To investigate the attitude of staff towards the recovery approach in forensic mental health services and the impact of training on staff knowledge and attitudes. A specially constructed 50-item recovery approach staff questionnaire, which focused on the core components of the recovery approach, was completed by 137 members of staff in in-patient forensic services in Lambeth, south London.

Staff were generally very positive about the implementation of the recovery approach in forensic services and those who had received training scored significantly higher on the questionnaire than non-trained staff.

The great majority of staff agree that the recovery approach to care does have a place in forensic services. This is important and needs to be built into the implementation of this approach in forensic services.

Significant ethnic differences have been found previously on a forensic unit in the management of psychiatric patients after a violent incident.

To study the management of violent incidents on all general wards in a large psychiatric hospital in South London. The main question is whether there are differences in the management of Black patients involved in violent incidents compared with White patients and, if so, what are the factors leading to it?

All recorded violent incidents (1515 in total) on 14 general wards over three years (1994, 1996, 1998) were analysed using mixed logistic regression to estimate the odds ratio that the corresponding management decision (emergency medication, physical restraint, seclusion) was taken for Black patients compared with White patients after controlling for covariates and unobserved heterogeneity between subjects.

Black patients were more likely than White patients to be given emergency medication and to be secluded after a violent incident, but not to be physically restrained. However, differences disappeared when the odds ratios were adjusted for other variables.

Racial ‘stereotyping’ was unlikely to have played a major direct role in determining nurses' responses.

The past decade has witnessed a recognition that unsafe criminal convictions may be occasioned by unreliable confessions.

To present a case which illustrates the dangers of using abreaction interview techniques in a legal context and demonstrate the relevance of the memory distrust syndrome to an unsafe confession to murder.

We undertook a detailed assessment of a person appealing against his original murder conviction/the appellant’, and a careful scrutiny of all the relevant papers in the case.

The appellant served 25 years in prison before his conviction was quashed as ‘unsafe’ on the basis of fresh psychological and psychiatric evidence.

Amnesia for an offence had been misdiagnosed, and the use of repeated abreaction interviews had further confused both the appellant and the original court. At the Appeal Court, the advice was that the man had experienced a form of source amnesia which resulted in an unreliable confession.