Chris Allen - Crime, Drugs and Social Theory

There are good political reasons for wanting to write about the nature and extent of the relationship between crime and drugs. The Blair Government, for example, has sought to attach the crime to drug users in a way which is typical of its tendency to pronounce in haste but, sadly, without seeking to understand the social phenomenon of crime and drug use at leisure. Such are the benefits of the class privileges that, when invested by their inheritors in order to secure political privileges, are too often used to marginalise those that are already marginalised. Despite New Labours claim that it understands the link between urban deprivation and problematic drug use, then, its political programme of labelling drug users as dangerous criminals has simply provided justification for an increased police focus on eliminating the drug problem (e.g. the street crime initiative) by catching offenders and then forcing them into treatment. This coercive strategy demonstrates a woeful lack of understanding of the lives of problematic drug users living in deprived urban areas. Unfortunately, this lack of understanding is only to be expected given that it is a consequence of the new economy of power that underpins the joined-up forms of governance (Allen 2003).

The principles of this new economy of power can be detected in New Labour rhetoric which lays the blame for previous welfare failures on the fragmentation that characterised the modern welfare state (institutional silos, professional boundaries, etc.), which was therefore culpable for its inability to address welfare recipients problems that are multi-dimensional in nature. However, the gradual shift towards a joined-up welfare system over the last 30 or so years has resulted in (what has become under the Blair Government) a chronic emphasis on holistic welfare practices that can see everything, know everything and do anything; these holistic practices are often presented as helping and supportive (Allen 2003). The shift towards a holistic system of welfare provision has therefore resulted in the production of a political discourse that exhibits growing confidence in the problem resolving capacity of the welfare system, which is increasingly seen to be infallible. Given that a holistic welfare system can see everything, know everything and do anything, then, the blame for welfare failures can now be passed onto the recipients of welfare who are consequently thought to be culpable for failing to capitalise on the context/resources/opportunities that the holistic welfare system has provided to enable them to resolve their problems and issues (Allen 2003; Crawford 1999). However, that is not the end of the matter. Of key import here is that welfare recipients enduring failures and shortcomings are then used as justification for recourse to coercive approaches to welfare provision. This brings me to the crux of the problem with New Labour and the political establishment more generally. Although the Blair Government has acknowledged that holistic measures are required to tackle drug use (for example, in regeneration programmes and drug treatment regimes) its