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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]

Focuses on the withholding of psychotherapy from violent and abusive psychiatric hospital patients in Great Britain's National Health Service. Rhetoric of violence; Man's potential for cruelty and destructiveness; Significant threats of risk of serious injury.

Focuses on the management of severely psychopathically disordered individuals in Great Britain. Need for public protection; Risk of causing harm to other individuals; Increase of crimes.

The offence of arson is examined within a very brief cultural and historical context; reference is made to the law and the size of the problem in the UK and elsewhere. Some typologies are put forward and proffered for improving understanding and management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some characteristics, drawn from a small sample of the series 'Pioneers in Forensic Psychiatry' and from a postal enquiry to thirty-seven UK consultant forensic psychiatrists are described; an attempt is made to provide a limited 'profile'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article comments on the trial in Great Britain of two ten-year-old boys who kidnapped and murdered a toddler. The killing of small children by other children is a rare event that arouses much anxiety. Mental health professionals explained the behavior of the boys in terms of family background, psychopathology and neurological impairment. The judge t the trial thought that the incident may have been the result of viewing nasty videos.