincided with concurrent changes to legislation and medical care. This is a novel approach to the investigation of drug-related deaths within this jurisdication. Over the study period 869 heroin positive drug-related deaths were identified, in 95% of which what drug was the sole or the major contributory causal factor. The majority of these deaths involved males. The average age of all individuals increased slightly from 26 years to 29 years over the study period. The individual had a history of drug misuse in 95% of cases and of those, 92% were known to abuse drugs intravenously. Approximately one quarter of individuals resided alone and over one-half resided with other people, primarily their parents or (common law) partners/spouses. The individual was homeless in 14% of cases. Of this group, 70% resided in a hostel. The remainder had no fixed abode. Of cases where the postal code was known, 74% resided within the Greater Glasgow Health Board area. In the last year of the study deaths of individuals residing in the Ayrshire and Arran Health Board area increased sharply compared to a decrease in deaths reported in all other areas. Approximately two-thirds of individuals resided in areas of high deprivation (categories 6 and 7). The locus where the body was found was primarily in a dwelling (73%), usually the individual’s own home. From the circumstances surrounding the deaths it was ascertained that the individual was alone at the time of death in just under half the cases, highlighting the risk of taking drugs in isolation.

Why do public policy systems sustain chronic conditions despite general consensus that these conditions are detrimental to overall performance? The answer is because they are, in one way or another, sustainable. Systems find ways of sustaining manageable and acceptable equilibrium between demand for their services and their supply. Yet in doing so, they develop ways of coping with and normalizing situations of chronicness. This research is about chronic capacity stress (CCS) in a large and complex public policy system. CCS may be caused by excessive demand for services. It may also be caused by inadequate supply. Either way, it is a property of sustainable equilibrium between the two, and therefore must be understood in these dynamic terms rather than as just the product of one or the other. I examine overcrowding in the England and Wales prison system as an archetypal case of CCS. It starts with the assumption that the prison system should in theory be set up to deal with the demands made upon it. In doing so, it examines the way in which the system itself has coped with, normalized, and sustained crowding over the years. I have conducted in-depth interviewing with former ministers, top officials, governors, and other key actors, as well as extensive quantitative analysis covering three decades. I develop four inter-related themes as a part of a ‘problematique’ which explains why CCS is sustained: ambivalence towards rehabilitation, coping and crisis culture, benign resistance, and obsolescence and redundancy. Constrained autonomy of actors and their adaptive behaviours are key to understanding how the system sustains CCS, and how it is able to function despite CCS. Ultimately, I show how three groups of public policy theory – public choice, cultural theory, and governance - are vital aspects of an overall explanation, but that independently they are insufficient to explain why chronicness sustains, and therefore must be integrated into a more holistic, governance-style explanation. CCS can be seen as a function of governance dysfunction.

Goodwill has been in the focus of interest of academics and practitioners for many years now. Research interest has been fuelled by its discretionary nature, the large amounts of its write- downs combined with adverse impact potential on financial statements and loopholes in accounting regulations. This thesis includes three empirical essays on the causes and impact of goodwill impairment write-downs. Its overall objective is to provide a more insightful and comprehensive understanding of the goodwill impairment process. The first empirical essay explores the role of goodwill write-downs in .the rating assessment process. It aims to uncover rating agencies' perception of goodwill using an accounting predictive model on ex post basis and comparing accounting treatments of goodwill as currently or recently applicable under UK GAAP. Results suggest that raters ignore goodwill and its write-downs in their annual rating analyses. While this evidence is consistent with pre- FRS 10 business reality in the UK, it raises questions about the efficiency of impairment regulations on national and international level. The second empirical essay investigates managerial choices related to goodwill impairment in the UK. Findings suggest that while managers are likely to base the decision whether to impair goodwill on financial performance indicators, they might adjust the amount of the impairment charge at their discretion for reporting purposes. The third empirical essay investigates two of the drivers of financial performance (industrial regulation and competition) and their relation to goodwill using a case study approach. The evidence suggests that these two phenomena could provide an early warning indicator to regulators, auditors and financial statement users about goodwill impairment potential of the individual firm or an industry sector. Furthermore, the room for managerial discretion provided by the discount rates in the impairment calculation is explored. Results show that discount rates can be adjusted using commonly accepted parameters in practice to justify a wide range of discount rates and, consequently, a variety of impairment opportunities at the discretion of management.

This thesis explores children's sibling relationships in middle childhood, particularly in relation to looked after children, with the aim of obtaining an 'insider view' from the children's perspective. Foster children's current relationship qualities and processes were considered in the context of their past family experiences and environments, their sibling relationship history, and their expectations of their siblings in the future. The aim was to extend our current understanding of the nature and quality of sibling relationships. The findings are intended to assist social workers and others with a responsibility for assessing children's needs and making decisions about their welfare. Foster children's perceptions of their sibling relationships had two separate but intertwined threads running through: a relationship dimension focusing on the quality of the current siblings relationship, and a family and kinship dimension focusing on siblings as life-long key family and kin. In comparison with the community sample, foster children's sibling relationships were more extreme, reflecting children's disrupted close relationships and adverse family experiences. Relationship aspects, referring to power and status, and sibling attachment relationships, were most salient for foster children. Siblings retained an importance to the foster children, at the level of family and kinship, regardless of the quality of their relationships. They expected their siblings to be part of their lives in adulthood. Because of foster children's smaller networks of other supportive relationships, than was the case for the children in the community, their siblings were even more important to them. For some foster children, particularly where contact with parents was terminated; their siblings were their only family. Based on the findings, a framework was developed for understanding sibling relationships in the context of foster children's adverse family experiences and disrupted close relationships.

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This thesis examines an assumption that has recently permeated social theory, that power and knowledge constitute each other and are mutually reinforcing. Knowledge is an instrument to be used to realise the interests of some group, i. e. is subservient to agency. This assumption is oblivious to the rise of realist social theory which has argued that the facilitating frameworks of social life, structure and culture (which would typically include 'knowledge') must be construed as having a causal influence themselves, regardless of what people make of them or do despite them. These do not automatically satisfy groups' wishes and may hinder them. The power/knowledge thesis has taken greatest hold in the study of prisons; it is argued that the penal reforms instituted in the 19th century were designed to control prisoners so that what seemed like a benevolent regime was actually an efficient mode of control. Thus the ideas that were used to direct the treatment of offenders were a means of power over prisoners. This thesis will incorporate historical material on the development of the prisons and show that supporting ideas of reform was not necessarily an exercise in power, so undercutting the principal thesis of the power/knowledge school. I will draw on recent developments in social theory to show how the interplay between power and knowledge might be better conceived. I will argue that only by estimating the logical connection between ideas can we understand their proper role- how they may facilitate or frustrate action. Thus I will query whether reform ever gained the prominence it did and show that it had always to be balanced by its logical counterpart, deterrence.

This study investigates the processes of the removal of the death penalty within the Council of Europe and its Member States. An evaluation is conducted of the relationship of sovereignty and the death penalty in this region, and the significance of the Council's attempts to penetrate this relationship is analysed. The foremost motivation of this study is to understand how solid the removal of the death penalty is, and to reveal what can be learned from the legislative activity of the Member States and the various Parliamentary Assembly and Committee of Ministers' enactments, and the case-law of the European Commission of Human Rights and the European Court of Human Rights. It is my hope that this study will help ensure that the death penalty remains removed from this European region.

This research examines the utility of the concept of institutional racism in explaining racial disparities in stop and search practice in the UK and US. The concept of institutional racism was introduced in 1960s America. The concept was politically powerful in expanding existing understandings of racial inequalities which focused on individual prejudice and cultural pathology, to showing how racist discourses can become embedded in the structures of social formation. There were a number of analytical weaknesses inherent in the term at its conception. The concept has been utilized at various points of history in the US and UK. The 1999 Macpherson Report brought the concept of institutional racism back to popular usage in the UK, particularly in discussions around discrimination and policing. Macpherson took as evidence of the existence of institutional racism the continued disparities in stop and search use. The power to stop and search people in the street suspected of criminal activity has long been a feature of British and American policing. Research in both countries has continually shown that these powers are being disproportionately exercised against ethnic minorities. Thus this thesis explores whether the concept is useful in explaining disproportionate stop and search outcomes. The research is based on a study of police officers from two forces in the UK and two police departments in the US. It uses semi-structured interviews, observations and draws on official policy documents and statistics. The purpose of the research is to gain an understanding of the circumstances and decision-making by officers as they conduct stop and search and to understand the context in which these decisions take place. The findings reveal that discriminatory outcomes in stop and search are the product of not only the actions of individual officers but also national and local policies and practices. These policies and practices are devised and implemented by social actors. The disproportionate outcomes not only result from racism but also prejudice based on class and gender. The concept of institutional racism reifies individual institutions and obscures the role of social actors in institutions, who shape the policies and practices of an institution. Without an understanding of the contexts in which people draw on race ideas and what features of their social position allows them to assert these ideas into the policies and practices of an institution we are unable to apportion responsibility and build reform agendas. Thus institutional racism fails to explain the disparities in stop and search use in the UK and US.

This thesis draws upon three years spent evaluating the implementation of a Bail Support and Supervision Scheme in one local authority. It describes the development of the scheme within the locality, exploring its relation to the Youth Offending Team and youth court, and their associated liaison groups. In doing so I offer an exploration of theoretical considerations that explain how managerialist policies are translated into localised practice, from which a means to learn from and develop such policy will emerge. I develop a particular strand of activity theory, primarily from within the tradition established by Yrjö Engeström, and demonstrate its usefulness to the examination and understanding of nationally determined yet locally implemented social policies. Using the notions of object trajectory and expansive transformation, I show how local context has impacted upon the idealised object formation arising out of the managerialist policy aims. By exploring activity in the boundary zones between activity systems, I describe a series of material or transitory objects emerging in order to overcome the tensions and contradictions inherent in situated practice, culminating in a reinterpretation of the purpose of the scheme. I conclude by addressing the extent to which local context has altered the intent of the policy in implementation.