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  • chapter_Chris_Grover_crime_and_criminal_justice_final

    Rights statement: This is a draft chapter/article. The final version is available in A Research Agenda for Social Welfare Law, Policy and Practice edited by Michael Adler, published in 2022, Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd http://dx.doi.org/10.4337/9781800886339.00015 The material cannot be used for any other purpose without further permission of the publisher, and is for private use only.

    Accepted author manuscript, 364 KB, PDF document

    Available under license: CC BY-NC: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License

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Social harms, crime and criminal justice

Research output: Contribution in Book/Report/Proceedings - With ISBN/ISSNChapter

Published
Publication date6/12/2022
Host publicationA Research Agenda for Social Welfare Law, Policy and Practice
EditorsMichael Adler
Place of PublicationCheltenham
PublisherEdward Elgar
Pages155-172
Number of pages17
ISBN (electronic)9781800886339
ISBN (print)9781800886322
<mark>Original language</mark>English

Abstract

This chapter focuses upon relationships between social assistance and crime in the UK. It examines ways the operation of social assistance and its consequences create social harms for the income poorest people, which can be understood as sources of crime, exacerbated by the operation of a criminal justice system geared to punishing individuals that in various ways make them poorer. The chapter argues that future research on the intersection between crime and social assistance should focus upon the ways in which states exacerbate social harm by ignoring its socio-economic embeddedness, and at how such issues as poverty and destitution might be taken into account in criminal justice processes; why in social assistance policy making there is an indifference, even an enthusiasm, for the infliction of such harm, and on understanding the complexities and nuances of how income poor people experience social harm and criminal justice. Such research, the chapter contends, will also need to be embedded in recent and more long-standing socio-political concerns that have framed social assistance policy, including policy reactions to the Covid-19 pandemic and devolved social assistance responsibility across the nations of the UK.

Bibliographic note

This is a draft chapter/article. The final version is available in A Research Agenda for Social Welfare Law, Policy and Practice edited by Michael Adler, published in 2022, Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd http://dx.doi.org/10.4337/9781800886339.00015 The material cannot be used for any other purpose without further permission of the publisher, and is for private use only.