Criminal Records Office Research Articles

A comparison of accidental and intentional fatal drug overdoses within the drug death population in Scotland: a case of comortality?

This article considers the social and clinical life circumstances of individuals who succumbed to drug deaths in Scotland in 2003. Specifically, comparisons are made between those who died of accidental and intentional illicit drug overdoses. A cross-linkage process allowed for a comparison of patient notes obtained from general practice, drug treatment services, the Scottish Prison service, the Scottish Criminal Records Office, acute services, non-statutory services and the Procurator Fiscal. Individuals who intentionally overdosed were older, more likely to be females and in a relationship, more likely to be living in their own homes in areas of lower deprivation, to have children and to have sought medical treatment for a psychological condition. They were less likely to have a criminal record or a history of incarceration or substance misuse problems. These findings demonstrate the diversity of the drug death population and may have implications for future prevention policies aimed at individual sub-p...

Recording of clinical information in a Scotland-wide drug deaths study

The aim of this study was to analyse the nature and extent of data extracted from case files of deceased individuals in contact with services 6 months prior to drug deaths in Scotland during 2003. A cross-sectional descriptive analysis of 317 case notes of 237 individuals who had drug-related deaths was undertaken, using a data linkage process. All contacts made with services in the 6 months prior to death were identified. Information on clinical and social circumstances obtained from social care, specialist drug treatment, mental health, non-statutory services, the Scottish Prison Service and Criminal Records Office was collated. More than 70% (n = 237) were seen 6 months prior to their drug death. Sociodemographic details were reported much more frequently than medical problems, for example, ethnicity (49%), living accommodation (66%), education and income (52%) and dependent children (73%). Medical and psychiatric history was recorded in only 12%, blood-borne viral status in 17% and life events in 26%. This paucity of information was a feature of treatment plans and progress recorded. The 237 drug deaths were not a population unknown to services. Highly relevant data were missing. Improved training to promote in-depth recording and effective monitoring may result in better understanding and reduction of drug deaths.

S05-03 Comorbidity and comortality

Aims:To analyse the nature and extent of data extracted from case files of deceased individuals in contact with health, social care and criminal justice services six months prior to their drug deaths in Scotland during 2003.Methods:A cross-sectional descriptive analysis of 317 case notes of 237 individuals who had drug related deaths, using a data linkage process, was undertaken. All contacts made with services in the six months prior to death were identified. Information on clinical and social circumstances obtained from case records of social care services, specialist drug treatment, mental health and non-statutory services and the Scottish Prison Service and Criminal Records Office were collated using the Centre for Addiction Research and Education Scotland (CARES) Clinical and Social Circumstances Data Collection Form.Findings:More than 50% (n=237) were seen six months prior to their drug death. Sociodemographic details were reported much more frequently than medical problems. While there was information available on ethnicity (49%), living accommodation (66%), education and income (52%), and dependent children (73%), medical and psychiatric history was recorded in only 12%, blood-borne viral status in 17%, and life events in 26%. This paucity of information was also a feature of the treatment plans and progress recorded for these individuals.Conclusions:The 237 drug deaths were not a population unknown to services. Highly relevant data about the six-month period prior to death were missing. Improved training to promote in-depth recording, and effective monitoring may result in better understanding and reduction of drug deaths.

The ‘Opinionization’ of Fingerprint Evidence

Perhaps the seminal moment in the now celebrated Shirley McKie fingerprint misidentification case that has preoccupied Scotland from 1997 until the present came in 2002 when Justice Minister Jim Wallace told the press that a fingerprint identification is ‘not an exact science’ (BBC News, 2002a). Shirley McKie, an officer in the Strathclyde Police Department, had been assigned to investigate the murder of Marion Ross at her home in Kilmarnock. McKie was not authorized to enter the crime scene, and she denied that she did. But four Scottish Criminal Records Office (SCRO) latent print examiners identified her as the source of a latent print found on a doorframe inside the house. A builder named David Asbury was eventually convicted of the crime, based primarily on the latent print evidence. With the Asbury conviction hinging on the latent print evidence, McKie was eventually charged with perjury. McKie sought assistance from other experts, and a British examiner and two American examiners concluded that she was not the source of the print. The same experts and others later concluded that the identification of Asbury, made by the same four SCRO experts, was also false, and his convictionwas quashed (Jofre, 2002).McKie was acquitted, but her and her father’s demands for investigations, apologies and compensation from the government have embroiled Scotland in what is now a decade-long scandal that shows few signs of abating (McKie and Russell, 2007). Wallace’s remark prompted widespread outrage. One member of Scottish Parliament called Wallace ‘scientifically illiterate’, said his remark was ‘the forensic equivalent of the flat earth theory’ (BBC News, 2002a), and said that he had turned Scottish justice into ‘a laughing stock throughout the world’ (BBC News, 2002b). Critics of the government read Wallace’s remark as an exercise in scandal management, a cynical attempt to minimize or even excuse the apparent incompetence, and perhaps even malfeasance, on the part of the Scottish Criminal Records Office. Members of the community of latent print practitioners, on the other hand, read the remark as a direct attack onwhatwas perhaps their most cherished epistemic artifact: the perceived ‘facticity’ of fingerprint identifications. A British latent print examiner replied ‘It is not opinion. It’s a fact in black and white. Either it is or it isn’t or it’s inconclusive, nothing else’ (BBC News, 2002b). However, Wallace’s remark may also be read as an understandable response to the epistemological trap in which he found himself. This trap was composed primarily of the extraordinarily strong epistemological claims—to ‘facticity’, to ‘reliability’ and even

Safeguarding children through police checks: a discussion

The disclosure of police-held criminal records of nurses working with children and those undergoing education for this role is a well-established process. Although the Police Act 1997 led to changes in the process, the aim remains the same: to prevent those with relevant convictions gaining access to children they may abuse or exploit. In this article, I summarise the current process for gaining police clearance and discuss some of the practical and ethical issues related to obtaining and using such information. Checks are made through the Criminal Records Bureau (CRB) in England and Wales, the Scottish Criminal Record Office Disclosure Service in Scotland and the PreEmployment Consultancy Service in Northern Ireland. The CRB is referred to specifically in the article as the volume of requests going to this service has resulted in problems for education and service, but the principles and issues are common to all systems.

There's nane ever fear’d that the truth should be heard but they whom the truth would indite

The story is purely fiction of course and I would not like any of you to leave with the impression that this could really happen in a country that so values truth, openness and accountability. The plot surrounds a brutal murder in the fictional town of Kilmarnock in Scotland. The hero is a tall young and good looking ex-policeman Iain McKie, father of the heroine Shirley McKie, a police detective who has been accused of leaving her fingerprint at this murder scene. (Sources tell me that George Clooney is lined up to play the father in the film.) The 'heavies' operate within the Scottish Criminal Records Office (SCRO), an organisation whose activities are shrouded in mystery. Their experts identified Shirley's print and for six years have refused to admit their mistake.

Adult Criminality May Be Rooted In Troubling Childhood Behaviors

Back to table of contents Previous article Next article Clinical & Research NewsFull AccessAdult Criminality May Be Rooted In Troubling Childhood BehaviorsJoan Arehart-TreichelJoan Arehart-TreichelSearch for more papers by this authorPublished Online:4 Jan 2002https://doi.org/10.1176/pn.37.1.0018aIf children aged 5 or older act impulsively or in an antisocial way, they may be at risk of adult criminality, various studies have suggested. But how about children who are just 3 years old: Might any of their behaviors foreshadow adult criminal behavior?The answer is yes, according to a study in the September 2001 British Journal of Psychiatry. It was conducted by Jim Stevenson, Ph.D., a professor of psychology at the University of Southampton in England, and Robert Goodman, M.D., a professor of psychiatry at King’s College in London, England.Back in 1972-73, the parents of 828 3-year-olds were interviewed about whether their child engaged in various problem behaviors such as worries, hyperactivity, attention seeking, temper tantrums, difficulties with siblings or other children, not minding one’s parents, eating lead or had problems with bowel and bladder control, trouble concentrating, poor appetite, and so forth. This work was undertaken by Stevenson when he was with the Institute of Child Health at the University of London, and in conjunction with two other investigators.Then in 1993 Stevenson and Goodman traced, with the help of the Criminal Records Office for England and Wales, which of the 828 children, who were now young adults, had been convicted of crimes since becoming adults. Eighty-one (10 percent) had been convicted, and 26 of the 81 had been convicted of violent crimes, they found.Then Stevenson and Goodman examined their data to see whether they could find any statistically significant relationships between the presence of certain behavior problems at age 3 and adult convictions. They could, they found.Temper tantrums, hyperactivity, and not minding one’s parents were found to be significantly linked to adult criminal offenses. Problems with bowel and bladder control were also associated with adult convictions, but this relationship disappeared when gender and social development were taken into consideration.Thus, temper tantrums, excessive physical activity, and management difficulties at age 3 may help to predict which individuals will go on to commit crimes as adults, Stevenson and Goodman concluded in their report.They cautioned, of course, that temper tantrums, excessive physical activity, and not minding one’s parents at age 3 do not necessarily mean that a child is going to commit crimes as an adult. Still, they suggested that targeting children who engage in such behaviors at age 3 might help keep them from becoming criminals later.Psychiatric News asked Stevenson what kinds of preventive measures might be tried. “Parent training,” he replied. “Parent training has been shown to be effective with a slightly older group; the same principles apply with younger children.”Felton Earls, M.D., a professor of child psychiatry and social medicine at Harvard Medical School, is familiar with the research by Stevenson and Goodman and commented about it to Psychiatric News: “I think it is quite a good paper. . . .The long-term follow-up provides convincing evidence on the threads of behavioral continuity.”Their report would have benefited, he noted, if they had included more evidence of the types of early-intervention programs that successfully reduce later antisocial behaviors. ▪ ISSUES NewArchived

How valid are psychiatric case notes for assessing criminal convictions?

Abstract This paper describes how 467 sets of case notes from the Bethlem and Maudsley Hospitals were assessed for evidence of a criminal record. Data were checked with the Criminal Records Office. The results show that psychiatric case notes reliably discriminate offenders from non-offenders, but only for males. Case notes do not contain accurate data on frequency or type of offences

CONVICTION RECORDS OF FATHERS AND SONS COMPARED

This paper is based on data from the Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development and follows some preliminary investigations previously reported (West and Farrington, 1977; Farrington, Gundry and West, 1975). The sample, recruited in 1961-62, comprised all eight-year-old boys attending certain primary schools in a working-class locality in London. Their con viction records are compared with those of their fathers by means of repeated searches at the Criminal Record Office.

The relationship between duration of treatment in a therapeutic community for drug abusers and subsequent criminality.

The conviction rates for the first 61 admissions to a therapeutic community for drug dependence were obtained for a period two years prior to admission and two years after discharge, by searching in the Criminal Records Office at Scotland Yards. A long-stay group (n = 20) which had remained in residence more than six months was compared with a medium-stay group (n = 20) which had remained from one to six months and a short stay group (n = 21) which had remained less than one month. The long-stay group had a pre-admission conviction rate of 60 per cent, which was significantly reduced to 10 per cent during the follow-up period. The conviction rate of the medium-stay group was reduced from 70 per cent before treatment to 45 percent after treatment; that of the short stay group remained constant at 57 per cent before and after treatment. It is suggested that periods of more than six months treatment in the community are effective in reducing subsequent criminality.

The familial transmission of criminality.

The names of a sample of young males, their parents and their siblings were searched for in the Criminal Record Office. A concentration of criminality among a minority of families was observed, and possible reasons for it investigated.

SOCIAL AND INTELLECTUAL HANDICAPS AS PRECURSORS OF EARLY DELINQUENCY

The criterion of early delinquency used in this report is one or more findings of guilt by a juvenile court on a boy under the age of fourteen years. The data are taken from an on-going research, the Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development, details of which have been published elsewhere (West, 1969). Briefly, the Study is a prospective survey of 411 boys, recruited at age eight to nine, and representing the total male membership of second-year classes in six state primary schools situated in an urban, working-class neighbourhood. All of the boys have now passed their fourteenth birthday, and the older half of the sample are fifteen years of age or more. Searches at the Criminal Record Office and at local children's department offices have established that a total of thirty of these boys, i.e. 7-3 per cent., were early delinquents. Their offences were almost exclusively petty thieving. The thirty boys had been found guilty on a total of fifty-two occasions; forty-two on a charge of larceny or attempted larceny, two for taking and driving away, three for warehouse breaking, two for wilful damage, and one each for causing actual bodily harm, unlawful possession and being on enclosed premises. A further eighty-seven boys, i.e. 21-2 per cent., were classed as unofficial early delinquents on the basis of reports made by teachers, neighbours or parents, of delinquent acts outside the home; action by police short of prosecution; or action taken by a juvenile court on evidence of non-attendance at school.

A follow-up study of criminal psychopaths.

One of the most important questions in dealing with psychopaths is the prognosis. In 1948 two of us made a study (Stafford-Clark, Pond, Lovett-Doust, 1951) of a number of criminal psychopaths and a control group of ordinary criminals in prison by clinical and EEG methods, with the object of revealing the characteristics which most significantly distinguished psychopaths from others, and which were, therefore, most crucial in diagnosis. The psychopaths were carefully chosen in collaboration with two experienced prison medical officers. The later criminal behaviour of these psychopaths and controls is equally interesting, however, if we are to understand what the diagnosis implies (Gibbens, 1951). The third author (T.C.N.G.) has therefore been conducting a continuous follow-up, with the collaboration of the Prison Commission and Criminal Records Office. The results of the first follow-up, from 1948–1953, have been published (Gibbens, Pond and Stafford-Clark, 1955), and were reproduced in the transactions of the Royal Commission on the Law relating to Mental Illness (1957). The present paper deals with a further period of study, so that the follow-up is now from 1948-June, 1957.

The Property Index of the Criminal Record Office at New Scotland Yard

The Property Index of the Criminal Record Office at New Scotland Yard