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Policing - new material (33)

01 December 1997

Review: Beyond disaster: identifying and resolving inter-agency conflict in the immediate aftermath of disasters Howard Davis and Phil Scraton. Centre for Studies in Crime and Social Justice, Edge Hill University College, July 1997, 122 pages. This research report was written for the UK Home Office Emergency Planning Division. The fact that the report was commissioned represents a significant welcome and overdue shift in the Home Office approach to emergency planning since the time of the three disasters examined: Lockerbie Hillsborough and The Marchioness.

The report focuses on inter-agency cooperation and conflict between the emergency services and makes recommendations on a Charter for the Bereaved central and local government responses to the immediate aftermath inter-agency cooperation crisis support and responses to the needs of the bereaved and of the survivors. It includes important and thoughtful sections on the contextualisation of disasters and the genesis use and contradictions of the concept of Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

It is to be hoped that the Home Office will take on board and take action on the recommendations informed as they are by a wealth of experience in the field from the authors the bereaved and the survivors.