Changing housing policy: women escaping domestic violence

Domestic violence has risen up the political agenda, as women's action has inspired changes in police, social work and legal practice. At the same time, one of the oldest pieces of legislation that protected women from violence - the Homeless Persons Act of 1977 - has been transmuted into the Housing Act of 1996. This legislation was introduced by a Conservative government, which was anxious to reduce the rights of homeless people to secure permanent accommodation, on the grounds that these rights gave incentives to pregnancy, lone parenthood and economic migrants. New Labour have softened the Housing Act to give more scope to local authorities to respond to homelessness. This article asks: What are the implications of changing homelessness rights under this legislation and subsequent regulations for women's ability to escape violent relationships and find long term solutions to the housing needs which domestic violence creates? How new is New Labour policy as expressed in housing regulations and its policy Green Paper?     

Mother Abuse: A Matter of Youth Justice,Child Welfare or Domestic Violence?

International evidence suggests that in advanced welfare states the abuse of parents, most particularly mothers, by their (most frequently male) adolescent children is increasingly prevalent. In the United Kingdom, however, child‐to‐mother abuse remains one of the most under‐acknowledged and under‐researched forms of family violence. Although it is an issue shrouded in silence, stigma, and shame, the authors' work in the youth justice sphere, focusing on interventions to deal with anti‐social behaviour, suggests that adolescent violence toward mothers is a topical and prevalent issue. We identify different ways of conceptualizing it in the policy realms of youth justice, child welfare, and domestic violence. The behaviour of both child/young person and mother is constructed in ways which inform the assignment of blame and responsibility. The paper highlights the silence that surrounds the issue in both the policy and wider academic spheres, hiding the failure of service providers to respond to this very destructive form of intimate interpersonal violence.     

Socio‐legal Studies in Aotearoa/New Zealand

This article reviews the development and impact of the socio‐legal field in New Zealand. It begins by assessing the socio‐legal presence within teaching and research conducted across New Zealand's law faculties before analysing factors likely to inhibit future growth of the sub‐discipline in this remote jurisdiction. Having examined how New Zealand's legal scholars map and influence national legal behaviour, without always recognizing contradictions between these objectives or categorizing their research as ‘socio‐legal’, the article goes on to examine how the next generation of socio‐legal researchers might exert stronger influence over the law curriculum and new areas of legal policy. In conclusion, it argues for a distinctive New Zealand approach toward socio‐legal studies and notes that future prospects appear encouraging, and in certain respects more promising than those in the United Kingdom, particularly when considering research impact.     

A three-year comparative longitudinal study of a school-based social work family service to reduce truancy,delinquency and school exclusions

New Labour is keen to use legislation to encourage what are seen as desirable family practices, and to discourage other, less-favoured, forms. What this means in policy terms has now been codified in its 1998 Green Paper, Supporting Families . In this paper, we examine the validity of this enterprise in terms of its underlying assumptions about social behaviour and economic decision making. We argue that the government implicitly assumes a universal model of 'rational economic man' and his close relative the 'rational legal subject', whereby people take individualistic, cost-benefit type decisions about how to maximize their own personal gain. Change the financial structure of costs and benefits, and the legal structure of rights and duties, in the appropriate way and people will modify their social behaviour in the desired direction. However, recent research suggests that people do not act like rational economic man in making decisions about their moral economy. Legislation based on this assumption might then be ineffectual and the proposals in Supporting Families seem to be one example. This is what we have labelled the 'rationality mistake'. In Part I of this work, we focus on the financial proposals in the Green Paper and on the New Deal for Lone Parents in particular. We then go on to counterpose this with the results of recent empirical work on how and why people actually do make family decisions. In Part II, to be published in the next issue, we focus on chapter four of Supporting Families , on strengthening marriage, and again compare New Labour's proposals with recent empirical work.     

Adoption Support and the Negotiation of Ambivalence in Family Policy and Children's Services

In this paper ambivalent commitments to parenting and family life by the New Labour government are explored by reference to the example of adoption support. Developments in adoption illuminate contrasting expectations in family policy and children's services more generally. Traditional normative concerns to support family status and parental autonomy are unsettled by contemporary anxieties about child outcomes and social mobility. Impatience with the attitudes and behaviour of parents has led to a 'progressive universalism' in which enhanced parenting services and expectations for all are combined with increasingly insistent and targeted interventions for the particularly needy, reluctant or recalcitrant few. At the same time demands for greater service modernization and professional effectiveness have led government to position parents as (potential) consumers too. The paper discusses these policy and practice tensions and concludes that new spaces are being opened up for the negotiation between parents and professionals about rights and responsibilities in family life and its support.     

Problem-oriented policing in public housing: The Jersey City evaluation

This paper examines the impact of a problem-oriented policing project on serious crime problems in six public housing sites in Jersey City, New Jersey. Representatives from the police department and the local housing authority, social service providers, and public housing tenants formed six problem-solving teams. Using systematic documentation of the teams' activities and calls for police service, we examine changes in serious crime both across and within the six sites over a 2 1/2-year period. We find that problem-oriented policing, as compared with traditional policing strategies used before the problem-oriented policing project, led to fewer serious crime calls for service over time and that two public housing sites in particular succeeded in reducing violent, property, and vehicle-related crimes.     

The curious case of Housing First: the limits of evidence based policy

Evidence Based Policy has been articulated and practiced in Europe, particularly under the ‘New Labour’ policies of the former Labour government in the United Kingdom. In the United States, the impact of research on policy has been inconsistent due to differing relationships between researchers and policy makers. This paper gives an overview of evidence based policy and presents critiques based on its reliance on positivist methods and technical approach to policy making. Using these critiques as a framework, the paper discusses the case of Housing First, a policy adopted by the Bush Administration in order to address the problem of chronic homelessness. The case is an example of research driven policy making but also resulted in a progressive policy being promoted by a conservative administration. In discussing the case, the paper elaborates on the relationship between evidence and policy, arguing that evidence based policy fails to integrate evidence and values into policy deliberations. The paper concludes with alternative models of policy decision making and their implications for research.     

Some Reflections on the Relationship between Citizenship, Access to Justice, and the Reform of Legal Aid

The reflexive, reciprocally constitutive relationship between law and society makes a substantive right of access to justice pivotal to the content of citizenship. It is therefore arguable that the establishment of legal aid, however limited in practice, was fundamental to the expanded citizenship which the post-war settlement sought to achieve. However this social form of citizenship has been attenuated by the reconfiguration of the state and the neo-liberal reconstruction of the public sector. Yet at the same time, the concepts of citizenship and social exclusion have become key discursive mechanisms in this reconstruction, including in the New Labour reform of the legal aid sector. This paper considers the various meanings attributed to the concepts of citizenship, social exclusion, and access to justice through the optic of the history of policy changes in legal aid. The impact of globalization and economic restructuring on social citizenship is explored, both in terms of the experience of recipients of public goods like legal services, and the professionals who supply them. The commensurability of the New Labour Community Legal Service (CLS) model with other models of justice is discussed. The conclusion briefly returns to the theme of law's 'citizen-constitutive' role and considers the potential of the CLS for combating social exclusion.     

论加强中央集权与强调政策执行自治权的两面性——对布莱尔时期新工党政策执行的思考

布莱尔执政时期比任何以前的工党政府更加坚持政府改革,注重提供公共服务的质量。“公共服务的提供”已经成为新工党的执政重点。与传统的自上而下公共服务提供方式和保守党政府时期强调“市场化”方式不同，新工党革新与改善政策执行的方法是基于“两面性”的基础之上——加强中央的集权与控制．同时强调给予政策直接执行者更多的自治权与自主性。本文旨在对布莱尔执政时期所进行的公共服务改革进行总结和分析，以期对研究布朗政府政策执行有一定的借鉴意义。     

Towards a Transformative Conceptualisation of Violence Against Women ‐ A Critical Frame Analysis of Council of Europe Discourse on Violence Against Women

Much academic attention has been devoted to violence against women (VAW) in Europe and research has focused on the mounting policy reform initiatives and capacity building strategies in the EU. Council of Europe initiatives in this area have, surprisingly, by contrast, remained under‐researched. This paper seeks to fill the gap in the literature by engaging in an examination and critique of the ways in which the Council of Europe has incorporated and framed VAW within various legal and policy initiatives. It will employ a methodology of critical frame analysis as theorised by the literature on social movements, and anti‐essentialist critiques within feminist literature to ask: how VAW is problematised; what solutions are offered; where they are located; to what extent they are gendered; and who has a voice in these policy and legal texts.     

Trust, Distrust and Betrayal: A Social Housing Case Study

This paper discusses the importance of trust, distrust and betrayal in the context of relational contracts in the modern welfare state. We use a specific case study of the allocation of social housing. That context is one in which the local authority has statutory obligations towards households in housing need but limited ability to fulfil those obligations without reliance on other social housing providers, specifically registered social landlords. Relationships between providers are, in theory, negotiated through nominations agreements. In this paper, we draw on data from a research project concerned with 'problematic nominations' to illustrate the production of trust, distrust and betrayal. Our analysis is structured by reference to three frameworks for the production of trust: characteristic-based, process-based and institutional based trust.     

Local Authorities and the Accountability Gap in a Fragmenting Schools System

Reforms to the English education system under the UK's coalition government are building on the so‐called ‘schools revolution’ that previous Labour governments began through legislation increasing both schools' autonomy from local authorities and the system's diversity. Growing numbers of state‐funded schools have converted to academies outside local authority control, particularly since the Academies Act 2010, while opportunities have emerged for ‘free schools’ to be established by various interest groups. The right to establish a school has normative human rights underpinnings, yet the government's policy as a whole is particularly controversial due to the increased risk of social division, instability of local schooling arrangements and significantly reduced local democratic accountability for state funded education. This article questions whether, against a background of three decades of centralising educational reform and a concomitant decline in the role of local (education) authorities, the local public interest in education is being adequately safeguarded.     

Social Citizenship,Housing Wealth and the Cost of Social Care: Is the Care Act 2014 ‘Fair'?

This article assesses the extent to which it is ‘fair’ for the government to require owner‐occupiers to draw on the equity accumulated in their home to fund their social care costs. The question is stimulated by the report of the Commission on Funding of Care and Support, Fairer Care Funding (the Dilnot Commission) and the subsequent Care Act 2014. The enquiry is located within the framework of social citizenship and the new social contract. It argues that the individualistic, contractarian approach, exemplified by the Dilnot Commission and reflected in the Act, raises questions when considered from the perspective of intergenerational fairness. We argue that our concerns with the Act could be addressed by inculcating an expectation of drawing on housing wealth to fund older age: a policy of asset‐based welfare.     

Anti-social behaviour: children,schools and parents

Under Prime Minister Tony Blair's New Labour government, increased criminalisation of previously non-criminal behaviour, anti-social behaviour and greater accountability of children and parents for their behaviour were evident. The article provides an overview of anti-social behaviour legislation and the implications for children, schools and parents. It focuses upon the interconnectedness of families and schools with the intention to better inform educational leaders of the changes to roles and responsibilities under the legislation.     

Assessing the Impact of Restrictive Housing on Inmate Post-Release Criminal Behavior

American Journal of Criminal Justice - The placement of inmates in restrictive housing (RH) units has become a staple of corrections policy in recent years. Despite its increased use, research on...     

Regulatory Capitalism and the UK Labour Government's Reregulation of Commissioning in the English National Health Service

Today, policy analysts and regulatory governance scholars are sceptical about the capacity of the regulatory state hypothesis to describe change at the institutional level. For many, the hypothesis is a convenient oversimplification that fails to account for the hybridity of institutional arrangements within individual policy sectors and also for the divergence of reform trajectories across different national and sector‐based policy contexts. This article assesses the influence of the key themes of the regulatory state on the UK Labour government's reregulation of National Health Service (NHS) commissioning organizations. Following the critics, it argues that these themes are only partially evident in the programme. While the government has codified previously informal relationships with policies like Patient Choice and has also subjected commissioning organizations to metaregulatory techniques, its reforms have neither displaced public ownership and the direct supply of commissioning services with markets and new mechanisms for rule making and standard setting, nor have the reforms divided labour within the state by creating an independent agency to regulate NHS commissioning organizations via technocratic means. Under the reforms, NHS commissioning continues to take place within a structure of bureaucratic relationships. However, the article suggests that the hybridity of regulatory techniques at work within the UK Labour government's reregulation of NHS commissioning lends weight to the claim that the current era is one of regulatory capitalism. It concludes with a discussion of the consequences of this finding for the public policy and regulatory governance literatures.     

'Contractual Governance' of Deviant Behaviour

This paper seeks to analyse and make sense of the growing role and implications of forms of 'contractual governance' that are emerging in diverse fields of social life and public policy in England and Wales, both within and beyond criminal justice. Collectively, these modes of control mimic and deploy 'contracts' and 'agreement' in the regulation of deviant conduct and disorderly behaviour. The rise of contractual governance is explored against the background of a crisis in penal modernism and the challenge of crime prevention. Contractual governance in a number of fields is outlined and discussed, including home-school agreements in education; acceptable behaviour contracts and introductory tenancies in social housing; restrictive covenants in private residential neighbourhoods; domestic security and private residential patrols and youth offender contracts. It will be argued that, in these contexts, contracts seek to induce conformity and order through modes of governing the future that depart significantly from traditional modes of policing and that recast social obligations in forms of parochial control.     

Perspectives on Parenting Responsibility: Contextualizing Values and Practices

This paper critically explores the classed assumptions underpinning contemporary family policy, situating them within the context of broader political and theoretical debates about parenting responsibility. Analysis of policy documents over the past few years suggests that the family is being prioritized as a mechanism for tackling wider social ills such as crime and poverty. Families are portrayed as the 'building blocks for safe and sustainable communities', with good parents fostering and transmitting crucial values to their children which protect and reproduce the common good. Although the current government has pledged to support all parents, policy initiatives point to a class-specific focus on disadvantaged or 'socially excluded' families. Poor parents are viewed as reproducing a cycle of deprivation and anti-social behaviour and are therefore targeted for behaviour modification. Drawing on research from a qualitative study of parenting resources, this paper will challenge the notion that social inclusion can be promoted at the level of the family, and will argue instead that parenting practices and values are grounded in social and economic realities.     

The Right to Buy,the Leaseholder,and the Impoverishment of Ownership

Right to Buy is one of the most successful schemes devised to extend home ownership to those otherwise excluded. Its introduction by Margaret Thatcher and endorsement by New Labour provide a critical indicator of those governments' neo‐liberal credentials. This article suggests that one of the key achievements of the Right to Buy was to obscure inequalities inherent in a project of democratization via property ownership. It examines New Labour's political reform of local authority landlordism and leaseholder rights and exposes the vulnerability of Right to Buy lessees and their successors in title. It argues that the promise of inclusion via home ownership is a more conditional promise than generally recognized, in some cases impoverishing rather than enriching. It concludes by reflecting on the importance of scrutinizing schemes which purport to democratize ownership, observing that the position of Right to Buy leaseholders is unlikely to improve following the abandonment of social reform projects by the coalition government.     

Candidate gender and voting in the 1997 British general election: Did labour Quotas Matter?

The proportion of women MPs elected in the 1997 British general election reached an historic high of 18.2 per cent, the vast majority from the victorious Labour Party. The large increase in the proportion of women Labour MPs was partly due to the policy of establishing women‐only shortlists for winnable seats. This paper examines the distribution of women candidates in the election and analyses the factors that affected the votes they attracted. The results show that Labour women selected on the women‐only shortlists attracted significantly more votes than women nominated on open shortlists. This was mainly a consequence of their selection for marginal seats, but the greater organisational effort that was concentrated on those seats was also an important factor. Overall, there was no evidence that voters discriminated against women candidates in the election, regardless of party and regardless of how they were selected. The large number of women MPs raises issues concerning the formulation and articulation of a distinctive women's policy agenda at Westminster.