Drugs Handbook 2008
Edition: 2008
Author: Glyn Volans &
Heather Wiseman
ISBN: 978 0230574250
Publishers: Palgrave
Price: £19.99 Publication Date: 4th
Dec 2007 Publisher’ Title Information It is
essential that all involved in a patient's healthcare should have ready access
to information on the various medicines prescribed or bought over the counter.
This book provides quick and easy access to this information and acts as a
concise guide to the mechanism of action, therapeutic indications and chief
unwanted effects of medicines available in the United Kingdom. The 2008
edition of the Drugs Handbook has been revised to include entries of new
medicines and new information about existing medicines, and also indicates
those medicines that are currently being intensively monitored by the
Commission on Human Medicines (CHM). Up-to-date information on the drugs is
clearly arranged in the following user-friendly structure: Part I
lists (in alphabetical order) the drugs under their chemically approved names,
giving mechanism of action, therapeutic indications and chief unwanted effects. Part II
lists the drugs under their trade or brand names, with cross references to the
appropriate approved names. There is
an Appendix of common slang names for misused drugs. This practical
and concise text is a valuable reference guide for student and qualified
nurses, and also for students and practitioners in other healthcare
professions. Glyn
Volans, MD, BSc, FRCP, is consultant clinical pharmacologist/ toxicologist at
Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust. Heather
Wiseman, BSc, MSc, is an information scientist with a longstanding interest in
drug safety. Reviews
to date 'Includes
new drugs and omits those no longer available. It is a useful quick reference
for those who do not have access to regularly published drug information
books'- Nursing Standard 'in a
ward where one needs to look up drugs quickly, a drug index book such as this
would prove useful'- Nursing Times. Communicating Rights, The Language of
Arrest and Detention Edition:
HB Author: Frances Rock ISBN:
9780230013315 Publishers:
Palgrave Price:
£55 Publication
Date: 2007 Publisher’s
Title Information People explain things to each other every day using both writing and
speech. Communicating
Rights examines the creativity which underpins everyday explanation and its
power to influence lives. The rights communication in question occurs in police
custody, where explanations shape crucial decisions. Data examined illustrate
that when speakers and writers transform texts for others through explanation
they work hard to convey meaning. They try to simplify words and grammar and
consider the other's perspective and communicative needs. However, although
explaining rights seems to be concerned with simply relaying facts it does much
more. This apparently tightly-regulated, goal-oriented talk is used by both
police officers and detainees to reassure, persuade, distract, challenge,
empathise, learn, influence confidence, present identity, prospect intentions,
show affiliation, make suggestions and bring formality. The book shows that
analysts, institutions, indeed anyone who explains to others, might usefully
recognize that their explanations do more than simply convey facts. Contents
List
of Figures Author
FRANCES ROCK is a Lecturer in the Centre for
Language and Communication Research at Cardiff University, UK. She has
previously taught at the Universities of Roehampton and Birmingham.
Acknowledgements
Terminology and Key to Transcription Conventions
PART 1: RIGHTS AND RESEARCH: ORIENTATION AND THEORY
Introduction
Beyond Language as Transmission
PART 2: WRITING RIGHTS
Introducing Written Rights Communication
Working with Syntax and Lexis in Writing
Working with Organization in Writing
Working with Context: Rights Texts in Custody
Off The Page: Detainees' Reading Practices
PART 3: SPEAKING RIGHTS
Introducing Spoken Rights Communication
Working with Lexis in Speech
Working with Organization in Speech
Checking Comprehension
Beyond Explanation: Using Cautioning
PART 4: RIGHTING RIGHTS?
Conclusion
Notes
References
Appendices
Index
Review
Having spent time as a Sergeant before the enactment of the Police & Criminal Evidence Act 1984 and then as Custody Sergeant and Review Officer ( Inspector) afterwards, this book goes to the very root of what I did for a considerable part of my life and I have to say that I never found communicating with prisoners particularly difficult. Most officers managed by experience and I am not sure that those on the ground, on the front line will read this book. Most stations will have their own Force Orders and will follow the procedures, added to that, Codes of Practice and Police Manuals are very comprehensive.
However there is an element of truth in the below quote from the book. This officer describes using language at work. 'Police officers, themselves, recognise this: when you're charging somebody with a Public Order offence and you read out the offence (.) the offence is so long winded and so complicated for them to understand that … they'll like look at you as if “what?” (.) you know (.) they've maybe been fighting in the street and they've been charged with Section 4 Public Order and they're like “what's going on here I was just fighting in the street?” and then you have to obviously explain, so like you're used to explaining things in layman's terms.'
As an academic exercise it is interesting to see that an entire book can be produced to discuss the language of arrest and detention, but surely it will vary from Force to Force as all language does. In London, ranks above you were often addressed as 'Guv' whereas when I was seconded to Yorkshire, I found myself addressing an Assistant Chief Constable as 'Boss'; I was Boss to my Sergeants.
I can recall clearly what we did as young Detectives or Constables prior to 1986 (PACE) because I frequently arrested people during those years and it is not true to say that they (prisoners or detainees) were not told of their rights, albeit I admit it was not so regulated. However you still had to satisfy the Station Officer (usually a Station Sergeant or Uniformed Inspector) of the legality of your arrest, if not a refused charge had to be written up. To read a very clear explanation of this see 'Living Twice - an Autobiography' by CH Rolph (AKA CR Hewitt, former Chief Inspector City of London Police,) Chapter 6, Page 98)
'I believe that the station officer is, and I am certain that he was, the mute inglorious Milton of the police service. He is the police system's only creative artist. During my own short period in this exacting role, I suppose three years at the most, I found…the telephone maddening, ….the duty parades faintly comic, the unlawful arrests a marvellous challenge to inventive lying, and the grape-shot of the criminal law highly dangerous….The unlawful arrests were many and various, and the recognition that they were unlawful was usually an unpopular piece of pedantry. The law had neglected, no doubt by oversight, to provide that some kinds of offenders could be arrested without a warrant from a magistrate. Among them were people obtaining property by 'false pretences,' cafe customers getting a meal with no intention of paying,' and men committing what the law shudderingly called "acts of gross indecency". Few station officers seemed to bother themselves about this state of the law; and because fewer still had done so in the past, there had grown up a code of procedure, and a list of "specimen charges", which offered an alternative cover for errors of law which did violence to "civil liberty". If the alleged crime, and the resulting unauthorised arrest, had taken place indoors you added a charge under the 1824 Vagrancy Act of "being found in premises for an unlawful purpose". If it was out of doors, you added a charge (unless it seemed completely daft) of "insulting behaviour likely to cause a breach of the peace ". Both of these rubber-stamp postscripts authorised "arrest without warrant", though the penalties attached to them were insignificant by comparison with the graver charges they artfully supported. Anyway they were ignored by the court and never read out to the defendantthe justices' clerk detachedly regarding them as a funny little police habit which did no harm and obviously in some way made the police feel better.
When you did this you had to write a story about it in the Refused Charge Book; and this was studied with passionate interest by such superior officers as were spurred by native devotion to duty, or self-preservation to look for trouble and stir up what they found. I am bound to confess that I developed a facility with the use of the Refused Charge Book which assured for me a kind of charmed life, though in fact it took longer to refuse a charge than to accept one. And I'm in no doubt that I sometimes grievously abused its intended purpose when it seemed to me that the lives of hapless men were going to be ruined by some trumpery charge of homosexual conduct in private (for an acquittal, though in these circumstances almost certain, would do them little less harm than a conviction), or of being "drunk and incapable" when they were clearly able to walk.'
I suggest the chapter be read in full along with Chapter VI of 'Common Sense About Crime & Punishment' also by CH Rolph Gollancz 1961. This will give you a feel of the old ways when Police Officers survived on practical Police work and common sense: it will set the scene before you delve into the complicated language and erudite research undertaken by this author. Before proceeding any further I should say I firmly believe that older generations of Police Officers could express themselves and use their own language far better than modern youth, who's daily vocabulary appears much more limited.
The book is divided into two parts, investigative and analytic, and examines the 'notice to detained persons' and the Police caution which has changed a few times over the years since it was first laid down in 1906 and embellished from time to time by the Judges of the High Court. The fact is they came about because of or I should say at the request of the Chief Constable of Birmingham and notes were added to the first four rules in response to questions put to them in 1929 by the Royal Commission on Police Powers and Procedure.
CH Rolph gives the rules in full in his 1961 book (Supra) and I know they were altered in 1964 and the copy I still have is Home Office Circular 89/1978, Second Edition. They are stated to be exactly the same as Home Office Circular 31/1964. These are the rules I worked under from 1968 to 1986 prior to PACE, and Home Office Circular 109/1978 'Identification Parades and the Use of Photographs for Identification'.
One Page 142 the author referring to the history of the rules quotes the short caution from the 'Police Mutual Assurance Society booklet 1976'. These small booklets although correct were not official documents, they were used by recruits at training centres in the days when you had to learn 10 'definitions a day, usually in the lunch hour. We called this the 'short caution' and what the 1978 official Home Office circular said was:-
.
RULES
I. When a police officer is trying to discover whether, or by whom, an offence has been committed he is entitled to question any person, whether suspected or not, from whom he thinks that useful information may be obtained. This is so whether or not the person in question has been taken into custody so long as he has not been charged with the offence or informed that he may be prosecuted for it.
II. As soon as a police officer has evidence which would afford reasonable grounds for suspecting that a person has committed an offence, he shall caution that person or cause him to be cautioned before putting to him any questions, or further questions, relating to that offence.
The caution shall be in the following terms :
" You are not obliged to say anything unless you wish to do so but what you say may be put into writing and given in evidence."
When after being cautioned a person is being questioned, or elects to make a statement, a record shall be kept of the time and place at which any such questioning or statement began and ended and of the persons present.
That was the short caution
III. (a) Where a person is charged with or informed that he may be prosecuted for an offence he shall be cautioned in the following terms :
" Do you wish to say anything? You are not obliged to say anything unless you wish to do so but whatever you say will be taken down in writing and may be given in evidence."
The Rights Text (the rights notice) now used around England and Wales shown at Appendix 12 of this book is based on a revision written by a serving Sergeant but it is typical of the Home Office that they were not satisfied with this plain language version eg the Sergeant wrote 'The Police will help you get in touch with a Solicitor' - simple enough isn't it? However the official version reads 'the Police will help you get in touch with a Solicitor for you'. What does adding 'for you' signify apart from making it bad English? I suppose it was too much to ask that something written by a Sergeant be allowed to stand.
This is a very well researched book, the references are extensive and it has a very good index.
Rob Jerrard
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