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Neuroscientific research on addictions has prompted a paradigm shift from a moral to a medical understanding – with substantial implications for legal professionals’ interactions with and decision-making surrounding individuals with addiction. This study complements prior work on US defense attorney’s understandings of addiction by investigating two further perspectives: the potential “next generation” of legal professionals in the USA (criminal justice undergraduates) and legal professionals from another system (Germany). This paper aims to assess their views on the brain disease model of addiction, dominance and relevance of this model, the responsibility of affected persons and preferred sources of information.

Views of 74 US criminal justice undergraduate students and 74 German legal professionals were assessed using Likert scales and open-ended questions in an online survey.

Neuroscientific research findings on addictions and views that addiction is a brain disease were rated as significantly more relevant by American students to their potential future work than by German legal professionals. However, a majority of both samples agreed that addiction is a brain disease and that those affected are responsible for their condition and actions. Sources of information most frequently used by both groups were publications in legal academic journals.

In the USA, information for legal professionals needs to be expanded and integrated into the education of its “next generation,” while in Germany it needs to be developed and promoted. Legal academic journals appear to play a primary role in the transfer of research on addiction into legal practice.

This study complements prior work on US defense attorney’s understandings of addiction by investigating two further perspectives.

The purpose of this research is to identify novel ways of tackling health inequalities of underserved populations. It explores the opportunities presented by the changes in health and social care legislation to employ historically underused services, such as police custody healthcare providers, in addressing health inequalities.

This research analyses the policy approaches to tackling health inequalities in the UK in the past 40 years with an emphasis on those experienced by the people detained in English police custodies. It analyses the current model of healthcare in police custody and proposes a novel integrated model of care and joint commissioning opportunities in funding it.

Policies to tackle health inequalities have largely failed, as they became entrenched. But recent changes in the health and social care legislation in England offer opportunities to address them by employing historically underused healthcare services, such as those operating in police custodies.

The research does not touch upon ethical considerations related to the patient privacy aspect of integrated care. Interventions by and interactions with police custody healthcare providers would be visible to all professionals with access to the patient’s health record. As with all novel interventions or innovative models of care, the effectiveness of such clinical interventions remains to be established by further research. It opens a new line of research on quality improvement through integration of care and explores understudied aspects of joint commissioning of integrated care.

It offers health commissioners and public health leaders the opportunity to employ police custody healthcare services in reaching their population health management objectives and meeting their health inequalities objectives at local level. It also gives police and crime commissioners the opportunity to address the health drivers of criminal behaviour that overlap with health inequalities. It offers funding opportunities presented by jointly commissioning services at lower costs to both police and health commissioners alike. It improves the health outcomes of historically underserved populations by facilitating access to health and social care services and facilities.

Reducing health inequalities and disparities in health outcomes can decrease the costs of the healthcare services over the long term and might contribute to reducing criminality by addressing inequities and some health drivers of criminal behaviour.

The paper explores understudied opportunities offered by the recent changes in health and social care legislation in England and includes underused resources to tackle health inequalities.

Illicit drug use is a well-known global problem that has been noticed to be increased significantly among medical students. This study aims to assess the prevalence and consequences of illicit drug use among medical students in the country of Jordan using the validated Drug Abuse Screening Test-10 (DAST-10).

The authors used a cross-sectional, descriptive design to conduct this study. A total of 2,104 participants from six medical schools were included. A structured online-based English self-administered questionnaire was used for data collection.

Out of 2,104 included participants, 242 (11.5%) reported using illicit drugs in the past year. More than three-quarters (77%) of the drug users suffer from various degrees of problems related to drug use, ranging from risky (41%) to severe risk (6%). Drug use was found to be associated with gender, planned specialty and exposure to psychiatry training.

The cross-sectional design prevents from drawing cause-and-effect relationships and confirming how the tendency toward substance use is affected by the psychological state, sleep quality and exposure to psychiatry. Also, although it is important to measure the subjective observation of distress and sleep, objective estimates of psychological distress and sleep including actigraphy and sleep diary could be helpful to strengthen the findings. Also using an online survey with convenience sampling are some inevitable limitations with the present COVID-19 restrictions. Also, the nature of DAST-10 closed-ended questions precluded from accurately exploring the consequences of substance abuse.

Appropriate screening to identify medical students at risk for substance abuse and provide them with treatment referrals are strongly recommended in this study. In addition, medical schools should provide a comfortable environment that encourages a healthy lifestyle with a responsible attitude toward using drugs.

There is a dearth of information about illicit drug use among medical students, especially in the country of Jordan. The nature of their studies, the different stresses they experience and the impact imposed by other factors such as sociocultural all are likely to make medical students more susceptible to drug abuse. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first cross-national study of its kind in Jordan with a representative sample of 2,104 participants. We assessed the prevalence and consequences of self-reported illicit drug use and the sleep quality of medical students from all schools of medicine in Jordan.

Sex and age estimation is important, particularly when information about the deceased is unavailable. There are limited radiological studies investigating side, sex and age differences in normal ankle morphometric parameters. The authors’ goal was to evaluate different ankle joint morphometric measurements and document variations among Egyptians.

A prospective study was conducted throughout 23 months on 203 (100 males and 103 females) adult Egyptians, aged between 20-69 years old, who were referred for a plain x-ray of bilateral normal ankle joints.

Ankle parameters showed no statistical difference between both sides, except for tarsal width (TaW) which was significantly higher on right than left side (26.92 ± 2.66 vs 26.18 ± 2.65 mm). Males showed significantly higher morphometric values except for anteroposterior gap (APG) and talus height (TaH) which were significantly higher in females (2.29 ± 0.80 vs 1.80 ± 0.61 mm and 13.01 ± 1.68 vs 11.87 ± 1.91 mm, respectively). There was significant increase in tibial arc length, APG, distance of level of MTiTh from anterior limit of mortise, distance of level of MTiTh from vertex of mortise, sagittal distance between tibial and talar vertices and sagittal radius of trochlea tali arc in old age group compared to young one. A significant decrease in tibial width, malleolar width, TaW and TaH was noted in old age group compared to young one.

Ankle joints of both sides are mostly symmetrical; however, there are significant differences in most morphometric values due to sex and age factors. These findings may be essential during side, sex and age determination.

The purpose of this paper is to develop an understanding of the experience of secure care from the patients’ perspective.

A systematic review of qualitative literature was conducted. The data was sourced from the electronic databases: PsychINFO, CINAHL, Medline and the Web of Science Core Collection using pre-defined search terms. A total of 17 studies, conducted in various countries worldwide and covering high, medium and low secure inpatient settings, were included for review. The analysis involved integrating findings from across the literature and was guided by thematic synthesis.

A total of eight themes were generated from the data, three of which provided an understanding of the experience of forensic secure care, and the remaining five themes provided an understanding of the factors which may influence the experience of secure care.

Developing understanding of patient experience can lead to service improvements, potentially impacting patients’ motivation and engagement and thus reducing admission times, potential recalls and recidivism.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first systematic review to date to exclusively explore the broad topic of the patient experience of secure mental health care.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the current state of the literature on the variables associated with self-harm and aggression in women who committed a criminal offence.

Studies were identified through online databases, namely, PsycINFO, PubMed, ERIC and EBSCOhost, as well as manual searches of reference lists of the selected studies. The target population included women who committed a criminal offence and have engaged in self-harm and aggressive behaviors during their incarceration, either in correctional institutions or in forensic psychiatric settings.

Of the 1,178 studies identified, nine met inclusion criteria. The studies were conducted in six different countries and included data from 6360 female participants. Few studies examine self-harm and aggression in women who committed a criminal offence which speaks to the still sparse literature on this topic. This review of the association between self-harm and aggression in women offenders highlights the finding that a small group of women is often involved in both self-harm and aggression. The authors have identified possible psychological factors associated with women engaging in both self-harm and aggression. The findings also reveal a possible connection between types of aggressive behaviors and specific time periods during sentences or stays in forensic psychiatry.

The findings of this scoping review have clinical implications which may be considered by both researchers and the case management teams of women involved in both self-harm and aggression.

Despite the limited number of studies examining self-harm and aggression in women, this scoping review highlights gaps in the literature as well as notable psychological correlates of women who engage in self-harm and aggression.

The purpose of this study was to determine the incidence and concentrations of aflatoxin M1 (AFM1) in raw buffalo milk samples obtained from four different seasons: winter, spring, summer and autumn in Sohag City, upper Egypt, and compared the determined findings against the several regulations regarding AFM1 that have been legislated by the European Union, US Food and Drug Administration and Egyptian Regulations.

Simultaneous determination of aflatoxins in raw buffalo milk samples trailed in different seasons, in Sohag City, Egypt. The aflatoxin that has been included in this survey is AFM1. Milk samples were obtained from February to October 2021. The enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay was used as a methodology technique.

The results of AFM1 presented the highest frequency of occurrence, with a detected incidence of 85.5% in winter samples, 64.2% in spring samples, 78.5% in summer samples and 78.5% in autumn samples. The positive samples showed concentration range levels of AFM1 between 0.0 and 0.9 µg/kg (12 samples) in winter samples, 0.03 and 1.2 µg/kg in spring milk samples (9 samples), 0.06 and 0.8 µg/kg in summer milk samples (11 samples) and lasted with 0.028 and 0.9 µg/kg in autumn milk samples (11 samples). The percentage of AFM1samples exceeded the maximum residues limit of Egyptian Standard Regulation 2010/7136 last updated, 78%, 57%, 100% and 64% in the four examined seasons, respectively.

The residue levels of AFM1 obtained in the investigated samples represented a serious concern about the health risk of consumers. Milk is introduced to the diet plan all over the people units especially the offspring ones as it is a complete food that contains a lot of important nutrients. So it is worth to set a regular schedule for monitoring and inspection of dairy products for aflatoxin residues.

This rapid evidence assessment (REA) study aims to synthesise what is known about food refusal within male prison populations to aid a better understanding of why this occurs. By looking at the various functions of food refusal for this population, it is hoped that professionals can better support prisoners’ needs in this area.

A rapid review of available data within the published literature was completed. Searches were conducted on two databases (PsychInfo and MedLine), and a total of 328 articles were screened using a three-stage process. This resulted in 13 articles being identified for the final sample, which were reviewed and synthesised into themes by looking for commonalities.

Five themes were identified: “to protest”, “to achieve goals or demands”, “to manage interpersonal difficulties with prison/custodial staff”, “to end life” and “mental health and personality disorder”. The findings appear to suggest that food refusal in this context may be predominantly driven by a need to communicate or gain control.

To help prevent and cease food refusal, it will be beneficial for prison staff to use approaches that support prisoners feeling a sense of fairness, transparency, control and autonomy, as well as problem-solving skills and establishing a sense of purpose and motivation.

This REA confirmed there is a lack of good-quality research into the functions of food refusal among prisoners in the UK. Future research should involve contact with prisoners who have engaged in food refusal to understand motivations firsthand.

The purpose of this study is to investigate whether sexual homicide offenders (SHO) who dispose of the victim’s body naked present with particular crime scene characteristics.

This study aims to answer this question through the use of a sequential logistic regression to test the individual effects of each set of crime scene variables against the manner of disposal using a sample of 662 solved cases of extrafamilial sexual homicide from an international database.

Results demonstrated that the modus operandi behaviors of sexual penetration, asphyxiation, dismemberment and overkill were significantly associated with the body being disposed of naked. In addition, removing or destroying evidence from the scene was also significantly associated with a naked victim. In contrast, the body was more likely to be dumped clothed if the contact scene was deserted and the victim was a stranger. These results suggest that SHOs who dispose of the body naked are more in line with the sadistic sexual murderer, while clothed victims are often disposed of by angry offenders.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to examine the particular manner of disposing the victim’s body naked in cases of sexual homicide.