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Despite the longstanding public and media fascination with the modern ‘serial killer’, the academic literature is relatively limited. The international field is dominated by individualistic biographical accounts, which offer a highly reductionist and distorted stereotype of the perpetrator, with little opportunity to learn from past cases, or place them within wider socio-cultural contexts. Furthermore, there are a profusion of overlapping and confusing terms, confounded by the FBI's social construction of the ‘serial killer problem’, and perpetuating widespread misleading assumptions. After many years teaching in this area, we are often struck by how these media-driven misconceptions of the serial killer dominate students' knowledge and interest in the topic. This is despite a growing critique of the area in recent years, particularly from within our field of criminology. We seek to debate these issues by exploring some useful cases of serial killing, foregrounding some UK case examples, which are often underexplored. We argue for the need to facilitate scholarly, systematic research to counter the voyeuristic, essentialist narratives within popular media. We also advocate the alternative socio-cultural approach to the study of serial killing, which has emerged in recent years, although been relatively unacknowledged in the international literature to date. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This contribution attempts to explore the use of a variety of literary sources as aids or 'prompts' to understanding those offenders and offender-patients whose mental states often raise considerable anxieties in those charged with their management. The word 'prompt' is borrowed from the work of my friend, the late doctor Murray Cox, and his co-worker Alice Theilgaard in their seminal work Shakespeare as Prompter (1994). The author of the present article hopes that its content will enable readers to focus more clearly on why we sometimes fail our offenders and offender-patients; in particular, through the mechanism of denial. The use of dramatic presentation when proffered with a unique blend of force and sensitivity can permit us to view puzzlement and horror from a safe distance and, at the same time, encourage us to increase our empathic understanding and professional practice. Most of the examples cited are brief allusions but, because her history is so compellingly applicable to our concerns in the present contribution, the 'case' of Lady Macbeth is considered in more detail. Finally, I would note some very wise words by Cox and Theilgaard (1994) in a caveat note to the reader: 'Should the focus on therapy ever become occluded by preoccupation with poetic association, clinical skills would be diminished, distraction ensue and therapeutic contact deteriorate' (not numbered). In the material that follows readers should bear such a cautionary note in mind. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Now in his 86th year, the author offers brief comments on some of the differences in the setting and practice of probation compared with those described by Jake Phillips in a recent issue of Probation Journal (Phillips, 2014). [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article offers insights into the supervision of potentially dangerous offender patients. The author notes that supervision needs a high degree of surveillance, an acknowledgement of the importance of accountability to the public and central government and of good relationship practices with close professional colleagues. The types of patients consist of those who have committed serious offenses of violence against the person and against property and who have the potential to do so again. He adds that it is important to overcome a reluctance to ask uncomfortable questions and to be aware of one of the difficult area of psychiatric practice.