Drug Law Enforcement, Policing and Harm Reduction
Drug Law Enforcement, Policing and Harm Reduction

Author: Matthew Bacon

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2022-12-30

Total Pages: 247

ISBN-13: 1000828387

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The policing of drugs is an intriguing, complex, and contentious domain that brings into sharp focus the multifaceted nature of the police role and has farreaching consequences for health, crime, and justice. While research on drugs policing has historically been surprisingly sparse, fragmented, and underdeveloped, the field has recently become a burgeoning area of academic study, influenced by contemporary trends in policing practices, changes in drug policy, and wider social movements. This book makes a much-needed interdisciplinary and international contribution that engages with established and emerging areas of scholarship, advances cutting-edge debates, and sets an agenda for future directions in drugs policing. Drug Law Enforcement, Policing and Harm Reduction is the first edited collection to devote its attention exclusively to drugs policing. It brings together a range of leading scholars to provide a deep and thorough account of the current state of knowledge. In addition to academic analysis, authors also include serving police officers and policymakers, who have influenced how drugs policing is framed and carried out. Together, the contributors draw on a diverse set of empirical studies and theoretical perspectives, with the thread running throughout the book being the concept of harm reduction policing. With accounts from various countries, localities, and contexts, topics covered include the (in)effectiveness and (un)intended consequences of the ‘war on drugs’, attempts to reform drugs policing, and the role of partnerships and policy networks. The broader theme of inequality lies at the heart of this collection. An accessible and compelling read, this book will be of interest to academics and students of criminology, public health, and social policy, especially those researching policing, drug policy, and harm reduction. It also offers valuable insights and practical guidance for professionals working in the drugs field.

Police Reform in Mexico
Police Reform in Mexico

Author: Daniel Sabet

Publisher: Stanford University Press

Published: 2012-05-02

Total Pages: 298

ISBN-13: 0804782067

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The urgent need to professionalize Mexican police has been recognized since the early 1990s, but despite even the most well-intentioned promises from elected officials and police chiefs, few gains have been made in improving police integrity. Why have reform efforts in Mexico been largely unsuccessful? This book seeks to answer the question by focusing on Mexico's municipal police, which make up the largest percentage of the country's police forces. Indeed, organized crime presents a major obstacle to institutional change, with criminal groups killing hundreds of local police in recent years. Nonetheless, Daniel Sabet argues that the problems of Mexican policing are really problems of governance. He finds that reform has suffered from a number of policy design and implementation challenges. More importantly, the informal rules of Mexican politics have prevented the continuity of reform efforts across administrations, allowed patronage appointments to persist, and undermined anti-corruption efforts. Although many advances have been made in Mexican policing, weak horizontal and vertical accountability mechanisms have failed to create sufficient incentives for institutional change. Citizens may represent the best hope for counterbalancing the toxic effects of organized crime and poor governance, but the ambivalent relationship between citizens and their police must be overcome to break the vicious cycle of corruption and ineffectiveness.

The Impact of Global Drug Policy on Women
The Impact of Global Drug Policy on Women

Author: Julia Buxton

Publisher: Emerald Group Publishing

Published: 2020-11-19

Total Pages: 444

ISBN-13: 183982882X

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The ebook edition of this title is Open Access and freely available to read online. Examining the impact of drug criminalisation on a previously overlooked demographic, this book argues that women are disproportionately affected by a flawed policy approach.

Integrating Responses at the Intersection of Opioid Use Disorder and Infectious Disease Epidemics
Integrating Responses at the Intersection of Opioid Use Disorder and Infectious Disease Epidemics

Author: National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine

Publisher: National Academies Press

Published: 2018-09-27

Total Pages: 175

ISBN-13: 0309477948

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According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 115 Americans die each day from an opioid overdose, which averages one death every 12.5 minutes. Between 1999 and 2016, the number of drug overdoses catapulted by 300 percent, with injection drug use increasing by 93 percent between 2004 and 2014 and opioid-related hospital admissions increasing by 58 percent over the past decade. And an inexorable sequela of the opioid epidemic is the spread of infectious diseases. To address these infectious disease consequences of the opioid crisis, a public workshop titled Integrating Infectious Disease Considerations with Response to the Opioid Epidemic was convened on March 12 and 13, 2018, by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. Participants discussed strategies to prevent and treat infections in people who inject drugs, especially ways to work efficiently though the existing public health and medical systems. This publication summarizes the presentations and discussions from the workshop.

Crimson Letters: Voices from Death Row
Crimson Letters: Voices from Death Row

Author: Tessie Castillo

Publisher: Black Rose Writing

Published: 2020-03-12

Total Pages: 245

ISBN-13: 1684334446

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Through thirty compelling essays written in the prisoners’ own words, Crimson Letters: Voices from Death Row offers stories of brutal beatings inside juvenile hall, botched suicide attempts, the terror of the first night on Death Row, the pain of goodbye as a friend is led to execution, and the small acts of humanity that keep hope alive for men living in the shadow of death. Each carefully crafted personal essay illuminates the complex stew of choice and circumstance that brought four men to Death Row and the cycle of dehumanization and brutality that continues inside prison. At times the men write with humor, at times with despair, at times with deep sensitivity, but always with keen insight and understanding of the common human experience that binds us.

Harm Reduction
Harm Reduction

Author: James A. Inciardi

Publisher: SAGE

Published: 1999-10-11

Total Pages: 248

ISBN-13: 9780761906889

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Harm reduction programmes accept the reality of drug use while attempting to reduce its harmful consequences to individuals and society. Here, contributors discuss the philosophical basis and history of such policies and examine their outcomes.

Pusher Myths
Pusher Myths

Author: Ross Coomber

Publisher:

Published: 2006

Total Pages: 228

ISBN-13:

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Drug dealers are commonly presented as 'dealing in death', preying on the young and innocent and spreading addiction with little care or regard for those they entangle. Drug markets are commonly depicted as being hierarchically organized and riddled with unscrupulous practices and chaotic violence. While a strong case has been made in recent years that the powers of particular drugs have often led to an unreasonable demonization of drug users, there has been little by way of understanding drug dealers as part of that same process. Who is a drug dealer? How does the dealer operate in the drug market? What if many common perceptions, both about dealers themselves and drug markets more generally, are either incorrect or unreasonably distorted? Reviewing recent research into the minutiae of drug dealing and drug market operations, Pusher Myths suggests that these overly simplistic characterizations of who the drug dealer is, what drug dealers do, and the context within which they operate serve to perpetuate unhelpful ideas of what the drug problem is and, thus ultimately, how it should be resolved. Focusing on issues such as dangerous drug adulteration, the pushing of street drugs onto the young and innocent, the provision of free drugs to hook new clients, and the legend of the Blue Star LSD Tattoo, this book goes in the direction of recasting our understanding of the drug dealer as one that has been unreasonably demonized and de-humanized. This book also provides a contemporary analysis of how the various myths (untruths) surrounding drug dealers may be understood within the broader conceptual analysis of the place of myth in modern society.

The End of Policing
The End of Policing

Author: Alex S. Vitale

Publisher: Verso Books

Published: 2017-10-10

Total Pages: 298

ISBN-13: 1784782904

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The massive uprising following the police killing of George Floyd in the summer of 2020--by some estimates the largest protests in US history--thrust the argument to defund the police to the forefront of international politics. It also made The End of Policing a bestseller and Alex Vitale, its author, a leading figure in the urgent public discussion over police and racial justice. As the writer Rachel Kushner put it in an article called "Things I Can't Live Without", this book explains that "unfortunately, no increased diversity on police forces, nor body cameras, nor better training, has made any seeming difference" in reducing police killings and abuse. "We need to restructure our society and put resources into communities themselves, an argument Alex Vitale makes very persuasively." The problem, Vitale demonstrates, is policing itself-the dramatic expansion of the police role over the last forty years. Drawing on first-hand research from across the globe, The End of Policing describes how the implementation of alternatives to policing, like drug legalization, regulation, and harm reduction instead of the policing of drugs, has led to reductions in crime, spending, and injustice. This edition includes a new introduction that takes stock of the renewed movement to challenge police impunity and shows how we move forward, evaluating protest, policy, and the political situation.

Preventing HIV Transmission
Preventing HIV Transmission

Author: National Research Council and Institute of Medicine

Publisher: National Academies Press

Published: 1995-09-14

Total Pages: 352

ISBN-13: 0309176212

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This volume addresses the interface of two major national problems: the epidemic of HIV-AIDS and the widespread use of illegal injection drugs. Should communities have the option of giving drug users sterile needles or bleach for cleaning needs in order to reduce the spread of HIV? Does needle distribution worsen the drug problem, as opponents of such programs argue? Do they reduce the spread of other serious diseases, such as hepatitis? Do they result in more used needles being carelessly discarded in the community? The panel takes a critical look at the available data on needle exchange and bleach distribution programs, reaches conclusions about their efficacy, and offers concrete recommendations for public policy to reduce the spread of HIV/AIDS. The book includes current knowledge about the epidemiologies of HIV/AIDS and injection drug use; characteristics of needle exchange and bleach distribution programs and views on those programs from diverse community groups; and a discussion of laws designed to control possession of needles, their impact on needle sharing among injection drug users, and their implications for needle exchange programs.

More Harm Than Good
More Harm Than Good

Author: Susan C. Boyd

Publisher:

Published: 2016

Total Pages: 160

ISBN-13: 9781552668504

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In an era when the "war on drugs" has resulted in increasingly militarized responses from police, harsh prison sentences and overcrowded prisons, a re-examination of drug policy is sorely needed. Are prohibitive policies actually effective? In what ways do prohibitive policies affect health care, education, housing and poverty? More Harm Than Good examines the past and current state of Canadian drug policy, especially as it evolved under the Conservative government, and raises key questions about the effects of Canada's increased involvement in and commitment to the war on drugs. The analysis in this book is shaped by critical sociology and feminist perspectives and incorporates insights not only from treatment and service workers on the front lines but also from those who live with the consequences of drug policy on a daily basis: people who use criminalized drugs. The authors propose realistic alternatives to today's failed policy approach and challenge citizens and governments at all levels in Canada to chart a new course in addressing drug-related issues.