That is not it at all: Unintended effects and policy outcomes Dr. Elaine Arnull: London Metropolitan University Abstract This paper looks at the unintended consequences of policy. It considers how policy may be heavily campaigned for and yet end up quite unlike that expected; it explores this with regard to policy making around youth offending and drug misuse. There are similarities with both areas in the 1990s and 2000s, whereby campaigning at an early stage, came to be combined with political concern and then commitment, underscored by public disquiet. South (1999) has moreover argued that the fear of drug use was in itself linked to a fear of young people. Campaigning by third sector organisations regarding drug misuse policy led to a Conservative manifesto commitment in 1993. Within the next ten years there were three major policies; this was in marked contrast to the ‘apathy about drugs’ in the 1970s (Stimson 2000:331). For youth offending, the lobbying by charitable organisations in the 1990s led to a policy commitment by New Labour and during their time in power it remained an important area of focus. Partnership structures were key features of both drug and youth justice policy: leading to the creation of Drug Action Teams (DATs) by the Conservatives in 1995 in the Tackling Drugs Together (1995) legislation and Youth Offending Teams (Yots) under New Labour as part of the Crime and Disorder Act (CDA:1998). Much debate about the changes during that period have focussed on a small number of areas, for example concerns about a re-focussing of drug policy towards a perceived penal agenda (Stimson 1987; Duke 2003; Berridge 2006) and in youth justice, the partnership style of working. Surprisingly, there has been little consideration of the effect of partnership on drug policy (Arnull 2007) in the discussions about these new forms of governance (Lowdnes 2005; Davies 2005; Glendinning et al 2002; Newman 2001). In addition, there has also been little consideration of the intended effects of the original policies and what was subsequently achieved (Arnull 2007).
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That is not it at all: Unintended effects and policy outcomes
Dr. Elaine Arnull: London Metropolitan University
Abstract
This paper looks at the unintended consequences of policy. It considers how
policy may be heavily campaigned for and yet end up quite unlike that
expected; it explores this with regard to policy making around youth offending
and drug misuse.
There are similarities with both areas in the 1990s and 2000s, whereby
campaigning at an early stage, came to be combined with political concern and
then commitment, underscored by public disquiet. South (1999) has moreover
argued that the fear of drug use was in itself linked to a fear of young people.
Campaigning by third sector organisations regarding drug misuse policy led to
a Conservative manifesto commitment in 1993. Within the next ten years
there were three major policies; this was in marked contrast to the ‘apathy
about drugs’ in the 1970s (Stimson 2000:331). For youth offending, the
lobbying by charitable organisations in the 1990s led to a policy commitment
by New Labour and during their time in power it remained an important area
of focus.
Partnership structures were key features of both drug and youth justice policy:
leading to the creation of Drug Action Teams (DATs) by the Conservatives in
1995 in the Tackling Drugs Together (1995) legislation and Youth Offending
Teams (Yots) under New Labour as part of the Crime and Disorder Act
(CDA:1998). Much debate about the changes during that period have focussed
on a small number of areas, for example concerns about a re-focussing of drug
policy towards a perceived penal agenda (Stimson 1987; Duke 2003; Berridge
2006) and in youth justice, the partnership style of working. Surprisingly, there
has been little consideration of the effect of partnership on drug policy (Arnull
2007) in the discussions about these new forms of governance (Lowdnes 2005;
Davies 2005; Glendinning et al 2002; Newman 2001). In addition, there has
also been little consideration of the intended effects of the original policies and
what was subsequently achieved (Arnull 2007).
Brief case studies looking at preparatory work and campaigning will be
considered for both areas. The paper will draw on speeches and campaigning
seen to inform the policy making process in each area and ask if it is possible
for us to consider unintended consequences when formulating policy or
whether campaigners for policy change will always end up saying, ‘that is not it
at all, that’s not what I meant at all...’ (Eliot 1936)
Introduction
How social policy is ‘made’ is an area with a considerable literature around it;
the process can be described and empirically studied and the literature most
often focuses on policy development and in particular how political impetus is
formed (Levin 1997; Colebatch 1998). The role of numerous players within this
policy process is often examined(Levin 1997), although most frequently
discussion ends with the writing of the policy, thus implementation is less
often considered as a part of that process (Arnull 2007). When policy
development and implementation are studied together consideration may be
given to what is perceived, or described, as an ‘implementation gap’ (Darke:
undated; Wong 1998). However it might be argued that ‘implementation gap’
is not an appropriate term – more that implementation is a part of the policy
process and also shaped by numerous factors - the policy actors and their
activities, national and international events, current and historical (Arnull
2007). This develops the work of Levin who has argued that academics have
too often sought to define policy, ‘rather than investigate how politicians and
officials use the term’ (Levin 1997:23) and have not always recognised that
policy means different things to those inside and outside of government (Levin
1997:15).
The focus in this paper is therefore on the processes which led to the
successive drug policies and shaped the outcomes. The contention, based on
empirical data, is that drug policy in 2004 was considerably different from that
envisaged prior to Tackling Drugs Together (TDT: 1995), not because it had
been implemented ‘wrongly’ or because of an ‘implementation gap’, but
because of other social and historical factors and some key actors which
changed the prism through which the policies were refracted and thus
changed the outcomes.
Looking at the policy process over a longer period allows for reflection on the
processes which have occurred and it also allows for consideration of key
actors. Different people are important at different periods of the policy
process and their in-put is often role specific (Arnull 2007). Colebatch
(1998:111) has defined ‘formal policy activity’ as a ‘process...structured by a
sense of authorised decision making...’ In the areas of youth justice and drug
policy there was an observable period of policy campaigning which attracted
the notice of Conservative and New Labour governments. Thus for example, a
handful of key actors had driven drug policy to prominence in the early 1990s
and received commitment to it in the Conservative 1993 manifesto (Arnull
2007) but once they had done so the ‘authorised decision making’ (Colebatch
1998) part of the process was largely out of their hands. Over the next ten
years numerous factors came to shape the subsequent drug policies.
It is important to uncover and consider these processes in order to understand
the role of campaigners in driving policy forward and to begin to think about
the consequences for them, foreseen and unforeseen, of so doing. Future
campaigns for changes in policy should perhaps be tempered with the
knowledge that once success has been achieved, there is no knowing what the
long term outcomes might be. Most immediately in-put is sustainable and
negotiated, but as time and policy progresses and moves into the mainstream,
or becomes important within a political context, it seems that the impact of
campaigners lessens and that other factors come to influence the resultant
policy which may subsequently be quite unlike that the campaigners hoped
for.
My concern elsewhere has been to describe the policy process and how drug
policy since 1994 has been shaped by the process of negotiation, local,
national and international factors and the role of individual actors (Arnull
2007). As noted less consideration has been paid in the literature to policy
implementation, than development, and the focus is most often on whether or
not there has been an ‘implementation gap’. However, if we focus on whether
the policy direction has changed from the ideas which originally underpinned
and framed it, we can be protected from confusing this with an
‘implementation gap’. The contention here is that policy generated from the
campaigning sectors, most likely to be voluntary, charitable and pressure
groups, may regularly find the policies end up radically different from that
originally hoped for: this is examined against two brief case studies.
Policy outcomes which are quite different from those originally intended are
an area which might be expected to be of particular concern, especially for
campaigning bodies at a time when government is claiming to lay particular
emphasis on the third sector with regard to social policy and delivery (for
example, Giving White Paper May 2011).
Case studies: youth justice and drug policy
Most policy areas, financial, economic, immigration, criminal justice, health
and agricultural, are subject to campaigns by charities, pressure groups and
third sector organisations who are seeking to influence policy making in their
area of specialism (Levin 1997:148). They may identify policy areas for
development or requiring improvement or refinement, often based on
evidence which they assemble in order to interest government and politicians
in the changes they are seeking to make (Arnull 2007). There is evidence of this
having occurred in the areas of youth justice and drug policy in the early 1990s.
Contextually, it is important to recall that Tackling Drugs Together (1995) was
innovative and excitingi; it created partnership bodies (Drug Action Teams,
DATs) for drug policy implementation, requiring the most senior local
representatives of the key statutory organisations to come together to work on
an issue which all considered peripheral to their principle area of focus.
Thirteen years later the Crime and Disorder Act (1998) made partnership
structures the mode of youth justice policy implementation, (Youth Offending
Teams, Yots). Both areas appeared to be informed by radical and innovative
policies, informed by research and ideas and there was considerable
excitement about what they might be able to deliver in terms of social change.
Youth justice
Youth justice and youth crime is an area which attracted considerable
attention towards the end of the 1990s. Campaign groups focussed their
attention on the need for increased funding and sought to influence the policy
direction. The Crime and Disorder Act (1998) responded to those campaigns
and changed the policy direction. It institutionalised some of the ideas which
campaign groups sought, with partnership working introduced through the
creation of Yots. The intention was to bring together more effectively those
working with young people who were offending, on the premise that many
were also young people ‘in need’ who required (or already received) a number
of interventions from state agencies. Allied with this, another area which
became institutionalised, was ‘risk factors’, based on research (Farrington
1996) it was built into the very systems around youth offending and thus the
system of assessment, ‘Asset’. The premise of the campaign, and then the
policy, was that young people ‘at risk’ of offending could be identified by a
range of ‘factors’ and that by thus identifying them it might be possible to
intervene early and thereby prevent them from offending: crime prevention.
Thus Nacro and the Princes Trust argued in ‘Wasted Lives’ (1998) that:
• Processing young people through the YJS was costly and wasteful;
• ‘Early intervention would mean fewer crimes, fewer victims and less
work for the courts and prisons’;
• ‘A great deal of youth crime had its roots in severe family and
educational problems’.
Lord Warner who was to Chair the new Youth Justice Board was welcomed by
many practitioners and campaigners within the youth justice system. In an
interview with Nacro published in ‘Safer Society’ (October 1998) (their new
magazine to look at policy and practice in the youth justice system) he argued
the role of the overhauled system was to:
‘...”produce safer communities, by tackling some of the persistent offenders at
earlier stages in their careers” and “also start to get society a bit more relaxed
about young people” who have often been ‘demonised’ by the behaviour of
persistent young offenders.’ (Lord Warner 1998: Safer Society)
Warner was someone who was close to new Labour and had informed the policy development: ‘...he has helped Jack Straw and Alun Michael to draw up the juvenile justice proposals which have found expression in the Crime and Disorder Act, and most recently he has acted as senior policy adviser to the Home Secretary and chaired the Government’s Youth Justice Task Force.’ (Safer Society 1998)
His interview with Nacro includes a discussion of key themes of partnership
working and the need for organisations to share information, safer
communities, the responsibility of the YJB to address the concerns of the
public about youth crime and work with the media to that end and ‘singles out
the statutory aim for all the agencies of preventing offending as being the most
important provision in the Act.’ Clearly therefore, the person driving forward
the changes in the YJS from 1998 was wholly allied with the policy drives
identified above and appeared to consider that the CDA (1998) and the
organisation he was to Chair (the Youth Justice Board) would deliver those.
Nacro, (a campaign group around offending and justice) had argued for change
and crystallised that in their paper, Wasted Lives (1998) and promulgated it
further in the interviews and reviews of policy change in Safer Society. Nacro
and the Princes trust therefore appeared to be aligned with the proposed
changes in the CDA (198). Similarly, another left leaning, socially aware and
campaigning body the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, supported and published
the work of Farrington (1996) with regard to risk factors.
Drug policy
Social forces and policies led to an increase in crime during the 1980s and
1990s (Farrall and Hay 2010; Arnull 2007) and some Labour MPs in particular
became concerned about this and apparently spiralling heroin use (Arnull
2007). This appeared to influence them to take up the issue of drug misuse
and its apparent effects on their communities. In a House of Commons debate
on 9 June 1989 a number of MPs spoke about their concerns. Hugo
Summerson (MP: Walthamstow) linked images of urban decay and
fragmentation with drug misuse and asked what would happen if drug misuse
‘got such a grip on this country’ as the United States. He and other Labour MPs
spoke of the ‘horrendous nightmare’ (Baldry MP: Banbury) of crack misuse and
the consequent effects on the USA. They told stories of their visits abroad and
what they had witnessed; in so doing they created powerful images. They were
receptive to the links made between poverty, crime and drug misuse. They
used the information fed to them by campaign groups such as SCODA and
ISDDii in their speeches, and Barry Sherman (MP Huddersfield) drew on ISDD
proposals regarding a ‘caution plus’ type scheme, and the work of Pearson
(1991) regarding a ‘major heroin epidemic...concentrated mainly in areas of
high unemployment and social deprivation’. Campaigners who were
interviewed about the development of TDT (1995)iii recalled that they
considered some Labour MPs important speakers on this subject, who were
open to briefings by them and who used research they were made aware of,
such as Ian McCartney MP, who was also known to have drawn on research by
Pearson (1987) (Arnull 2007:184). Additionally, interviewees named one
another, forming a small group involved in campaigning around the need for
drug policy and influencing the formation of TDT (1995) (Arnull 2007); they
were a mixture of individuals, those from the voluntary or campaigning sector,
politicians and latterly civil servants (Arnull 2007:181). Key documents
identified by them were the Home Affairs Committee Report (1984) and two
‘independent’ reports: ‘Across the Divide’ (Howard 1993) and that by Barker
and Runnicles (1991) (Arnull 2007:182). There is evidence that campaign
groups through individual lobbying, documents and research were able to
impact on the formation of drug policy through their ‘...direct linkages to either
ministers...or officials’ (Levin 1997:234) in the UK at this time (Arnull
2007:185).
Thus the role of Tony Newton, MP was seen as crucial once there was a
manifesto commitment by the Conservatives in 1993 (Arnull 2007:182 & 184)
and others within the Conservative government were seen to be interested in
drug misuse, such as John Major. Conservative MPs were more likely however
to argue that drug misuse was not about wealth or poverty, but about
‘aimlessness, hopelessness, lack of direction...’ (Norris MP: Epping Forest) and
Ann Widdecombe (MP: Maidstone). And John Marshall (MP: Hendon South)
talked of drug misuse stemming from a failure in personal moral values and a
‘permissive society’ which had emerged as a result of social changes begun in
the 1960s.
A feature of drug misuse debate post the late 1980s is the cross-party
cooperation and support which it engendered; at a time of considerable social
and political strife this was the more remarkable. Some have described drug
issues/policy at this time as ‘sexy’, with ‘political excitement’ about it
(Campaign respondent: Arnull 2007:183). Concern was reinforced by fears
about HIV/Aids and thus drug misuse appeared an important area for social
policy that transcended party politics and MPs apologised in the House for
being ‘party political’ (Sherman MP: Huddersfield). Additionally, each Prime
Minister from Thatcher, to Blair was seen to be interested in drug issues and
this provided continuity of concern at a high level throughout the period
(Arnull 2007:197). Nevertheless in 1989 the underlying assumptions and
analyses were quite different about the causes of drug misuse on each side of
the House. The difference in attribution may seem unsurprising, and the
concerns of Labour appeared to have been generated, at least in part, by
Conservative social policies. Thus the social factors which each politician took
into account and attributed as relevant to drug misuse were at this point
different; what both can be observed to have had in common was a clear
moral undertone. For the Conservatives the moral issue with regard to drug
misuse was personal responsibility, for Labour it was social responsibility and
the impact on communities. Both types of analysis recur with increasing
emphasis over the next twenty or so years and the analyses of the parties of
the underlying causes of drug misuse move closer together.
In 1989 however there was not an accepted link between drug misuse,
community or crime (Arnull 2007). TDT (1995) was not therefore premised on
these ideas; it argued that ‘drug misuse is not confined to particular social or
economic conditions.’ (TDT: 1995:54) ‘...social environment may be relevant in
once case; personal inclination in another’ (TDT: 1995:54). The apparent
success of campaigners and those from the Left in forcing through the
acceptance of a link between social and economic deprivation, crime and drug
use (Pearson 1991; Sherman 1989) leads under New Labour to Tackling Drugs
To Build a Better Britain (TDTBBB1998) and The Updated Strategy (2002) in
which a link is made, with ‘deprived communities currently suffering the worst
drug related crime’ specifically drawn out for attention (Updated Strategy
202:5). The trajectory of the policies over the years is the acceptance of the
link between crime and drug use, reinforced by social science research
(Pearson 1991; Hough 1995;NTORs 1996; Gossop et al 2001). By 2011 Jack
Straw in an appearance on Question Time treated the two as irrevocably and
ultimately linked and in the Conservative party manifesto in 2010 drug misuse
was only referred to in sections related to crime. Almost certainly, partnership,
the method of delivery chosen for drug and youth justice policy
implementation, strengthened the opportunities for links to be made and
brokered the relationships in those fora which further allowed for that to
happen. Much of the original emphasis on social issues, crime, communities
and drug use/misuse came from the left and campaign groups, similarly the
ideas regarding communities, crime and partnerships (Morgan report 1991);
these links and the effects were such that by 1994 treatment providers such as
Ian Wardle in Manchester was talking of a ‘paradigm shift’ with an ‘emphasis
on community approaches’ to drug misuse. Berridge (2006) and Duke (2003)
have discussed the importance of networks in the development of policy
trajectories and whilst there is no evidence of a ‘network’ in the development
of drug policy (Arnull 2007), partnership forms as the method of policy
implementation created local ‘networks’ of key players around drug misuse
issues and allowed for the formation of relationships. The creation of these
local networks strengthened the links with the conceptions of ‘community’
which were being made politically at the centre and which were becoming
increasingly important. The idea of drug misuse as geographically limited and
located by social deprivation (Pearson 1987: Sherman 1989) becomes another
key feature in the picture of drug misuse which is being drawn and when all
are added together they create the trajectories in drug policy which can be
seen most clearly in the Updated Strategy (2002.
Once again it seems unlikely that the campaigners in the drugs field in the late
1980s and early 1990s meant the UK to end up with the drugs policies it now
has; drug policies in which drug users are automatically linked with crime and
criminal activity (beyond possession) and where drug users can be ‘sentenced’
to ASBOs and compelled towards treatment in the name of a greater,
community, good.
Discussion
Taking a historical perspective with regard to policy is important to enable us
to disentangle the various threads which go into the process. Levin (1997) has
used case studies to enable a consideration of the policy making process.
Others, such as Farrall and Hay (2010) have sought to lay out how particular
ideological foci have impacted on policy making. Farrall and Hay (2010) have
thus considered ‘Thatcherite’ policies on crime and have argued that
apparently ‘Thatcherite’ policies did not really emerge until Thatcher herself
was out of office. They argue that it took time for her influence to embed, in
party as a result of an initial focus on areas other than crime, in part due to the
limits to her political influence and power at the start, and additionally because
it took time for crime to become an issue. They argue that the latter came
about as a direct result of the social and economic policies pursued by
Thatcher. The usefulness of their hypothesis is that it accords with that
advanced here with regard to the conception that it is important to observe
policies and their direction over time; and that this is essential before one can
actually be certain of the direction travelled.
Farrall and Hay (2010) include the notion of an ‘implementation gap’, but their
paper did not look in depth at how the policy ideas were generated; it appears
a given that these emerged from ‘Thatcherite’ policy directions. However as
we have seen empirical data can assist us to observe not an ‘implementation
gap’, nor a ‘rhetoric gap’, but a ‘gap’ between the intentions of those behind
the policy generation and what finally emerged as the policy over time. This
goes beyond policy implementation and precedes and then post-dates the
period for policy campaigners to be involved. Factors which influence both the
taking up of the policy ideas and their subsequent development and
implementation are ideological, rhetorical, political and moral trajectories
which can carry a policy along, propel it forward but also change it irrevocably
and substantially. This is what happened to drug policy and has led both to the
misapprehension that a penal policy agenda was to the fore (Stimson 1987;
Duke 2003; Arnull 2007 &2009) and/or that a ‘managerialist’ agenda was both
influential and/or preeminent in social policy during this period (Brown &
Simon and Feeley (1996) somewhat sceptically characterised government
concerns at this time with implementable policies in which delivery and value
for money could be evidenced, as essentially managerialist and ‘pragmatic’.
The assumption appeared to be that there was low ideological in-put and high
practicality and that the managerialist agenda led to ‘misshapen’ social policies
as a result: elsewhere I have argued that with regard to drug misuse this was a
misconception (Arnull 2009) What we can see here is that there were clear
ideological inputs into the formation of policy around drugs and youth justice
and these were also influenced by other discourses. Apparently
straightforward policy ideas such as partnership can be seen to have informed
both drug and youth justice policies, with Yots ‘a legacy from the DATs...’
(Arnull 2007:210), although with considerably greater resources; the impact of
working in partnership may also have been more subtle than commentators
first considered and it may have been in their geographical location and link to
communities that their most powerful influence on policy trajectories was to
be felt.
Addressing the ‘Wasted Lives Conference Ten Years On’ in 2009 I asked
delegates to consider if the Youth Crime Action Plan (2009) offering a ‘triple
track approach’:
• Setting clear boundaries and punishment;
• Addressing the root causes of crime;
• Offering ‘non-negotiable intervention’ to families at risk of offending.
was what people might have expected or anticipated in 1998? During those
ten years youth crime came to attract a lot of negative focus and press and
publicity; it led to research reported by Barnardos (2008) in which 54% of the
public in the UK identified young people as ‘feral’ /behaving like animals and
also considered that young people were responsible for half of all crime
(whereas Barnardos argued it was just 12%).iv
It might be that the campaigns for reform to the youth justice system by
powerful and respected third sector organisations such as Nacro and the
Princes Trust, supported by research by Farrington (1992; 1996) commissioned
by Joseph Rowntree, hit a period of increasing fear of young people and thus
the policy outcomes could not have been anticipated. If that is true then it
would suggest that the changes to the Youth Justice System which had in part
been introduced in order to ‘...”produce safer communities, ... get society a bit
more relaxed about young people” who have often been ‘demonised’ ....’ (Lord
Warner 1998: Safer Society) were not, when judged against those criteria,
successful. It may also be however that the elements contained within the
evidence and reports (Wasted Lives 1998) aiming at early identification and
partnership working, were actually followed, but the outcomes were not as
expected. The increasingly disciplinary approach to young people which
occurred in the policies over this period, when combined with an approach
which argued that ‘potential’ young offenders could be identified at an early
stage, appears to have taken the ‘Wasted Lives’ campaign to a place it is
unlikely that the campaigners meant to go and it appears that the Chair of the
new Youth Justice Board in 1998 did not intend:
‘I hope that all people will be able to congregate around this common aim... (crime prevention) If we hang on to that and shape the programmes towards that end, I think we’ll do a lot more good for a lot of young people.’ An essentially liberal policy imperative is not obviously apparent in the ‘non-
negotiable intervention’ proposed in the Youth Crime Action Plan (2009),
although it does focus on crime prevention. In 1998 talking about the Youth
Justice Board and the ‘new’ approaches to youth offending, Lord Warner said:
‘I think the concern was, not that the public wanted to be excessively more
punitive with young offenders but, they wanted to see responses which had a
chance of changing people’s behaviour.’ (Safer Society 1998)
It is hard to see ‘non-negotiable interventions’ as not excessively punitive, but
it can be argued, that within the campaigns which informed the policy
formulations in the CDA 1998 there were the seeds which allowed for The
Youth Crime Action Plan in 2009. Over that period the contested notion of risk
and identifiable risk factors became institutionalised within the youth justice
system and in so doing it became a given. By 2009 it was assumed that these
risk factors could be used to identify or ‘target’ young people considered to be
‘at risk’ of offending. The notion of crime prevention, rather than simply
punishment once one had transgressed, introduced the possibility of
intervening. It is possible to see, with hindsight, how from this basis it is
possible to find oneself with the ‘non-negotiable intervention’ proffered in the
YCAP (2009).
Additionally, research had apparently proven a link between drug use and
crime (Hough 1995; NTORs 1996; Gossop et al 2001 ) and thus it appeared
clear that drug users were harming their communities; on this basis it too
became possible to require treatment, increasingly accessed via the criminal
justice system (for example DTTOs). Davies (2005:3) has described this
approach as ‘...contractarian’, offering conditional access to the mainstream to
outsiders...’
Ideological simplification may be an important facet at this point in the political
process; whereby complex nuanced messages become certainties; thus
‘research suggests...’may during the policy process become, ‘we know...’ A
close reading of the drug strategies from 1995-2002 shows this simplification
process and the reduction of the strategy to one in which it is no longer a
discussion document about what might cause drug misuse (TDT 1995) or in
which there is an acknowledgement that ‘There are no easy answers’ (TDTBB
1998:3) but one in which the aims are clear (Arnull 2007).
In addition both the Conservatives and New Labour during this period
approached social policy from a perspective which talked of individual
responsibility and suggested the paramountcy of the family and community.
Both were seen to be influenced by thinkers working in these areas: the New
Right by theoreticians such as Murray (1994 with Hernstein) and New Labour
by Etzioni (1997). Community during the 1980s and 1990s became an
increasingly contested term, with a varied meaning depending on who used it.
Nonetheless, for those who wrote and said it, the intention was most often to
conjure a meaning which was positive and which related to a group of people
with shared interests. For the Conservatives 1979-97 communities were
destroyed by ‘social security scroungers’, unions and single parents; it is New
Labour who introduce the conception of the social responsibilities of drug
users. It can, as we have seen, be traced in the speeches of Labour MPs in the
House of Commons and it may well have been taken up by them because it
accorded with the experiences of constituents in poor, traditional working
class neighbourhoods who prior to 1997 were the traditional voting base for
Labour. The strains in difficult social and economic circumstances between
individual and community rights were clearly ones under consideration across
the policy spectrum. In 1995 Dennis O’Connor (Deputy Chief Constable of Kent
at the time and a frequent commentator on drug issues) at an ISTD conference
talked of the ‘tensions between the concerns for the individual and the
community’ and how multi-agency working (later, partnership) was helping to
‘overcome’ these ‘tensions’.
The representations portrayed drug users and young offenders (nay, young
people) as outside of their communities, and detrimental to them, they could
(and perhaps should) be compelled to be ‘responsible’ members of those
communities. There is no apparent recognition that they are the sons,
daughters, mothers and fathers, in those communities. It is contended that the
subtle influence of this moral discourse influenced the trajectory of social
policies and observably the policies concerned with drug misuse and youth
justice. Both increasingly gave prominence to the notions of individual and
community responsibility.
In just one edition, on one page, (6:26) ‘Safer Society’ (1998) discussed a host
of ‘social’ problems affecting neighbourhoods and communities and the new
and forthcoming legislative and policy changes, which included partnership
approaches, ASBOs, and DTTOs. It is important to recall the pace and scale of
change going on at this time and affecting many policy areas, including and
especially drug misuse and youth justice. During the 1990s and early 2000s the
sheer number of new policies and the scale of changes were phenomenal; it is
easy to see therefore how policies could be swayed over time as new and/or
more powerful voices/opinions took hold. However the seeds for the ultimate
outcomes were hidden in the original campaigns and the language used:
‘A reparation order will require the young offender to make reparation to his
victim or to the community.’ (Safer Society 1998:6)
As such it is possible to see how unintended consequences could emerge.
A combination of factors led drug misuse to become a prominent area for
social policy reform, so that TDT (1995) is a policy with a reasonably liberal and
libertarian approach to drug misuse, whereas the successive policies under
New Labour draw a link between drug misusing behaviour, social and
economic factors and ideas of social and community responsibility (Arnull
2007). The apparent success of campaigners and those from the Left in forcing
through the acceptance of a link between social and economic deprivation,
crime and drug use led under New Labour to TDTBB (1998) and the Updated
Strategy (2002):
‘one single change which has affected the well-being of individuals, families
and the wider community over the last thirty years is the substantial growth in
the use of drugs...The misery this causes cannot be underestimated’.
The trajectory of the policies over the years is the acceptance of these links
reinforced by social science research (Pearson 1987; Hough 1995; NTORS
1996;) which suggested that criminal activity could be reduced by treating drug
dependence (Gossop et al 2001) and argued that ‘treatment works’, a view
which MacGregor (2006:405) argued became accepted. This approach
combined with the moralised language of individual responsibility and
community began under the Conservatives and continued under New Labour
and the Respect agenda (Blair 2002):
‘Respect is at the heart of a belief in society. It is what makes us a community,
not merely a group of isolated individuals.’ (Blair 2002 in The Observer)
The language of respect, the moral impetus behind each policy, provides a
powerful platform from which it becomes possible to compel young offenders
and drug users to accept/be sentenced to ‘treatment’ in the name of wider
community benefit. The individualist right to offend and be punished, or to
use drugs and harm oneself has been lost in a broader, ‘contractarian’ (Davies
2005) conception of the moralised individual responsibility to the wider
community. This is a substantial change in focus from the original aims of the
campaigners who were behind the changes in legislation around drug use and
youth justice; it is most probable that this is not what they meant at all. The
changes and policy foci brought money and attention to the areas and related
problems, but they also brought a moral focus which allowed for a harsher and
blaming approach; it allowed for drug misuse and youth offending to become
wholly associated with problematic social behaviour, with an ‘underclass’,
confined to particular communities and requiring exclusionary social policies to
control – thus ASBOs. This analysis makes it possible and permissible to require
parents (parenting orders) and children (ASBOs) and drug users (DTTOs;
ASBOs) to undertake ‘treatment’ in the name of a greater good which can be
derived for the community. This was substantially different from the approach
of the Right in the early days of policy development (especially regarding drug
use) which understood and approached the issues from an individualist,
libertarian philosophical basis (TDT 1995; Arnull 2007). By associating drug use
with social problems and crime, Labour MPs (Arnull 2007) and New Labour
(TDTBB 1998) aligned drug use (and more recently alcohol use and in particular
binge drinking) with ‘morality’ and concepts of social responsibility which
allowed for the denigration of individual transgressors on a scale which had
not occurred in recent timesv and which allowed for penalties to be incurred
which sought to contain and punish social behaviours, as well as criminal ones.
The argument is not that this trajectory was intentional, but that the
accumulation of factors allowed it to occur. In an era in which the
Conservatives appear to be continuing the emphasis on individual
responsibility, the central importance of community (Cameron 2011) and the
role of third sector organisations in developing responses to social problems
(Giving 2011) it is important to consider how one might pursue radical policy
campaigns in the future, whilst giving some thought to how they might be
transformed over time.
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i Newman (2001:122) noted that practitioners might ‘welcome a release from traditional organisational restraints’ and it is important not to overlook the excitement, energy and drive which can accompany new policy directions.
ii SCODA (Standing Conference on Drug Abuse) and ISDD (Institute for the Study of Drug Dependence) were
two of the leading voluntary campaign and information groups around drug misuse at this time; they later merged to be come DrugScope iii PhD thesis by Elaine Arnull (2007); all respondents were interviewed on the basis that they would remain
anonymous in subsequently published work. iv Interestingly I was contacted by managers and practitioners in the field after this presentation who were
interested in being involved in research to look in greater detail at this area of unintended consequences. v There may be some similarities to gin drinking and working class women in the early 20