This module seeks to enable students to develop a deeper critical understanding of societal issues concerning illegal drugs and crime, and to appraise how policy and practice have developed to try to alleviate them. Students will look at how issues of drug use, supply and associated criminal behaviour are socially constructed. Through these understandings, students will develop their own knowledge as to how policy responses to such ‘problems’ are interpreted and translated into practice. Students will be encouraged to consider how some people’s drug use is disproportionately framed as problematic, with reference to age, gender and class, as well as consider the spatial distribution of drug-related crime, violence, harm and links to wider social-structural processes. Due attention will be given to a range of criminological and multi-disciplinary perspectives in this module.