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This article shares the rich experiences of those involved in our first virtual Tree of Life group. We hope their ideas will offer clinicians a safe place to stand amidst the Coronavirus storms.

Background: Parents of children with chronic health conditions can face many challenges. The Tree of Life narrative therapy group intervention aims to connect parents with their skills and resources before collectively exploring the ‘storms’ (challenges) they face. A narrative-informed evaluation aimed to story the parents’ experiences of attending the group. Methods: Seven parents attended a Tree of Life group intervention and then participated in a narrative-informed group interview to generate stories regarding their experience of the group. The interview was recorded with consent and later transcribed. Results: A thematic analysis was undertaken and highlighted that the group offered parents a ‘safe place to stand’ to talk about difficulties; a different perspective on their situation; connection with the skills of other parents; new ideas to introduce more independence to their child; and togetherness within the ‘storms’ (challenges). Conclusions: The narrative-informed evaluation offered opportunities to further thicken parents’ preferred identity stories whilst also contributing to the evidence base of narrative-informed group interventions for parents.

This is an accepted manuscript of an chapter published by Routledge in Policing and Mental Health: Theory, Policy and Practice on 25/02/2020, available online: https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429470882 The accepted version of the publication may differ from the final published version

Vitiligo is a chronic and visible skin condition involving depigmentation with half of those with the condition developing it before the age of 20. This study sought to gain an experiential understanding of the impact of vitiligo on children and their parents. Interpretative phenomenological analysis was used, and semi-structured interviews were conducted with four child–parent dyads (eight participants). Analysis of the participants’ accounts revealed four overarching themes (Continuing Burden, The Significance of Visible Difference, Uncertainty and Unpredictability, and Coping), with 12 subthemes. There were some subtle differences between the parents and children. Both parents and child participants described the condition as posing a continuing burden with most participants reporting experiencing unwanted attention and being concerned about future relationship impact. Some parents described experiencing a sense of resignation to the condition, whereas all the children described a greater sense of acceptance. Nevertheless, acceptance seemed fragile, and parents were concerned that their children needed assistance in developing self-confidence. The findings represent the first in-depth analysis of childhood vitiligo.

This is the first UK multi-centre case-controlled study with follow-up in excess of 10 years to report the neurocognitive, academic and psychological outcomes of individuals diagnosed with a brain tumour in early childhood. Children enrolled into the UKCCSG CNS 9204 trial, diagnosed with intracranial ependymoma when aged ≤ 36 months old, who received a primary chemotherapy strategy to defer or avoid radiotherapy, were recruited. Outcomes of those who relapsed and subsequently received radiotherapy (n = 13) were compared to those enrolled who did not relapse (n = 16), age-matched controls—diagnosed with solid non-central nervous system (SN-CNS; n = 15) tumours or low-grade posterior fossa pilocytic astrocytoma (PFPA; n = 15), and normative data. Analyses compared nine neurocognitive outcomes as primary measures with quality of survival as secondary measures. Relapsed ependymoma participants performed significantly worse than their non-relapsed counterparts on measures of Full Scale IQ, Perceptual Reasoning, Word Reading and Numerical Operations. The relapsed ependymoma group performed significantly worse than SN-CNS controls on all primary measures, whereas non-relapsing participants only differed significantly from SN-CNS controls on measures of Processing Speed and General Memory. Relapsed ependymoma participants fared worse than all groups on measures of quality of survival. The relapsed irradiated ependymoma group demonstrated the most significantly impaired neurocognitive outcomes at long-term follow-up. Non-relapsing participants demonstrated better outcomes than those who relapsed. Results tentatively suggest avoiding radiotherapy helped preserve neurocognitive and learning outcomes of individuals diagnosed with ependymoma when aged ≤ 36 months old. Prospective neurocognitive surveillance is required. Recommendations for clinical and research practice are provided.

Against expectation, the experience of setting up a psychotherapy service for adult epidermolysis bullosa (EB) patients at St Thomas’ Hospital in London has been that take up is slow and wary. Prior indications from the wider team were that need is high. This may reflect differences in the experience of need on the part of patients and staff. Published research on the psychosocial aspects of EB is minimal. This article proposes a type of genetic trauma particular to this patient group. It then examines some clinical psychodynamics with regard to the capacity of some severely affected patients to experience and acknowledge feelings such as love and need. Some aspects of the psychological significance of the skin as an organ of the body will be discussed, with particular reference to what happens when it goes wrong.

This important book reveals a number of truths about women’s rough sleeping across Europe and argues for the adoption of effective policy, strategies and services to meet the needs of homeless women, and specifically women rough sleepers who are the victims of domestic abuse.

Criteria for the permissible exchange of relevant data within crime and disorder partnerships are to be found in the Crime and Disorder Act 1998. Partnerships have experienced difficulties in reaching agreement about data-sharing. This paper proposes an approach which minimises formal data-sharing while maximising relevance to crime reduction. It should be read as a radical alternative to the approach advocated by Brookes et al (2003) and is based on the excellent work undertaken in the Government Office, East Midlands.

In December 2001 the then Department of Transport, Local Government and the Regions (DTLR but now currently the Office for the Deputy Prime Minister, hereafter referred to as ODPM) issued the tender document it had promised for the review and update of 5/94 Planning Out Crime (Home Office, 1994) The specification was for good practice guidance on planning out crime to be written within 6 months. Notwithstanding this exercise, the writer contends that in the face of the research, literature, legislation and expertise in relation to designing out crime, papers issued by ODPM and the form of the tender document itself demonstrate that it remains uncommitted to many of the accepted principles of design‐against‐crime and to the cross‐cutting crime reduction obligations of the police and local authorities under the 1998 Crime and Disorder Act. The author anticipates that this lack of commitment may be evident in the forthcoming revised planning out crime guidance and suggests possible approaches to this potentially influential document.

Public conveniences are well known as being problematic in terms of crime‐generation. The design of these buildings in respect of both access and internal layout can encourage misuse, including incidents of damage and criminal or anti‐social activity. Traditional policing methods have failed to control or deter such behaviour at problem locations and in spite of frequent prosecutions for a wide range of offences problems tend to persist. This paper discusses the types of problems encountered in public conveniences and makes suggestions as to how these might be overcome.

It has recently been suggested that Section 17 of the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 did not create an additional material consideration, nor would it affect Home Office Circular 5/94: Planning Out Crime. Reference to published research suggests that Section 17 considerations are already material, according to decided case law, and that Circular 5/94 has already been affected by these and other changes in environmental planning, since DETR has already tendered for its review and update. It is suggested that the appeal decisions cited in support of this claim are not representative of the general trend in planning, and that in support of the government's initiative towards partnerships in crime prevention and joined-up thinking in environmental planning and crime reduction, planners and crime reduction specialists both within and outside the police are currently working together more fully to incorporate crime and design issues into the planning process at an early stage to produce the best possible results.

In a previous paper, Moss and Pease outlined that although Section 17 of the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 was arguably the most radical section, this did not appear to have been recognised. Specifically, fieldwork suggested that police requests for crime prevention measures, made on the basis of Section 17, were not consistently being accommodated, particularly where they conflicted with what planning officers wanted. It was argued that Section 17 should have a greater visible impact upon the agencies that it would necessarily affect. Contested planning applications since this time suggest that whilst many police forces and local councils, including planning departments, have been working hard to implement the requirements of Section 17, this is being undermined by decisions of the Planning Inspectorate. They maintain that in the absence of case law, Section 17 does not constitute a material consideration in terms of planning. Some examples, which have been contested on this basis, are discussed. It is suggested that the Planning Inspectorate should interpret Section 17 as a material consideration, in line with the guidelines laid down in Home Office Circular 5/94 ‘Planning Out Crime’3 and give greater primacy to the views held by the public in Crime Audits.

The debate about law and morality is not new but changing social structures and advances in science, medicine and technology have impacted the decisions courts have to make. Within the fast-changing societies of the 21st century, is judicial decision-making cognisant of these advances and how do the judiciary currently reconcile difficult emergent issues concerning law, science and morality? The dilemma of decision-making regarding frozen embryos, the gametes of deceased donors and the issue of consent is analysed by reference to recent case law and the problem of decision-making in relation to the newly possible.

One of the major questions facing contemporary society in the areas of political theory and practice, law, philosophy and human rights is whether there is an acceptable balance between national security needs and the protection of civil liberties. This is an issue which I tackled in my book — Security and Liberty: Restriction by Stealth (2009) — in which I questioned the rights, responsibilities and expectations of individual citizens and the accountability of the organs of the State as well as the lack of interest of academe in becoming truly engaged in this debate. The preface to that book notes that when the writer became interested in crime in the 1970’s, ideas then in the ascendant included the strict circumscription of behaviour properly criminalised, and the corresponding circumscription of properly exercised judicial discretion. Concerning the lengths to which those ideologies have changed (2009: x), If … anyone had predicted that a generation later Guantanamo Bay would be filled with untried people and flights of extraordinary rendition exported prisoners to places convenient for their torture, they would have been thought insane. That the UK Parliament is now haggling not about the principle of detention without trial but how many weeks and months such detention would be allowed to last, is breath-taking.

This chapter illustrates contemporary European safeguards for Human Rights and Civil Liberties with specific reference to the nature and purpose of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) which took effect in 1953 with the objective of avoiding the atrocities and abuses of human rights that had taken place in World Wars I and II. It does not form part of UK law but has developed as a separate system of jurisprudence with its own institutions and procedures. There has been a clear expectation of compliance with the ECHR since 1953 and currently, a theory of State obligation1 has developed whereby member states have to do more than just be seen to comply. In the UK, the Human Rights Act 1998 gives ‘greater effect’ to Convention Rights in two main ways; first, by making it clear that as far as possible the courts in this country should interpret domestic law in a way that is compatible with Convention Rights and second, by allowing people the right to take court proceedings if they think that their Convention Rights have been, or are going to be, breached. This chapter will also assess the relevance of the legal doctrine of the ‘Margin of Appreciation’ which reflects the ideal that there should be maximum compliance from all parties about the general standards that the convention sets and the relevance of the legal ‘Doctrine of Proportionality’ which is a way of testing whether member states’ actions are compatible with convention standards.

In conclusion, this chapter draws together all the evidence from the preceding chapters. It will raise issues of international norms and legal obligations emanating from them in order to address what tensions exist between national laws and international laws and conventions in situations where national security is seen to be at stake. It will consider the impact of the EU’s new five-year strategy for justice and home affairs and security policy for 2009–2014. These proposals have been set out by the shadowy ‘Future Group’ set up by the Council of the European Union and include a range of highly controversial measures including new technologies of surveillance and enhanced cooperation with the United States of America. This development shows how European Governments and EU policy-makers are pursuing unfettered powers to access and gather masses of personal data on our everyday lives — on the grounds that we can thereby all be safe and secure from perceived ‘threats’. This chapter will suggest that a meaningful and wide-ranging debate regarding the current situation is necessary in order to strengthen British commitments to democracy.

This chapter deals specifically with the effectiveness of contemporary legislative safeguards in the forms of the European Convention on Human Rights and the UK Human Rights Act 1998 by specifically undertaking an analysis of judicial decisions in relation to cases brought under Article 5 in order to determine how UK law is being interpreted in relation to this article and whether or not it is compatible with, or is deviating from, these basic libertarian principles. Contemporary and controversial cases such as those involving Khalid el-Masri and Maher Arar will be used to highlight this assessment as will case law such as the Secretary of State for the Home Department v JJ and others [2006] where the respondents successfully challenged the compatibility with Article 5 ECHR, of control orders issued against them. It is necessary to highlight that detention without trial under Article 5, torture under Article 3 and extraordinary rendition and Article 6 cannot easily be discussed separately as in many situations these issues all appear to go hand in hand. There will, therefore, be occasions throughout these chapters where the issues of torture and extraordinary rendition will be mentioned albeit the main focus within this chapter is on the subject of detention without trial. For this reason, I have tried to avoid repetition of materials used in the previous chapter and in the penultimate chapter which follows this.

This chapter highlights contemporary deviations from Article 6 — the right to a fair trial — as illustrated by cases of extraordinary rendition. Subsequent to the previous UK Government’s attempts in August 2008 to extend the maximum permitted duration of detention without trial in the UK to 42 days, which was discussed in the previous chapter, it assesses allegations of the use of British overseas territories as secret prisons and recent reports by leading media that individuals have been rendered to such locations and held there illegally. This chapter will also contain an analysis of judicial decisions in cases relating to the right to a fair trial in order to assess how far the European Convention on Human Rights and the UK Human Rights Act 1998 prevent contemporary abuses of the ideals of the rule of law and essential civil liberties.

The aims of this chapter are to highlight the legal prohibition of torture and to illustrate judicial decisions in cases relating to its prohibition in order to assess how far the European Convention on Human Rights and the UK Human Rights Act 1998 are designed and deployed to prevent contemporary abuses of the ideals of the rule of law and essential civil liberties as enshrined by Article 3 of those statutes. The chapter discusses mechanisms for evading the law on torture and cruel and inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment and the circumstances in which this occurs and highlights such practices around the world. The relevance of human rights law will be assessed, and the effectiveness of legal challenges over the torture and ill-treatment of detainees held by the UK and US abroad will be highlighted as will the current complex moral and ethical dilemmas surrounding its use.

This chapter examines one of the critical conditions for the emergence of effective public leadership — namely the need to engage in both shared and distributed leadership. It suggests that the enactment a decade ago of the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 (hereinafter referred to as CDA) but specifically section 17 of that Act, provided an excellent opportunity to put this type of leadership into practice and to conjoin national and local public leaders to improve the quality of life for citizens. The legislation placed an obligation on local authorities and the police (amongst others) to cooperate in the development and implementation of a strategy for tackling crime and disorder. Section 17 fits well with the modernisation of public institutions in that it requires local authorities and police authorities to consider crime and disorder implications within their decision-making. However, what this chapter will demonstrate is that the implementation of these legal provisions has been at best, lukewarm and at worst, nonexistent. The chapter also explores the potential that this legislation offered for public leaders to openly display their collaborative efforts in improving responses to and strategies for tackling crime and disorder at the local level. It also assesses the implications of the legislation for specific local authority departments and police forces, both legally and strategically, and outlines some of the possible reasons for the inaction of public leaders — at all levels — in relation to the important task of improving community wellbeing.

Writing in March 2006, Martin Bright, political editor for the New Statesman commented that the current British government has a mania for legislation. Citing a response from Home Office Minister Baroness Scotland to a question posed by Lord Tebbitt, he suggested that since 1997, and according to the latest Home Office information, over four hundred forms of behaviour, previously legal, are now illegal, thanks to a plethora of legislation passed presumably under the banner of the need for security and crime reduction. Some of this avalanche of legislation would not be well known, such as those offences created by the Elections and Referendums Act 2000. Some are arguably the result of a recognition that the law must continue to play ‘catch up’ with those criminals who avail themselves of advances in technology. In these cases, offences created by the Sexual Offences Act 2003 such as grooming and downloading internet child pornography have a place, as do good examples of ground breaking legislation such as the Crime and Disorder Act 1998, the Human Rights Act 1998 and the Freedom of Information Act 2000. However, according to Bright (2006):1 This government has a mania for legislation. Since 1997 it has introduced no fewer than 11 education bills to tinker around the edges of our bewildering school and university system.

In this chapter I will advance the idea that there are a number of constitutional factors unique to the UK which have enabled a greater degree of social control to proliferate during the last ten years. Specifically it is my assertion that the nature of the parliamentary system — characterised as it is by flexibility; ad hoc rule making; legislation driven by personal and social trends; a lack of formal or entrenched procedures for enacting amending or repealing legislation and knee jerk responses to social and cultural changes in the last decade — has enabled the government of the past decade to erode the essential liberties of individuals whilst at the same time ratcheting up the numerous ways in which behaviour can be deemed to be criminal through multiple pieces of legislation.

In this chapter I want to explore some of the philosophical and theoretical explanations for the move towards the greater degree of social control which appears to have proliferated during the last few decades, the background to this and to explore the potential problems that this raises. The nature of this book, and in particular the length of this chapter does not allow for the sort of in depth analysis provided, for example in Garland’s (2001) book, The Culture of Control, but my aim is to highlight some of the salient aspects of what Garland describes as a transformation of both governmental and citizens’ attitudes to crime and contemporary crime control both in Britain and the United States of America. I also want to highlight other factors which I perceive as being relevant in explaining theses changes including the demise of policing by consent and the difficulties of reconciling issues of law and morality.

In the furtherance of the overall theme of this book, this chapter considers a more specific example of the potential for the restriction of personal liberties which have been facilitated through legislation and highlights my view that current attempts at preventing crime are disproportionate to the risks posed and therefore represent in themselves a different kind of danger. Specifically I want to highlight the undermining of the age old principles of ‘innocent until proven guilty’ and habeas corpus by the move to the detention of terrorist suspects without trial for indefinite periods of time. This practice, which appears to have been justified both in the UK and the USA on the basis of an increased need for security in the wake of terrorist atrocities, has given rise to the previously unacceptable notion of detention without trial. To do this, I want to focus in this chapter on a number of specific matters.

In this book I have sought to give some specific examples of what I consider to be unjustified and unnecessary legal restrictions upon individuals and to detail some of the motives behind this. I began by asking a number of questions which in the course of the last six chapters, I hope I have at least answered in some way. In Chapter 1, I asked whether the present government really does have a mania for legislation, concluded that it seems to, and discuss what the explanation for such a mania could be. I sought then to produce some topical evidence for the glut of legislation which has reached the statute books over the last ten years and the background to this. More laws, I argue, do not necessarily make for less crime but sometimes serve only to criminalise more and more behaviour. In Chapters 2 and 3 I focused on some of the possible reasons for the proliferation of restrictive legislation over the last decade and which could be considered to have impacted upon our essential rights and liberties as citizens. Moreover, I mused about whether this represents a new form of social or even moral control. In Chapters 4 to 6 my aim was to highlight some particularly interesting areas in which to concentrate this argument and to present to the reader some detailed examples which demonstrate the point. In this final chapter my aim is to ask, why might it be wrong to over-legislate and what implications are arising from this, first in terms of the success of balancing individual rights and liberties against the need for security and second, for the academic discipline of criminology?

In this chapter I want to focus on a rather different type of restriction, namely the Football Banning Order which was enacted under the Football (Disorder) Act 2000. I wish to highlight not only the nature of this type of restriction, but also importantly, the way in which it has been implemented and question whether it is another example of imposing what might be called ‘quasi-criminal sanctions’ on people in much the same way as the Anti Social Behaviour Order. Whilst there was a burst of interest regarding the legality of football banning orders around the time of a famous Court of Appeal decision in the case of Gough — which I will consider specifically later in this chapter — this issue has mostly been ignored. However, there is more scope for debate regarding the legality of these types of sanctions and perhaps even to put forward an argument that if any one of these quasi-criminal sanctions are questioned, then all of them would collapse. Whilst currently football banning orders and the way they have been implemented are assumed to be acceptable because of the judgement in Gough I want to highlight the fact that, with the exception of the work of James & Pearson (2006) there has simply not been a full intellectual engagement of the issue.

The development of the concept, causes and management of severe (psychopathic) personality disorder is reviewed against the current background of government concern about the activities of a small group of individuals alleged to be showing the disorder to a dangerous degree. The authors acknowledge the problems involved in ‘labelling’ the disorder. The term psychopathic has a somewhat chequered history. It did not enter UK legislation until the Mental Health Act 1959. To this extent, it is a legal term and does not equate to any exact degree with the clinical descriptions currently in use. However, the term ‘psychopathic disorder’ will be used as a kind of shorthand for variants in everyday use. It is important to note that in this contribution we are only considering those ‘psychopaths’ who have come to the attention of the criminal justice and mental health systems. There are also ‘psychopaths’ who, for a variety of reasons, have not come to official attention and a recent contribution by Board and Fritzon (2005) highlights some interesting common characteristics in business managers and a sample of forensic patients detained in high security establishments.

The study’s principal research question – What are the qualities of the sustainability perspectives of adults engaged in a whole-school sustainability program? – was guided by examining the link be...