Please be aware this post was written before December 2018 when the Mental Health Act 1983 was amended and is now largely out of date — One aspect of those changes affected the types of location in which use of s136 MHA may be considered and this potentially affects hotel rooms.  If a person is […]

Can you tell the difference between fear and anger in the aggression you’ve seen? Does it matter whether there even is a difference when it comes to responding to incidents where people may be non-cooperative, for whatever reason?  This is an issue I’ve touched on before – in fact I’ve done so a few times.  […]

Policing and mental health as a subject cuts right across all of policing. We often end up talking about section 136 and places of safety – even when it’s completely irrelevant to the outrage prompting discussion – and I suspect that this prevents us from talking about, or even identifying, the larger and far more […]