Since the shutdown of our public psychiatry system, the seriously mentally ill are now mostly managed by public safety officers, school officials, emergency first responders and social workers with little experience in recognizing symptoms, triggers and issues. This book addresses the need to recognize the psychiatric component of criminological issues and the methodology of dealing with it on a practical as well as academic basis. It provides a roadmap for training in rapid assessment bui...

Forensic psychology has developed and extended from an original, narrow focus on presenting evidence to the courts to a wider application across the whole span of civil and criminal justice, which includes dealing with suspects, offenders, victims, witnesses, defendants, litigants and justice professionals. This Handbook provides an encyclopedic-style source regarding the major concerns in forensic psychology. It is an invaluable reference text for practitioners within community, special h...

The written report is central to the practice of psychiatry in legal settings. It is required of mental health professionals acting as expert witnesses in criminal cases, civil litigation situations, child custody proceedings and risk assessments. This book provides a theoretical background to psychiatric writing for the law and a practical guide to the preparation of the report. The first section addresses practical and ethical concerns, including the conduct of the forensic psychiatric e...

THE EMMY AWARD-WINNING HOST OF COURT TV’S "CATHERINE CRIER LIVE" DESCRIBES AN AMERICAN LEGAL SYSTEM DANGEROUSLY OUT OF CONTROL – AND FINDS THE LAWYERS GUILTY AS CHARGED.As a child, Catherine Crier was enchanted by film portrayals of crusading lawyers like Clarence Darrow and Atticus Finch. As a district attorney, private lawyer, and judge herself, she saw firsthand how the U.S. justice system worked – and didn’t. One of the most respected legal journalists and commentators today, s...

Alcohol, opiates, cocaine and marijuana, among other drugs, have been used and abused for millennia. Prior to the disease model approach to drug addiction, which posits that addiction is a psychological and biological problem and that sufferers are victims, societies had a workable solution: let people consume what they want, and let informal cultural controls reinforce responsible behavior. Legal sanctions were reserved for any use that affected the safety of others. Blowing Smoke propose...

This book investigates the limits of the legitimate role of the state in regulating the human body. It questions whether there is a public interest in issues of bodily autonomy, with particular focus on reproductive choices, end of life choices, sexual autonomy, body modifications and selling the body. The main question addressed in this book is whether such autonomous choices about the human body are, and should be, subject to state regulation. Potential justifications for the state's int...

In recent years, debates have arisen concerning the encroachment of the criminal process in regulating fatal medical error, the implementation of the Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act 2007 and the recent release of the Director of Public Prosecution's assisted suicide policy. Consequently, questions have been raised regarding the extent to which such intervention helps, or if it in fact hinders, the sustained development of medical practice. In this collection, Danielle Gri...

G. di Gennaro Abuse of drugs has reached such magnitude that it is regarded by most govern ments, scholars, and experts as one of the major problems of present-day society. The highest values of individuals and social groups are strongly attacked or are at risk as a result of the spread of drug abuse. As a consequence, society is deprived of the contribution of many of its members toward the establishment of better condi tions of life. On the other hand, considerable portions of the limite...

The prostitution of the German psychiatric profession into a Nazi inquisitional tool was a major factor producing the total degradation of German medicine and moral ity. Its low point was its psychiatrists killing the patients they were sworn to care for, and its other physicians performing inhuman experiments on patients they were pledged to treat. In America also, psychiatry has been performing some of the functions of an In quisition: injuring innocents, both patients and dissenters, an...

The goal of improving public health involves the use of different tools, with the law being one way to influence the activities of institutions and individuals. Of the regulatory mechanisms afforded by law to achieve this end, criminal law remains a perennial mechanism to delimit the scope of individual and group conduct. Utilising criminal law may promote or hinder public health goals, and its use raises a number of complex questions that merit exploration. This examination of the interfa...

Systematically improving patient safety is of the utmost importance, but it is also an extremely complex and challenging task. This illuminating study evaluates the role of professionalism, regulation and law in seeking to improve safety, arguing that the 'medical dominance' model is ill-suited to this aim, which instead requires a patient-centred vision of professionalism. It brings together literatures on professions, regulation and trust, while examining the different legal mechanisms f...

Who should define what constitutes ethical and lawful medical practice? Judges? Doctors? Scientists? Or someone else entirely? This volume analyses how effectively criminal law operates as a forum for resolving ethical conflict in the delivery of health care. It addresses key questions such as: how does criminal law regulate controversial bioethical areas? What effect, positive or negative, does the use of criminal law have when regulating bioethical conflict? And can the law accommodate m...