Centre for Criminal Justice Studies

1
Centre for Criminal Justice Studies

• Sailing the Seas of Alcohol Frantic Steering
  and Creative Rowing
• Australian Drug Foundation
• Thinking Drinking 3 Conference
• Brisbane 5-7th August 2009

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Aims

• To explore a number of broad connected themes
  relating to policy networks, partnership working,
  compliance, and effectiveness in different areas
  of alcohol policy.
• To use Osborne and Gaeblers seafaring metaphors
  of steering and rowing to examine some of the
  tensions between top-down policy directives and
  grass roots solutions to local problems.
• To consider both conceptual and normative, as
  well as descriptive and empirical questions
  surrounding the regulation of alcohol.

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Challenges for alcohol policy

• Involves plural forms of regulation beyond
  law/state.
• Requires multi-disciplinary approaches, drawing
  insights on individual and group behaviour from
  sociology, social psychology and behavioural
  economics, as well as epidemiology, public
  health, socio-legal studies, and town planning.
• A growing emphasis on choice,
  individualisation and customer satisfaction
  (responsiveness) in public policy.
• Important conceptual insights provided by notions
  of responsive regulation and procedural
  justice.
• Issues of economic interest, moral
  entrepreneurship and political acceptability loom
  large.

4
Night-time economies feature prominently in
popular understandings of the alcohol issue and
are linked to criminal justice and urban
governance concerns
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Steering towards crime

• In England and Wales, 12 significant new powers
  have been introduced since 1998 to tackle crime,
  disorder and public nuisance related to alcohol.
• By contrast, the objective of improving public
  health -present in Scottish licensing law - was
  omitted from the Licensing Act 2003 and is absent
  from public sector statutory obligations and
  centrally-imposed performance indicators save in
  relation to reducing the rate of alcohol-related
  hospital admissions (Public Service Agreement
  25).

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• Detectable 'fault lines' can emerge in the
  development and implementation of alcohol policy
  where public health/treatment and criminal
  justice/urban governance concerns are not well
  integrated.
• Where criminal justice concerns - particularly
  those of low-level anti-social behaviour- take
  precedence this can lead to a focus on acute
  problems associated with younger 'binge drinkers'
  at the expense of work to illuminate and address
  the chronic effects of other prominent
  population-level issues such as 'hazardous' and
  'harmful' drinking by older people at home.  

7

• ...actually theyre not worried about whether
  people are drinking in a way that is harming
  themselves...if people are just drinking
  themselves into oblivion every night, but theyre
  not hitting anybody, thats ok
• Local Alcohol Strategy Coordinator commenting on
  central government policy.

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Treatment or prevention?

• Our interviewees spoke of a focus on brief
  interventions and arrest referral rather then
  proactive prevention
• Actors involved in alcohol treatment raised
  concerns over queue jumping in which clients
  became prioritised for treatment in direct
  relation to their offending history, rather than
  the seriousness of their drink problems

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Creative Rowing

• Local policy networks which include statutory
  partnerships and other stakeholders such as
  drinks retailers and local residents groups
  have sometimes struggled to keep pace with the
  tide of new policies and proposals from central
  government.
• They often struggle to retain some autonomy from
  national directives, whilst at the same time
  attempting to secure central funding for
  locally-prioritised action.
• The need to develop creative solutions stems from
  the nature of the many practical problems
  encountered.

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Regulation

• Regulation encompasses intentional and purposive
  activity that seeks to control, direct or
  influence behaviour and the flow of events.
• It entails three core constituents (Hood et al.
  2001 23-7)
• a goal component - the rule, standard or set of
  values against which behaviour or action is to be
  compared and contrasted
• a monitoring component - some mechanism or
  process of feedback for monitoring or evaluating
  what happens in pursuance of the goal and
• a realignment component - some form of corrective
  action or response that is designed or attempts
  to realign the subjects of control where
  deviation from the goal is perceived namely a
  mechanism for enforcing rules.

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Regulatory concerns

• Effectiveness - the impact of regulation on the
  social world and the extent to which targeted
  populations comply with regulation. It provokes
  questions about the consequences (intended or
  not) of regulation on society.
• Responsiveness - the manner in which regulatory
  regimes fit with, and relate to, other forms of
  regulation. Prompts descriptive questions about
  the resonance or dissonance between different
  systems of control, as well as normative
  questions about how better systems of regulation
  can work with and through existing systems of
  control rooted in social, economic and cultural
  life.
• Coherence - the logic and consistency of the
  norms and values within a system of regulation
  the extent to which the norms interact with each
  other to produce an integrated whole or are in
  conflict giving rise to ambiguous interactional
  effects.
• Each of these has implications for and raises
  questions about compliance and legitimacy.

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Command and control

• Recognition of the limitations of command and
  control mechanisms that have been the principal
  regulatory tools at the states disposal.
• Beyond what Ian Ayres describes as the bad old
  days and simplistic tools
• like linguistically challenged parrots, could
  only ritualistically repeat prohibit it or
  mandate it. (Ayres 2006 4)

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Responsive Regulation

• Preference for voluntary compliance and
  self-regulation.
• Regulation becomes responsive where regulators
  recognise and respond to the conduct of those
  they seek to regulate in ways that are sensitive
  to
• the conditions in which regulation occurs and
• the capacity of the regulated for
  self-regulation.
• Such responsiveness, where it involves
  cooperation, it is argued will produce more
  legitimate and effective regulation.
• New regulatory tools that engage with the
  regulated constituents and enlist their
  self-regulatory capacities - regulated
  self-regulation.

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What might responsive alcohol policy look like?

• Localities vary considerably in the range of
  issues that emerge, as well as in
  their professional resources, political histories
  and economic needs.
• Researchers and practitioners need to think
  locally and work from the bottom up, as well as
  thinking nationally, or globally and from the top
  down in a process of hypothesis testing.
• For example
• In relation to the 'night-time economy', it may
  be more fruitful to direct action toward the
  development of suitable strategies for different
  'types' of place, eg. 'holiday resorts', city
  centres, rural towns and suburbs, rather than to
  rely upon more general national, regional or
  city-wide directives which cross-cut various
  drinking settings.

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Responsive regulation is not de-regulation
re-labelled

• Self-regulation does not always produce the
  desired outcomes see recent KPMG report for the
  UK Home Office
• http//drugs.homeoffice.gov.uk/publication-sear
  ch/alcohol/alcohol-industry-responsibility/
• The findings of this research have fed into the
  drafting of a national mandatory code of practice
  for alcohol retailers- open for consultation from
  13 May 2009, until today!

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A New Taste for Intervention?

• Cumulative Impact Policies
• Alcohol Disorder Zones
• Discretionary local licensing conditions
• Mandatory codes of practice
• Many of these powers remain in prospect and it
  remains to be seen if they transform into
  concrete action.
• A fear of litigation evidenced in the low
  uptake of licence reviews and prosecutions for
  serving drunks and underage drinkers

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Responsiveness to cultural and economic change

•  
• Responses to alcohol need to be attuned to the
  changing ways in which young people are
  communicating and socialising. For example, as
  the formal 'night-time economy' becomes more
  heavily policed, regulated and expensive, there
  are signs that young people in a number of
  countries may be choosing more informal settings
  for nightlife and drug and alcohol consumption,
  such as festivals and free parties, as well
  pre-loading on alcohol before their nights out.
• The phenomena of 'flashmobs' organised on social
  networking websites is a good example of this.
  These factors are likely to provide new
  challenges in years to come as they elide many of
  the more recent harm minimisation efforts focused
  on manipulating physical and managerial aspects
  of identifiable licensed drinking settings.

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Alcohol remains a divisive topic

• Vested interests, economic development issues,
  tax revenue, and moral entrepreneurship make
  alcohol a contested topic around which feelings
  can run high
• Alcohol policy is not always objective and
  evidence-led. Their can be great debate over the
  validity of statistics, trends and research
  findings.
• Policy makers should not deny or seek to brush
  over deep-seated differences, rather they should
  try to achieve an equality of arms between
  those who wish to voice their opinions and
  concerns in influencing policy

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Allowing the rowers a steer

• National and regional governments should develop
  alcohol policies that are flexible and responsive
  to local needs and concerns- a soft steer, rather
  than a hard push. There will be special cases
  eg. Londons West End, Surfers Paradise on QLD
  Gold Coast?
• Public health and criminal justice agendas need
  to be aligned to allow joined-up collaborative
  working
• Preventative work on long-term issues can easily
  be overlooked in the rush to respond to immediate
  concerns- this applies both to public health and
  to urban governance, through planning and
  licensing strategies.