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 &

Sparks 1989; Harris 1989; Mishra 1990; Deakin 1994; Simon & Feeley 1996).

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

th century: Berridge, et

al 2005