Tom Stevens

The Drugs Offences Handbook provides a comprehensive, focused and concise analysis of the often complex evidential and litigation issues that relate to drugs cases. The law relating to drugs has the broadest span of any specialist area within crime. Evidentially it includes the forensic examination of drugs themselves and evidence linking individuals to drugs, as well as cell site analysis, interrogation of computers and mobile telephones, police powers of search, and the utilisation of police ‘expert’ witnesses. From a litigation perspective, drugs cases (together with financial crime) make up the vast majority of cases giving rise to money laundering and proceeds of crime issues. In complex supply and importation cases, the financial aspect frequently arises within the evidence as well. Laid out in three broad sections covering Offences, Evidence and Post-conviction, The Drugs Offences Handbook provides expert guidance on key areas such as:- Manufacture and cultivation- Importation- Possession and supply- Police powers of search and seizure- Sentencing and confiscationWith reference to all relevant legislation including the Psychoactive Substances Act 2016, the Drugs Act 2005, the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 as well as analysis of leading cases such as R v Hussain (Shabbir), R v Green and R v Wright, The Drugs Offences Handbook is an essential resource for criminal law practitioners as well as professionals such as drugs agencies, counselling agencies and expert witnesses. Tim Moloney QC, Tom Stevens, Paul Mason, Abigail Bright and Harriet Johnson are all members of Doughty Street Chambers. Steven Bird is the founder and director of Birds Solicitors. The Criminal Practice Series is a series of practical court-style guides covering a number of discrete, specialist areas. They assist users to identify cases, rules and regulations relevant to the specific topic quickly and easily. For more information please visit www.bloomsburyprofessional.com/criminal

In March 1952 Tom Stevens sailed from Southampton aboard the troopship Dilwara, one of the last generations of British soldiers to serve in the West Indies. `How did I get here?’, he asks. Tom’s candid memoir describes his wartime childhood, disrupted by evacuation, the Swansea blitz, patchy schooling, his father’s absence at war and his parents’ separation. He evokes with an engaging honesty the life of an infantryman in the garrison of Jamaica, the pleasures of tropical service and the temptations faced by a young man in uniform. Vividly recalled, Tom’s memoir reveals how a young Welshman grew up in the final years of colonial Jamaica, recalling the complex relationships he enjoyed with its people. Tom candidly recounts the two amorous adventures that make his account of his time in the West Indies unique: his infatuation with Elvira, the Belize beauty for whom he risked all by deserting to elope with her, and Marcia, the Kingston woman with whom he lived happily, as long as neither mentioned her life as a prostitute. In between, Tom and his Royal Welch comrades relaxed in the bars of Kingston, cleaned up after a tropical hurricane in Jamaica, suppressed a socialist coup in British Guiana and guarded the leaders of the free world when they met in the Bahamas, before leaving the bright sunshine of the West Indies to return to the grey skies of post-war Britain. A Welch Calypso opens the barrack room door after lights out, evoking the life of the other ranks in one of Britain’s last tropical garrisons. As well as describing a now long-gone military world, Tom Stevens opens his heart in a frank reminiscence of a Welsh boy’s coming of age.