Matthew Bacon
Biographic Data
| ID | 4505029 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Matthew Bacon |
| GIVEN NAMES | Matthew |
| FAMILY NAME | Bacon |
| SIGNATURE | BACON M |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Sheffield |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-8036-1452 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 22 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 34 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 22 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2009 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Analyzing the Role of Needs Assessments in Police Drug Diversion Schemes
Police-led drug diversion (PDD) schemes can divert individuals caught in possession of controlled substances away from the harms associated with criminal justice pathways and toward treatment, education, or welfare support. As an alternative to prosecution, it has been established that the use of well-implemented diversion schemes may lead to reductions in reoffending, efficiencies in police time, and reductions in costs for the wider criminal ju…
Implementation fidelity matters
Evaluations in the field of police studies do not adequately address implementation fidelity, which impacts understanding of outcomes, how and why an intervention works in practice, what can be done to achieve improvements, and how to implement effective innovations in different contexts. Responding to calls for greater use of implementation science to improve innovations in policing, this article draws on the qualitative phase of a realist, quas…
Cascading Constraint and Subsidiary Discretion
This article explores how discretion is managed and exercised across senior, middle, and street levels of policing. It uses qualitative data from two studies in England. The first, a study across three police force areas, involved interviews and focus groups with 221 people who were designers, deliverers, and recipients of police-led drug diversion. The second study used 354 hours of ethnographic observation and 21 interviews to examine stop-and-…
Triggering motivations for change
Background The harm reduction effects of police drug diversion (PDD) are influenced by how people engage with diversion, which is moderated by their motivation to change. Underlying influences can be revealed by examining the contexts and mechanisms which trigger and support participants’ motivation for engagement and change.Methods The qualitative phase of a realist evaluation of three PDD programs in England used semi-structured interviews with…
Police innovation and institutional entrepreneurs
This article advances knowledge about the initiation of police innovation in the context of drugs policing. Drawing on the findings of a qualitative research project, it provides an original account of the emergence of police drug diversion schemes in England and Wales by analysing the complex interactions between individual, organisational and environmental determinants. The concept of institutional entrepreneurship is applied to examine the rol…
Emerging Victims in Contemporary Drugs Policing
Recent shifts in UK policy have seen certain populations, who were predominantly viewed as offenders due to their involvement in drug offences, increasingly recognized as victims of exploitation. Drawing on qualitative data from three studies, this article interrogates how this trend is playing out within contemporary drugs policing, focussing on officers’ responses to people affected by: drug addiction, child criminal exploitation and ‘cuckooing…
Ethnography and the Evocative World of Policing
The moral and emotional world of police informants
The global pattern of implementing proactive policing to address crime and insecurity continues to drive undercover techniques, including the deployment of police informants. Our aim in this article is to reflect upon research on informants policing, setting out a more comprehensive agenda that appreciates the moral significance and power dynamics at play. Our starting point is that this practice embodies immense moral and emotional tension, both…
Evaluating police drug diversion in England
There is increasing international interest in the use of police drug diversion schemes that offer people suspected of minor drug-related offences an educative or therapeutic intervention as an alternative to criminalisation. While there have been randomised trials of some such schemes for their effects on reducing offending, with generally positive results, less is known about the health outcomes, and what works, for whom, in what circumstances a…
From criminalisation to harm reduction? The forms and functions of police drug diversion in England and Wales
While drugs policing often involves enforcement interventions that seek to tackle drug offences and drug-related crime through criminal sanctions, it is becoming increasingly apparent that diversion now occupies a central position in police responses to people suspected of either simple possession or an offence related to their drug use. This article draws on findings from a qualitative study of police-led schemes in England and Wales to examine …
Drug Law Enforcement, Policing and Harm Reduction
Breaking supply chains’. A commentary on the new UK Drug Strategy
Drug Law Enforcement, Policing and Harm Reduction
Desistance from criminalisation
Globally, there is emerging evidence that drugs policing is moving away from traditional enforcement interventions towards a greater focus on harm reduction. Signs of a shift include alternatives to criminalisation in the form of police-led diversion schemes. This article examines the extent to which new directions in drugs policing reflect changes in police culture. The key change under consideration is police desistance from criminalising peopl…
Fragile alliances
Background Police–academic partnerships have developed significantly over the past decade or so, spurred on by the expansion of the evidence-based policing movement, the increasing value attached to impactful research in the academy, the ascendance of the professionalisation agenda in the police, and the growing necessity of cross-sectoral collaborations under conditions of post-financial crisis austerity. This trend has given rise to a burgeonin…
Ethnography and the Evocative World of Policing (Part I)
Ethnography has proved to be a crucial methodology for entering and understanding the world of policing. Recent developments in the fields of policing, and within police organisations themselves, h
Ethnography and the evocative world of policing (Part II)
Controlling Drug Users
This article examines the control practices used in drug treatment services to regulate the behaviour of people with drug problems. Drawing on an extensive qualitative study, we developed a conceptual framework, integrating the notion of responsive regulation with Wrong’s sociology of power. The picture that emerges is of a complex ‘web of controls’, combining diverse forms of power and control techniques, used to steer action and shape behaviour…
Maintaining order in the drug game
Drug war rhetoric is losing favour in the political arena due to its increasingly obvious failures and there is a growing consensus amongst governing elites that something ought to change. Against this backdrop, the concept of ‘harm reduction’ has moved to the foreground of the research agenda and some policing agencies appear to be reconfiguring their enforcement interventions to focus on managing drug markets in a way that minimises the various…
The contractual governance of drug users in treatment
Intelligence‐Led Policing by J. Ratcliffe
Cullompton : Willan ( 2008 ) 265pp. £50.00hb ISBN 978-1-84392-340-4 £22.00pb ISBN 978-1-84392-339-8 Intelligence-Led Policing brings together for the first time the concepts, processes and practices of the policing movement of the same name, providing a much-called-for explication of what the author heralds to be ‘the most significant and profound change in modern policing’ (p.88). In what might be considered the culmination of his work to date, …
Crime Reduction and Community Safety
Cullompton : Willan ( 2007 ) 265pp. £19.50pb ISBN 978-1-84392-251-3 By concentrating on the role of central government, Crime Reduction and Community Safety offers the reader a penetrating criminological analysis of the institutional architecture, political ideologies and policy-making constraints that have influenced and shaped New Labour's policies on local crime control and the rolling out of these policies into practice from 1997 through to 2…
Desistance from criminalisation
Globally, there is emerging evidence that drugs policing is moving away from traditional enforcement interventions towards a greater focus on harm reduction. Signs of a shift include alternatives to criminalisation in the form of police-led diversion schemes. This article examines the extent to which new directions in drugs policing reflect changes in police culture. The key change under consideration is police desistance from criminalising peopl…
From criminalisation to harm reduction? The forms and functions of police drug diversion in England and Wales
While drugs policing often involves enforcement interventions that seek to tackle drug offences and drug-related crime through criminal sanctions, it is becoming increasingly apparent that diversion now occupies a central position in police responses to people suspected of either simple possession or an offence related to their drug use. This article draws on findings from a qualitative study of police-led schemes in England and Wales to examine …
Ethnography and the Evocative World of Policing (Part I)
Ethnography has proved to be a crucial methodology for entering and understanding the world of policing. Recent developments in the fields of policing, and within police organisations themselves, h
Fragile alliances
Background Police–academic partnerships have developed significantly over the past decade or so, spurred on by the expansion of the evidence-based policing movement, the increasing value attached to impactful research in the academy, the ascendance of the professionalisation agenda in the police, and the growing necessity of cross-sectoral collaborations under conditions of post-financial crisis austerity. This trend has given rise to a burgeonin…
Emerging Victims in Contemporary Drugs Policing
Recent shifts in UK policy have seen certain populations, who were predominantly viewed as offenders due to their involvement in drug offences, increasingly recognized as victims of exploitation. Drawing on qualitative data from three studies, this article interrogates how this trend is playing out within contemporary drugs policing, focussing on officers’ responses to people affected by: drug addiction, child criminal exploitation and ‘cuckooing…
Intelligence‐Led Policing by J. Ratcliffe
Cullompton : Willan ( 2008 ) 265pp. £50.00hb ISBN 978-1-84392-340-4 £22.00pb ISBN 978-1-84392-339-8 Intelligence-Led Policing brings together for the first time the concepts, processes and practices of the policing movement of the same name, providing a much-called-for explication of what the author heralds to be ‘the most significant and profound change in modern policing’ (p.88). In what might be considered the culmination of his work to date, …
Crime Reduction and Community Safety
Cullompton : Willan ( 2007 ) 265pp. £19.50pb ISBN 978-1-84392-251-3 By concentrating on the role of central government, Crime Reduction and Community Safety offers the reader a penetrating criminological analysis of the institutional architecture, political ideologies and policy-making constraints that have influenced and shaped New Labour's policies on local crime control and the rolling out of these policies into practice from 1997 through to 2…
The contractual governance of drug users in treatment
Maintaining order in the drug game
Drug war rhetoric is losing favour in the political arena due to its increasingly obvious failures and there is a growing consensus amongst governing elites that something ought to change. Against this backdrop, the concept of ‘harm reduction’ has moved to the foreground of the research agenda and some policing agencies appear to be reconfiguring their enforcement interventions to focus on managing drug markets in a way that minimises the various…
Ethnography and the evocative world of policing (Part II)
Controlling Drug Users
This article examines the control practices used in drug treatment services to regulate the behaviour of people with drug problems. Drawing on an extensive qualitative study, we developed a conceptual framework, integrating the notion of responsive regulation with Wrong’s sociology of power. The picture that emerges is of a complex ‘web of controls’, combining diverse forms of power and control techniques, used to steer action and shape behaviour…
Fragile alliances
Background Police–academic partnerships have developed significantly over the past decade or so, spurred on by the expansion of the evidence-based policing movement, the increasing value attached to impactful research in the academy, the ascendance of the professionalisation agenda in the police, and the growing necessity of cross-sectoral collaborations under conditions of post-financial crisis austerity. This trend has given rise to a burgeonin…
Ethnography and the Evocative World of Policing (Part I)
Ethnography has proved to be a crucial methodology for entering and understanding the world of policing. Recent developments in the fields of policing, and within police organisations themselves, h
Desistance from criminalisation
Globally, there is emerging evidence that drugs policing is moving away from traditional enforcement interventions towards a greater focus on harm reduction. Signs of a shift include alternatives to criminalisation in the form of police-led diversion schemes. This article examines the extent to which new directions in drugs policing reflect changes in police culture. The key change under consideration is police desistance from criminalising peopl…
Drug Law Enforcement, Policing and Harm Reduction
Breaking supply chains’. A commentary on the new UK Drug Strategy
Drug Law Enforcement, Policing and Harm Reduction
Ethnography and the Evocative World of Policing
The moral and emotional world of police informants
The global pattern of implementing proactive policing to address crime and insecurity continues to drive undercover techniques, including the deployment of police informants. Our aim in this article is to reflect upon research on informants policing, setting out a more comprehensive agenda that appreciates the moral significance and power dynamics at play. Our starting point is that this practice embodies immense moral and emotional tension, both…
Evaluating police drug diversion in England
There is increasing international interest in the use of police drug diversion schemes that offer people suspected of minor drug-related offences an educative or therapeutic intervention as an alternative to criminalisation. While there have been randomised trials of some such schemes for their effects on reducing offending, with generally positive results, less is known about the health outcomes, and what works, for whom, in what circumstances a…
From criminalisation to harm reduction? The forms and functions of police drug diversion in England and Wales
While drugs policing often involves enforcement interventions that seek to tackle drug offences and drug-related crime through criminal sanctions, it is becoming increasingly apparent that diversion now occupies a central position in police responses to people suspected of either simple possession or an offence related to their drug use. This article draws on findings from a qualitative study of police-led schemes in England and Wales to examine …
Emerging Victims in Contemporary Drugs Policing
Recent shifts in UK policy have seen certain populations, who were predominantly viewed as offenders due to their involvement in drug offences, increasingly recognized as victims of exploitation. Drawing on qualitative data from three studies, this article interrogates how this trend is playing out within contemporary drugs policing, focussing on officers’ responses to people affected by: drug addiction, child criminal exploitation and ‘cuckooing…
Triggering motivations for change
Background The harm reduction effects of police drug diversion (PDD) are influenced by how people engage with diversion, which is moderated by their motivation to change. Underlying influences can be revealed by examining the contexts and mechanisms which trigger and support participants’ motivation for engagement and change.Methods The qualitative phase of a realist evaluation of three PDD programs in England used semi-structured interviews with…
Police innovation and institutional entrepreneurs
This article advances knowledge about the initiation of police innovation in the context of drugs policing. Drawing on the findings of a qualitative research project, it provides an original account of the emergence of police drug diversion schemes in England and Wales by analysing the complex interactions between individual, organisational and environmental determinants. The concept of institutional entrepreneurship is applied to examine the rol…
Analyzing the Role of Needs Assessments in Police Drug Diversion Schemes
Police-led drug diversion (PDD) schemes can divert individuals caught in possession of controlled substances away from the harms associated with criminal justice pathways and toward treatment, education, or welfare support. As an alternative to prosecution, it has been established that the use of well-implemented diversion schemes may lead to reductions in reoffending, efficiencies in police time, and reductions in costs for the wider criminal ju…
Implementation fidelity matters
Evaluations in the field of police studies do not adequately address implementation fidelity, which impacts understanding of outcomes, how and why an intervention works in practice, what can be done to achieve improvements, and how to implement effective innovations in different contexts. Responding to calls for greater use of implementation science to improve innovations in policing, this article draws on the qualitative phase of a realist, quas…
Cascading Constraint and Subsidiary Discretion
This article explores how discretion is managed and exercised across senior, middle, and street levels of policing. It uses qualitative data from two studies in England. The first, a study across three police force areas, involved interviews and focus groups with 221 people who were designers, deliverers, and recipients of police-led drug diversion. The second study used 354 hours of ethnographic observation and 21 interviews to examine stop-and-…
Political science (14 works) · Sociology (14 works) · Criminology (13 works) · Policing Practices and Perceptions (11 works) · Law (10 works) · Psychology (10 works) · Crime, Illicit Activities, and Governance (9 works) · Criminal Justice and Corrections Analysis (9 works) · Crime Patterns and Interventions (7 works) · Public relations (7 works)