Keeping you up-to-date with Drugs and Crime
I set up this blog to stimulate debate around the rapid changes in the way we deliver public services, especially in the arenas of crime and drug & alcohol treatment, which I specialise in. The blog went live on 1 September 2011 and has continued to focus on these two key areas, with a side interest in payment by results. Over the past ten years, the pace of change in both these sectors has accelerated, driven by some very different forces:
- The ongoing reductions in public expenditure have drastically altered the way public (and private and voluntary) sector organisations deliver services — and has resulted in a prison service on the brink of collapse and an ongoing re-definition of the role of our police.
- Radical government policies (most driven by the need to cut public expenditure) resulted in a privatised and fragmented probation service which eventually returned to the public sector in June 2021.
- In the substance misuse sector, the advent of New Psychoactive Substances (particularly synthetic cannabinoids) has resulted in very different patterns of drug use and different types of help needed.
- The advent of new technology and of smartphone apps in particular is revolutionising the way we help people get free from dependency or move away from crime.
- All these trends have of course been accelerated by the global pandemic.
Explore your Areas of Interest
Browse by category
Alcohol/Drugs
The latest research, police & practice in substance misuse.
Probation
The latest developments in TR & probation practice
Prison
Can the Rehabilitation Revolution make our prisons safe again?
Criminal Justice
Latest crime stats, plus developments on courts, diversion etc.
Policing
How are our police services adapting to austerity?
Payment by Results
Does paying for outcomes work in the real world?
New Content Daily
A new post is published daily; summarising the latest ministerial speeches, policy initiatives, research or new practice methods. I’m increasingly keen to host guest blogs and recent contributors have comprised a wide range of researchers, policy makers and people with lived experience.
More than 6,000 people choose to subscribe to the blog and get these posts by email every day at noon. If you want to join them, just click on the button at the bottom of this page.
A Growing Community
The blog has continued to grow steadily with traffic continuing to increase (the last year saw over 360,000 different people visit the site, with over 6 million page views). More importantly, the blog has increasingly stimulated comment and debate. Although, like most blogs, discussion tends to happen less in the comments section at the end of posts, more on Twitter, LinkedIn, phone and e-mail – and even occasionally in person.
Blog Traffic
These figures exclude 3.4 million page views by robots, web crawlers etc.
A blog, of course, is just a waste of hyperspace unless visitors read something that makes them want to express an opinion. I hope you’ll want to post comments and generally get involved.
Welcome.
August 2022
