ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses the origins of the interest in the science-policy nexus as well as more recent debates about evidence-based policy and public scholarship. The earliest paradigm concerning the science-policy connection, developed by Caplan, describes scientists and policy-makers as part of two communities with different world views, values, and language, separated by a huge gap. Carol Weiss' three-fold knowledge utilisation typology has proven to be very influential in the knowledge utilisation literature and has been applied widely to studies of the science-policy nexus in the drug policy field and elsewhere. Monaghan argued that the evolutionary model has an understanding of a linear deterministic form of utilisation and policy-making as an authoritative choice. Most reflections on public criminology focus primarily on the discipline's contribution to the policy-making process. The chapter outlines the barriers and facilitators of the relationship between science and policy. Debates on drug policies are never far from the media gaze, including newspapers, television, radio, as well as internet.
