Violence against doctors provides an illuminating context for studying medicalisation and its limits in the management of deviance. The paper examines the emergence of such violence as a policy issue in England, with particular reference to general practitioners (GPs) in the National Health Service. Recent guidance exhorts doctors to exercise 'zero tolerance' with respect to acts of violence. The emphasis is on risk management and protecting victims rather than on resolving the perpetrators' problems. The paper argues that this policy frame is consistent with recent claims from criminologists that there is a new 'turn' in penal policy, away from rehabilitation and addressing the needs of individual offenders. However, responses of individual GPs, obtained through a postal questionnaire sent to c.1000 GPs and in-depth interviews with a sub-sample, suggest that doctors are not 'zero tolerant' in responding to attacks. But nor are they medical imperialists seeking to include all perpetrators within their professional jurisdiction. Rather, they exercise professional discretion about behaviours which often fall into a 'grey area' between 'illness' and 'crime', and about individuals who are not clearly categorisable as either 'sick' or 'bad'.

The Research, Development and Statistics Directorate RDS is part of the Home Office. The Home Office's purpose is to build a safe, just and tolerant society in which the rights and responsibilities of individuals, families and communities are p roperly balanced and the protection and security of the public are maintained. RDS is also part of National Statistics (NS). One of the aims of NS is to inform Parliament and the citizen about the state of the nation and provide a window on the work and perf o rm a n c e of government, allowing the impact of government policies and actions to be assessed. T h e re f o re-R e s e a rch Development and Statistics Directorate exists to improve policy making, decision taking and practice in support of the Home Office purpose and aims, to provide the public and Parliament with information necessary for informed debate and to publish information for future use.

This article examines the impact of violence perpetrated against probation officers. It presents empirical evidence based upon work carried out under the ESRC Violence Research Programme.It is argued that the managerial response to violence has been largely defensive and piecemeal. Professional responses to violence are context-bound, while risk assessment is largely confined to the potential harm to the general public posed by offenders. The article concludes by arguing that more attention needs to be given to the evaluation of management responses to violence including appropriate training, and the greater organizational support for safety at work.

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Few studies have considered the nature of violence and its implications for Anglican clergy. A conventional victimological approach would go no further than to identify the social correlates of victims and perpetrators. While this enables us to establish patterns of violence we also need to draw on lifestyle and routine activity theory to understand violence. In addition, a more critical victimology suggests that we consider the role of socio-cultural and macro organizational factors. The purpose of this article is to explore the value of these approaches and it is structured as follows: first, it provides evidence of the degree and type of violence experienced by Anglican priests in urban and rural localities in the south east of England and their response; second, the article describes how clergy make sense of 'everyday' violence in these locations; and finally, it describes how this relates to the public and private worlds that they inhabit. KEY WORDS