Editorial

Citation

Shevlin, M., Adamson, G., Colbert, R., Boduszek, D. and Hyland, P. (2014), "Editorial", Journal of Criminal Psychology, Vol. 4 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/JCP-07-2014-0011

Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: Journal of Criminal Psychology, Volume 4, Issue 2

Welcome to Volume 4, Issue 2 of the Journal of Criminal Psychology. With this issue we continue our commitment to present a broad range of high-quality research from the field of criminal psychology that we hope will be of interest to anybody working in this area. In order to achieve this objective, this issue follows our traditional format of presenting research work from a variety of methodological perspectives, along with thought-provoking theoretical research papers, and contemporary reviews of critically important topics in criminal psychology.

The current issue includes three pieces of original quantitative research that will substantially contribute to the scientific literature in criminal psychology. The first of these addresses the serious issue of understanding the predictors of recidivism among offenders in substance dependence treatment. A second empirical paper addresses a very interesting concept of how to distinguish an "offender" from a "criminal". Finally, we include a wonderful study of the psychological features of female firesetters who are currently detained in secure psychiatric settings. In addition to the quantitative works, this issue also includes two review papers; one is a fascinating review and analysis of the current state of knowledge regarding the issue of "suicide by cop" and presents important empirically derived information to crisis negotiators for how to deal with these situations. The other is an illuminating review of the relationship between the conditions of Alexithymia and Asperger's Syndrome with criminal behaviour. In addition to these empirical reviews, we also include a fascinating theoretical paper which introduces a contexualistic account of antisocial behaviour from a behaviourist standpoint.

As always we must extend our sincerest thanks to all the excellent researchers who contributed their work to our journal, and especially to our committed reviewers who gave freely of their time and expertise, and without which it would be impossible to produce this issue. The Journal of Criminal Psychology remains committed to being a source of high-quality scientific research that is of interest to a range of different professionals. We invite you to sample what our journal has to offer in this issue with confidence that you will find much to enjoy! It is our hope that the work presented herein will inspire future work and continue to grow the field of criminal psychology.

Until next time.

Daniel Boduszek, Gary Adamson, Mark Shevlin, Philip Hyland and Ryanne Colbert