Abstract
In the early 1970s, during a conference on political theory at Exeter College of Oxford University, the writer of this review heard Quentin Skinner deliver a persuasive and controversial paper on “Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas.” The guts of Skinner’s argument is that no text in the history of political thought, for example, J. S. Mill’s essay On Liberty, has a timeless autonomy independent of the cultural, political, and philosophical context in which it was written. The authors of Tough Choices have explicitly embraced Skinner’s methodology in the mission to understand and explain the fusion of drug treatment with the criminal justice process in England. “It is only through a detailed empirical study of the micro-processes of the making of recent drug policy, drawing on a combination of oral historical enquiry and analysis of documentation, that we can develop this kind of nuanced and full contextualized understanding of the criminal justice turn” (p. 42).
The persons who give a careful reading of this book, particularly if they have experienced the responsibilities and opportunities of managing a criminal justice organization from 1979 to the present will agree that the authors of Tough Choices have successfully accomplished their defined mission of providing a highly detailed explanation of the fusion of drug treatment with the criminal justice process in England. The authors are not armchair criminologists. More specifically in the 2½ years between 2007 and 2009, they accumulated a mountain of empirical data. The first phase of their study involved the collection of national policy documentation and “… nearly 30 interviews with senior individuals involved in or knowledgeable about policy-making in this area, for example, officials in the Home Office and Department of Health, ministerial advisors and national drug policy campaigners” (p. 21).
The second main strand of their research brought them into the arena where theories and official policies regarding the drug offender population meet the actual practices of some community agencies whose mission is to make them achieve some socially beneficial consequences. They selected three sites to conduct in-depth case studies, namely, a city in the Midlands, an area in northern England with some small towns and rural parts, and a large city in northern England. In each site, they analyzed operational data, interviewed drug treatment providers, police, probation, magistrates, and drug users. “In total, we carried out over 220 interviews (including 77 with drug users) coded and analyzed over 150 documents and did nearly 80 hours of observation in criminal justice and drug-treatment sites” (p. 21).
During my 18-year tenure (1985–2004) as the director of an adult probation department in Texas, the highly politicized war on drugs was a constant presence and I was obliged to create judicially approved policies and procedures for dealing with multitudes of drug offenders. Marijuana, heroin, cocaine, and methamphetamines were the most commonly used drugs. I witnessed the virtual destruction of numerous young lives with a stiff prison sentence for a nonviolent offense. These experiences caused me to repudiate the “drug warrior” perspective and embrace the position that state and national policies for dealing with drug users should be controlled by a paradigm of public health and safety, that is, harm reduction.
Most of Tough Choices is a persuasive elucidation with massive documentation of claims made on two pages in the second chapter. They maintain that “… we can locate shifts in the British drug situation over the last 30 years in the context of wider social, economic and cultural transformations during the period” (p. 30). The present public perception is that drugs are now pervasive in society, particularly among the young in all social groups, that is, “the idea of normalization.” Drugs, from cannabis to crack and powder cocaine are responsible for unacceptably high crime rates, a major collateral consequence being the destructive impact on numerous communities. These grim realities are a “dangerous political cocktail.” “This, in a nutshell, is the new drug policy predicament in late-modern Britain that has structured and constrained …” the content of future policies.
Next we are told “that there is a strong continuity that runs through British drug policy from the 1980s to the present” and that any apparent distinct phases “can be better understood as variations within the same basic policy paradigm.” In what is probably a somewhat disputed claim among British criminologists, they assert that “The criminal justice turn developed in parallel with the public health or harm reduction approach, rather than following it” (p. 32).
The impressive result of their work at the three selected sites is that they have accurately identified some of the most critical issues that confront all of the key players who are obliged to make tough decisions regarding drug users. More specifically, Chapter 5 is where they unpack the content of their description of the criminal courts as a risk management system. The majority of drug users commit nonviolent crimes of shoplifting, theft, and burglary and are eligible for pretrial release on bail. A high percentage of them “relapse” or continue to use drugs and pose a risk of reoffending. Although legally innocent of the instant offense, magistrates have the authority to order them to complete a drug evaluation and submit to frequent urine testing. In the United States, a frequent criticism of pretrial release programs is that nonconvicted persons are subjected to many of the same requirements that are imposed on the convicted.
Some drug offenders are sentenced to prison, but the authors inform us that the magistrates who they interviewed are mindful of the issue of prison overcrowding and in many instances have probation officers write a presentence report, a vital assistance to their decision-making process. The presentence report is one of the most important documents in the criminal justice process as it provides the court with a comprehensive portrait of the defendant. This writer was highly impressed to read that in “all three sites, it appeared that probation recommendations about the suitability of an offenders for a ‘Drug Rehabilitation Requirement’ tended to be followed by magistrates” (p. 101). Judicial arrogance and pomposity are common in many jurisdictions in Texas where judges refuse to request a presentence report in any case and make their contribution to the American tragedy of mass incarceration.
Most of the remainder of Chapter 5 is an informative explanation of the reporting requirements imposed on the drug offenders, the regular court reviews in which judges are given progress reports on the defendants and the initiation of the breaching or revocation process for those who have failed to comply with the conditions of the drug rehabilitation program. The authors decided that the ethics of coerced drug treatment was not germane to their limited objective, but they cite research evidence from the United Kingdom, Europe, and the United States that coerced defendants are no less successful than those who voluntarily enter treatment programs. This is consistent with this writer’s 25 years of experience with multitudes of probationers. I have no ethical qualms about coercing into treatment/counseling drug users who steal to purchase drugs, repeat drunken drivers, sex offenders, and perpetrators of domestic violence who have been convicted and granted a community sentence of probation.
Tough Choices is a work of first-class scholarship and anyone with a desire to understand the complexities of finding a solution to the problem of drugs and crime can profit from reading it. My only criticism is that the massive amount of documentation on many pages of the text impede a smooth following of the discussion and make it a “tough” read. I would have preferred to read the citations in endnotes or footnotes.