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INTRODUCTION There is surprisingly little research in the United Kingdom on drug misuse and associated problems among members of ethnic minority groups. In 1998, the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (1998) reported that the influence of ethnicity on illicit drug use in the United Kingdom was an ‘under-researched topic’ (p. 25). This lack of information on ethnicity and drugs also has been reported in other countries. Fountain and colleagues (2004) noted the following in relation to Europe: In several European Union countries drug use amongst black and minority ethnic communities is largely unacknowledged, ignored, unrecognised, or hidden by some policy-makers, drugs researchers, drug service planners and commissioners and by some members of some black and minority ethnic communities themselves. (p. 362) Rounds-Bryant, Motivans, and Pelissier (2003) claimed that even in studies where ethnic minorities had been included, many investigators fail to report findings for individual ethnic groups. Others have criticized drug research for focusing on some ethnic groups and ignoring others (Fountain, Bashford, Winters, and Patel, 2003). The absence of research in this area has been attributed in part to the differing cultural values of ethnic groups. Reid, Crofts, and Beyer (2001) state that illicit drug use in minority ethnic communities is often associated with denial, shame, stigma, and loss of face. As a result, there might be some reluctance among researchers to investigate these sensitive topic areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

INTRODUCTION Since 1997, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) has published estimates of the extent of drug misuse in the world. The most recent figures were presented in the World Drug Report 2005 (UNODC, 2005). It was estimated that about 200 million people, comprising 5 percent of the world's population aged 15 to 64, had used drugs at least once in the last 12 months. Cannabis was found to have been consumed by approximately 160 million people or (4% of the population aged 15 to 64). At the global level the main hard drugs reported were opiates and cocaine. In addition to providing global estimates of drug misuse, the World Drug Report 2005 also published estimates for individual countries. The results show wide variation in the prevalence of drug use across countries. Opiate use in the last 12 months, for example, was found to range from a low of 0.01 percent in Brunei, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait to a high of 2.8 percent in Iran. Estimates of cocaine use in the last 12 months ranged from 0.001 percent in Hong Kong to 3 percent in the United States. Cannabis use was estimated to be particularly high in some African and Caribbean countries with an estimate of 21.5 percent in Ghana and 16.1 percent in Haiti. By contrast, cannabis use was estimated to be just 0.02 percent in Brunei. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Third party policing represents a major shift in crime control. It is a trend in policing that mirrors wider societal transformations in regulatory practices concomitant with the emergence of the “risk society.” In third party policing, responsibility for crime control no longer rests with state agencies, but is shared with a wide range of regulatory nodes (both formal and informal) including regulatory agencies, local councils, businesses and individuals. Police partner with property owners, local residents, business owners, parents, health and fire regulators and local councils to control and prevent crime. Third party policing is thus defined in our book as police efforts to persuade or coerce organizations or non-offending persons, such as public housing agencies, property owners, parents, health and building inspectors, and business owners to take some responsibility for preventing crime or reducing crime problems (Buerger and Mazerolle, 1998: 301). In third party policing, the police create or enhance crime control guardians in locations or situations where crime control guardianship was previously absent or non-effective. Our book had four main goals: first, to define and describe third party policing. What does third party policing look like in practice? How is third party policing implemented at the coalface of policing? What are the key dimensions of third party policing? What types of legal levers are used in third party policing and why? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Third party policing has wide applicability across a variety of different settings (places, situations and people) and across a variety of different types of crime. In this chapter, we continue presenting the results of our systematic review of third party policing interventions (described in Chapter 5), concentrating on four specific crime categories: tactics geared to reduce violent crime problems, third party policing strategies used to reduce juvenile offending, third party policing aimed at property crime and, finally, third party policing that seeks to reduce a generic set of problems in public places. For each of these four categories we examine the range of third parties co-opted, the types of laws invoked and the outcome of the third party policing interventions. Violent crime problems This section examines the effectiveness of third party policing in controlling a variety of violent crimes including assaults, robberies, domestic disputes and gun crimes. Our systematic review reveals five domains where the police have used third party policing tactics to control violent crime problems. These include third party policing tactics that engage businesses (e.g. bars, nightclubs), victims, public officials (e.g. school administrators, probation officers, local council officers), professional service providers (e.g. medical practitioners, lawyers, accountants), and finally, not-for-profit service providers (e.g. victim advocates, social service providers). In this section, we discuss each of these areas of third party policing that seeks to control violent crime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The difference print makes The classic or liberal public sphere is separated out of a larger private realm defined in opposition to the early modern state and its public authority. Within the realm that was the preserve of private people we therefore distinguish again between private and public spheres. The private sphere comprised civil society in the narrower sense, that is to say, the realm of commodity exchange and social labor; imbedded in it was the family with its interior domain [“intimate sphere”]. (Habermas, Structural Transformation, 30) By means of this simultaneous separation from the state, the marketplace, and the “intimate sphere,” the public sphere, as Habermas formulates it, can negotiate and express “the general interest” in a “rational” fashion (“Encyclopedia,” 53). In the first chapter I argued that the problem Habermas identifies as an incursion of commercial interests into the public sphere is present from the moment a public sphere becomes imaginable. Assessing that assertion and the arguments and evidence I have drawn from late sixteenth-century pamphlets requires closer attention to the ways in which Habermas describes the marketplace simultaneously as separate from the early public sphere and as its enabling condition. The “general interest,” he argues, was “guaranteed according to the presuppositions of a society of free commodity exchange, when the activities of private individuals were freed from social compulsion and from political pressure in the public sphere” (“Encyclopedia,” 53). The condition of formal or abstract equality in turn secures “the general interest” and, most important for Habermas, the possibility of a rational collective consensus within the public sphere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]