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The UK government proposals for services for individuals considered to be dangerous with a severe personality disorder (DSPD) are developing. The complex task of balancing safety and therapeutic change in DSPD services will rest largely upon the skills, knowledge and practice of the staff group. As a result, one challenge for DSPD services is to provide sufficient training and support to staff, in order to ensure that adequate resources are available to assist them in processing their emotional reactions to their work. As part of this, clinical supervision systems need to be developed to offer professional support and learning, enabling individual practitioners to develop knowledge and competence and assume responsibility for their own practice (DoH, 1993). Among the service developments at Rampton Hospital an innovative multi‐professional supervision strategy has been introduced for all staff working in the unit. This paper describes the evolving supervision framework, including a new tool, the ‘Supervision Matrix’, and implementation guidelines, and describes how this supervision framework will be evaluated.

We describe how Supervised Discharge (Section 25) of the Mental Health Act 1983 was used to promote mental health care in the community for a man with mild learning disabilities and paranoid schizophrenia who has had repeated relapses and hospital admissions. The new compulsory Community Treatment Order in England and Wales introduced by the Mental Health Act 2007 is explored in comparison with Section 25 Supervised Discharge, which it has now replaced, and compared with similar legislation already introduced in Scotland. The practice implications of the new supervised community treatment orders are discussed.

This paper aims to focus on the perspectives of correctional officers supervising young offenders on community supervision in Singapore.

The study adopted a qualitative research framework, where attention was devoted to understanding the perspectives of eight reintegration officers, and what they perceived to have helped young offenders successfully discharged from community supervision.

The five essential factors that emerged are compliance to supervision conditions, education and/or employment, ability to cope and efforts to change, support and environment. Each factor is defensible and had been substantiated by past research that incorporates evidence-based practice in correctional rehabilitation for offenders.

Due to constraints imposed on the research timeline, the five factors identified do not take into account societal-level barriers such as stigma, discrimination and inequalities, which are important factors that can be further explored in subsequent studies.

In Singapore, there is no research study on the Reintegration Officers' perspectives on what they deemed as critical for offenders to be discharged from community supervision. Understanding these key factors may help to shape future research in determining supervisees’ readiness for discharge from community supervision in Singapore. This knowledge gained could further inform and bolster the correctional rehabilitation services provided by SPS and be further developed into a tool that can be used to systematically assess the readiness of offenders to be discharged from community supervision.

The concept of unfitness to plead is central to conduct of a fair trial for someone accused of a crime. The historical origins go back several centuries, developing through a number of legislative changes. The modern concept of unfitness to plead arose from a number of legal cases in the 19th century. The Criminal Procedure (Insanity and Unfitness to Plead) Act 1991 followed a number of concerns over existing legislation. More recently, there have been a number of amendments made through the Domestic Violence, Crime and Victims Act 2004. This paper reviews the history and changes in legislation to the present day, and provides an example of the practical application of fitness to plead in practice. It also reviews relevant research and attempts to consider the future of this important medico‐legal term.

This review sets out the legislative amendments that have been made to the Children Act 1989 since it was implemented in 1991. It highlights the most significant changes to the original wording of the Act, with brief summaries of the relevant background and references to comment by leading figures in law and social work. The review follows the structure of the Act, beginning with the welfare principle and covering: private law provisions; local authority duties to children in need; care orders; and child protection. It is concluded that the majority of the amendments have arisen through increased recognition of the impact of domestic violence on children, campaigning by the fathers' rights movements and the economic pressures on local authorities that have prevented the provision of adequate services to children in need.

The annual cost of alcohol‐related harm in the UK is estimated to be between £17.7 and £25.1 billion with healthcare costs alone reaching £2.7 billion and the costs of alcohol‐fuelled crime and disorder accounting for £7.3 billion each year. The aim of the study was to examine the prevalence of alcohol use disorders (AUD) in prison and probation settings in the North East of England, and to compare the ability of the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT) and Offender Assessment System (OASys) at identifying alcohol‐related need in probation clients. A quantitative prevalence study was carried out using anonymous questionnaires with participants from four prisons and three probation offices in the North East who voluntarily completed the AUDIT questionnaire during a 1‐month period in 2006. Response outcomes on AUDIT were compared with OASys scores which identify alcohol‐related need in probation. At the time of the study OASys scores were not available for offenders in prison. Seven hundred and fifteen questionnaires were completed. Sixty‐three per cent of men and 57% of women were identified as having an AUD with over a third of all individuals scoring within the possibly dependant range (20+ on AUDIT). Around 40% of probation cases who were classified as either hazardous, harmful or possibly dependant drinkers on AUDIT were not identified by OASys. The results indicate that the prevalence of AUD in offenders is much higher than in the general population. In addition, current methods of identifying offenders with alcohol‐related need in probation are flawed and as many such people go undetected. Alcohol assessment procedures need to be improved in criminal justice setting order to correctly identify people with AUD.

This article gives an account of the cases in which the Children Act 1989 has been interpreted and applied by the highest courts in the UK, the appellate committee of the House of Lords until October 2009 when their jurisdiction was taken over by the new Supreme Court of the UK. It explains the reasoning behind those decisions and how they did, or did not, reflect the thinking of the original framers of the Act. It concludes that, by and large, the Act has stood up well to judicial scrutiny but that the Human Rights Act 1998 has brought new challenges to which it must respond.