Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan Dewey ◽  
Tonia St. Germain
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Drug Use ◽  
Research Methods ◽  
Social Services ◽  
Illicit Drug ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
Federal State ◽  
Ethical Considerations ◽  
Law Enforcement Agencies ◽  
Municipal Law

This chapter introduces the criminal justice–social services alliance, a punitive-therapeutic confederation of federal, state, and municipal law enforcement agencies and state, municipal, or independent nonprofit social services entities. The diverse bodies and individuals comprising the alliance are united by a cultural ethos characterized by the belief that street-based prostitution and illicit drug use are inherently harmful to women, who require sociolegal intervention and subsequent demonstration of their readiness to express accountability for their life circumstances. Encounters between street-involved women and alliance professionals take place within the context of systemic intimacy, a paradoxical relationship between individuals who belong to oppositional social groups and who consequently must assess one another’s motivations and inner states as they go about the daily business of making a living. This chapter also presents a review of the research methods employed as well as associated ethical considerations, and a chapter overview.

Women of the Street

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan Dewey ◽  
Tonia St. Germain
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Drug Use ◽  
Social Services ◽  
Police Officers ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
Illicit Drug ◽  
Illicit Drug Use ◽  
Transitional Housing ◽  
Sex Trading ◽  
Treatment Providers

This is a book about people who make their living by engaging in street-based sex trading and criminal justice and social services efforts to curtail it through the work of police officers, public defenders, judges, probation officers, or court-mandated therapeutic treatment providers. Coauthored by an anthropologist and a legal scholar, the book explores these interactions and the cultural context in which they take place by drawing upon six years of ethnographic research with hundreds of women involved in street-based prostitution and illicit drug use, as well as dozens of the criminal justice and social services professionals who regularly interact with them. The book focuses on the criminal justice–social services alliance, which positions itself as a punitive-therapeutic partnership among law enforcement agencies and state, municipal, or independent nonprofit social services entities that police or otherwise regulate women involved in street-based prostitution and illicit drug use. Such policing and regulation rely on an interventionist discourse that positions the women’s decision making as the product of traumatic interpersonal encounters rather than of the exclusionary socioeconomic realities that frame their lives. The book’s balanced approach results from its unique methodology, with Dewey inhabiting a number of distinct roles as a participant observer on the streets, in services providers’ offices, and in correctional facilities, and as an alliance professional through her work as the admissions coordinator of one of the few transitional housing facilities for women leaving street-based sex trading.

Illicit drug use as a challenge to the delivery of end-of-life care services to homeless persons: Perceptions of health and social services professionals

2011 ◽  
Vol 26 (4) ◽  
pp. 350-359 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ryan McNeil ◽  
Manal Guirguis-Younger
Keyword(s):  
Drug Use ◽  
End Of Life ◽  
Social Services ◽  
End Of Life Care ◽  
Illicit Drug ◽  
Homeless Persons ◽  
Life Care ◽  
Health And Social Services ◽  
Care Services ◽  
Services Delivery

Homeless persons tend to die younger than the housed population and have complex, often unmet, end-of-life care needs. High levels of illicit drug use among this population are a particular challenge for health and social services professionals involved in end-of-life care services delivery. This article explores the challenges of end-of-life care services to homeless illicit drug users based on data collected during a national study on end-of-life care services delivery to homeless persons in Canada. The authors conducted qualitative interviews with 50 health and social services professionals involved in health services delivery to homeless persons in five cities. Interviews were transcribed verbatim and analysed thematically. Themes were organised into two domains. First, barriers preventing homeless illicit drug users from accessing end-of-life care services, such as competing priorities (e.g. withdrawal management), lack of trust in healthcare providers and discrimination. Second, challenges to end-of-life care services delivery to this population in health and social care settings, including non-disclosure of illicit drug use, pain and symptom management, interruptions in care, and lack of experience with addictions. The authors identify a need for increased research on the role of harm reduction in end-of-life care settings to address these challenges.

Harms associated with illicit drug use

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas F. Babor ◽  
Jonathan Caulkins ◽  
Benedikt Fischer ◽  
David Foxcroft ◽  
Keith Humphreys ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Drug Use ◽  
Social Services ◽  
Disease Burden ◽  
Illicit Drugs ◽  
Illicit Drug ◽  
Premature Mortality ◽  
Illicit Drug Use ◽  
Years Of Life Lost ◽  
Causes Of Disease ◽  
Prevention Programmes

Five types of morbidity and mortality have been identified as the main health expressions of health harm associated with illicit drug use: 1) overdose; 2) other injury; 3) non-communicable physical disease; 4) mental disorders; and 5) infectious disease. Burden of disease estimates combining years of life lost due to premature mortality and disability indicate that illicit drugs ranked eighth among causes of disease, death, and disability in developed regions of the world. Opioids, cocaine, and amphetamines entail greater risks, especially when they are injected. Many harmful consequences are not completely intrinsic to the properties of the drug, but instead are associated with the physical and social environment in which drug use takes place. These epidemiological considerations need to be taken into account in the allocation of resources for prevention programmes, treatment, and social services.

scholarly journals Association of illicit drug use in adolescence with socioeconomic and criminal justice outcomes in adulthood: prospective findings from a UK national birth cohort

2020 ◽  
pp. jech-2019-213282
Author(s):  
James White ◽  
Steven Bell ◽  
G David Batty
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Drug Use ◽  
Birth Cohort ◽  
Illicit Drug ◽  
Mental Health Problems ◽  
Adult Life ◽  
Illicit Drug Use ◽  
Birth Cohort Study ◽  
The Past

BackgroundIllicit drug use in adolescence has been linked to drug use and poor mental health in adult life, but few studies have examined the relation between adult economic and criminal justice outcomes.MethodsWe analysed data from 14 082 participants (6999 women) in the 1970 British Birth Cohort Study. Illicit drug use over study members’ lifetime and in the past year were self-reported at 16 years of age. Thirteen outcomes were self-reported at 30 years of age, including illicit drug use, smoking, problems with alcohol, mental and physical health, experience of socioeconomic disadvantage and experiences with the criminal justice system.ResultsAt 16 years of age, 20.3% of the participants had ever tried an illicit drug and 7.2% had used in the past year. After adjustment for childhood socioeconomic status and mental health problems, and following correction for multiple testing, there was a dose–response association between illicit drug use at 16 years with illicit drug use in adult life in the past year (OR; 95% CI – 1.83, 1.51 to 3.12), experiencing homelessness (1.74, 1.16 to 2.62), being arrested (1.57, 1.29 to 1.92) and cautioned (1.97, 1.50 to 2.57) by the police, and being found guilty at court (1.73, 1.34 to 2.23).ConclusionsAdolescent drug use was associated with an array of social and criminal outcomes in later life.

Conclusion

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan Dewey ◽  
Tonia St. Germain
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Drug Use ◽  
Racial Discrimination ◽  
Social Services ◽  
Evidence Based ◽  
Socioeconomic Conditions ◽  
Life Choices ◽  
Sex Trading ◽  
Decision Making Processes

Our conclusion questions the utility of an alliance between criminal justice and social services professionals that remains dominated by punitive criminal justice paradigms. The alliance’s ideological focus on changing individual women’s decision-making processes translates into practices that punish street-involved women for decisions they make in the context of the pervasive gender, class, and ethno-racial discrimination that limits their life choices. Hence even when street-involved women receive therapeutic social services in the alliance context, more often than not they return to the same socioeconomic conditions that impelled them to work the street in the first place. Street-based sex trading and the illicit drug use it often supports stem from and take place within the context of women’s complex lives in communities struggling with multiple oppressions. The nuances involved in such situations require pragmatic, evidence-based legislative and policy approaches that reflect these complex realities; without these, the system will continue to fail the very women it aims to assist.

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