Persons In Custody Research Articles

What now — what next? The future of clinical forensic medicine in the UK

There has been considerable resistance to the recognition of clinical forensic medicine as a specialty in the UK. In the past, when forensic medicine was taught in the medical schools, its clinical aspects were negligible; even the interpretation of wounds, such as it was, was conducted on cadavers. If the whole of forensic medicine was regarded as a superfluous luxury in the medical curriculum, what hope was there for its apparently minuscule clinical component? Nevertheless, the need by society for clinical skills at the medico-legal interface has exerted considerable pressure for change. It was inevitable that doctors called by police to examine and report on injuries caused by criminal activity would lead the way and form a nucleus of clinical forensic practitioners. As legislation developed, their skills had to include the assessment of intoxication by drink or drugs, particularly in relation to traffic offences, and the examination of victims of sexual perpetrators and other serious crime. As concern for the care of persons in custody increased, attention had to be focused on medical fitness to be detained and increasingly fitness to be interviewed. Apart from the general skills possessed by the average primary care physician, this required speciality knowledge of the effects of the custodial situation on healthcare, in particular in the short-term to distinguish it from long-term custody in prison. An understanding of mental illness and mental health law became very necessary, initially as more acute psychiatric sick were taken to police stations as a ‘place of safety’, as a result of increased use of community care. One of the main driving forces for change has been the increasing realisation by the media and the public that not only must justice be done, but that it must be seen to be done. Public scrutiny is intense. Deaths in police custody and disclosures of miscarriages of justice associated with dubious medical and scientific evidence

Behavioral Pharmacology of Abused Drugs A Review of Clinical Aspects

From the viewpoints of behavioral pharmacology, abused drugs are classified as narcotics, analgetics, stimulants and hallucinogens. At present, most common abused drugs in Japan are methamphetamine (a CNS stimulant) and volatile solvents. Abuse of narcotics rarely comes to attention. The characteristic symptoms of acute methamphetamine intoxicution are restlessness, irritability, insomnia, anorexia and panic reaction with slight conciousness disturbance. Methamphetamine psychosis caused by chronic abuse shows the symptoms varying from transient hallucinatory delusional states which are of brief duration, to a more prolonged states closely mimicking schizophrenia. The contents of delusions are often related to the illicit nature of the patient's drug use on persecution by the detective and sometimes the delusions relapse after the symptom free period (reverse tolerance). The total number of the persons in custody for illegality in 1983 were 23635. The inhalation of volatile solvents is usually a group activity predominatly of boys aged 14-18. Habitual abusers of the solvents (thinner) develop marked tolerance. The harmful effects arise from intoxicated behavior and there is a risk of sudden death from anoxia due to lack of oxygen. Chronic abuse of solvents produces amotivational syndrome and at times hallucinosis. Epidemiologically the biginning of solvent abuse in Japan went back to 1968 and the prevalence still continues without stopping. Drug abuse is the product of an extra-ordinary complex interaction between drug (the agent) and man (the host) and his community (the environment). Drug abuse is essentially a biopsychosocial rather than a medical affair and so we should manipulate multidemensional approach to treat the abusers.

Access by Solicitors and Their Clerks to Persons in Custody

Access by Solicitors and Their Clerks to Persons in Custody

Book Reviews

Book reviewed in this article:Locking Up Children: Secure Provision Within The Child‐Care System by S. Millham, R. Bullock, K. HosieSent Away: A Study of Young Offenders in Care by J. A. WalterChildren and Young Persons in Custody: Report of a N.A.C.R.O. Working Party under the Chairmanship of Peter Jay.Troubled and Troublesome: Coping with Severely Disordered Children by M. HoghughiSupervision Orders (Summary of the main proposals of the Swedish Committee on the Abolition of Youth Imprisonment)Violence and the Family edited by J. P. MartinBeyond the Limits of the Law: A Comparative Study of the Police in Crisis Politics by T. Bowden

Proof of Guilt in Capital Cases: An Unscience

To what extent do the police and prosecution, in cases where death is the sentence for murder, avail themselves at the trial of the techniques of modern science in establishing guilt? So far as we are aware, no prior investigation of this matter has been conducted. The question is important, its ramifications extending far beyond the small number of individuals sentenced to death in any one year (60 to 80) and the still smaller number executed (7 in 1965 and 1 in 1966). If it appears that the police and prosecution do not make full use of current technology in death cases, then it seems a fair assumption that still less use is made of such methods in murder cases where the death penalty is not sought and in other non-capital criminal prosecutions. Presumably the prosecution makes the most thorough investigation and has the most positive proof of guilt in those cases where the extreme penalty is sought. If the resources of science are employed at all, one would expect them to be utilized the most where the heaviest penalty is sought. There is another related reason for investigating the use of science in murder prosecutions. In 1964, in the Escobedo decision, and again in 1966 in the Miranda decision, the Supreme Court of the United States placed radical restrictions on the prosecution in obtaining admissible confessions from persons in custody. Few issues in law enforcement are more emotion-laden. Civil libertarians (and we include ourselves) believe that conviction by confession, among its other evils, kills inducement to good police work. Others view confessions as essential to law enforcement, claiming that in many instances there is no other way to solve crimes. We do not presume to resolve this dispute. Surely, however, data on the utilization of scientific techniques is

Extradition: Persons in Custody

Extradition: Persons in Custody