NCJ Number
83148
Date Published
1974
Length
406 pages
Annotation
This collection presents papers delivered at an international criminological convention devoted to assessing the powers and limits of legal intervention into the two distressing phenomena of contemporary society -- declining public morality and drug abuse.
Abstract
Papers addressing the morality issue primarily concern sexual deviance, commercial pornography, contraception, and abortion. In general, participants recognized that increased liberalization and retreat of the law from intervention into private matters must be offset by effective educational measures to protect the young. Several papers on drugs outlined legislative, enforcement, and programmatic treatment approaches being practiced to control drug abuse in specific countries (e.g., the United Kingdom and Belgium). One paper offers comparisons of the antidrug legislation in force in West Germany, France, the United States, Canada, the Netherlands, Italy, and Great Britain. Theoretical discussions seek the 'frontiers of repression' in terms of the official involvement permissible into the private lives of citizens, the need to punish traffickers but to treat addicts, the inequities between criminalization of soft drugs and tolerance of alcohol abuse, and the devastating proclivity for members of contemporary society to seek their own destruction through addictive toxicants. Psychological treatment approaches, juvenile drug involvement, sociological aspects of drug abuse, as well as medical and legal considerations are all topics of individual papers. Drug treatment programs in correctional institutions are also addressed. Some papers contain tabular data and footnotes. For individual articles, see NCJ 83149-53. For Volume I, containing conference papers on economic law, see NCJ 42807.