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Despite the wealth of academic literature relating to serial murder, there has been little research into how the occupational choice of serial killers influences their behaviour and subsequent offending. This article seeks to address this current gap by first examining the occupational history of known British serial murderers and determining if there were any particular work environments which were commonly selected. It was determined that there are four particular occupational 'groups' that known British serial murderers selected and these are described as: 'Healthcare'; 'Business'; 'Public and personal service'; and 'Driving and transient dependent work'. It is this latter occupational 'grouping' that was the most commonly selected form of employment. Through using a case study of Peter Sutcliffe - a serial murderer who was active during the 1970s and early 1980s - the reasons why such occupations may be so popular among serial sexual murderers are explored. © 2015 The Howard League and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

This article discusses what might motivate someone to become a hitman. It does this by considering those hitmen identified as 'Novices' and 'Dilettantes' in the research by MacIntyre et al. (2014) and then uses a critical analysis of a biography of one British hitman not considered in that article to pursue these ideas further. Throughout, we are keen to see how potential hitmen develop a psychological 'reframing' of their victim (Levi 1981), so as to be able to achieve their objectives, and how this reframing might thereafter be maintained. Hitmen, it is argued, emerge as an extreme example of Hall's (2012) 'criminal undertakers'. © 2015 The Howard League and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

This article sets out to establish whether, and to what extent, homicides involving social networking sites (SNSs) are unique and to identify the ways in which perpetrators of homicide have used SNSs in their crimes. It does so by identifying and analysing relevant cases of homicide from around the world and comparing the characteristics of these cases with the general literature on homicide. We argue that the cases in our sample are largely typical of homicide in general and identify six ways in which homicide perpetrators have used SNSs - as reactors, informers, antagonists, predators, fantasists and imposters. © 2014 The Howard League and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

This exploratory article presents a typology of British ‘hitmen’ as identified within newspaper reports about contract killing. Demographic and criminological data related to these hitmen and their victims are analysed and, on the basis of this analysis, a typology of British hitmen is developed. Our typology suggests that British hitmen are: ‘Novices’; ‘Dilettantes’; ‘Journeymen’; or ‘Masters’. It is hoped that this typology will be of use to law enforcement.

This exploratory article presents an overview of British, male family annihi- lators from 1980 to 2012. In doing so it provides a range of criminological information relevant to the incidents being described, and offers a taxonomy of four different types of annihilators that moves discussion beyond 'revenge/altruistic' categories.

This article explores interwar penal policy tensions through a case study of Harold Jones, a sexually sadistic double child-killer. Reports by two reforming Prison Commissioners of that period – Alexander Paterson and Dr W. Norwood East – are used to develop the case study. Their different approaches to understanding Jones's offences reflect their conflicting views on the aetiology of crime, the purpose of imprisonment and how to address offending behaviour. This shaped the extent to which they were prepared to act as an advocate for Jones and whether or not he should be released. It also influenced their views on the operational management of prisons and brought them into conflict with other administrators, managers and commentators of that period, as the prison service moved slowly out of its Victorian origins and responded to the demands of the times.

This article is a response to Piche´ and Walby’s (2010) criticism of ‘carceral tours’. It uses 40 reflective accounts, completed by final year students at Birmingham City University, of their visit to HMP Grendon – an annual visit which has been ongoing for ten years – to argue that this ‘carceral tour’ has pedagogical value to the students and is also important to the prisoners and prison staff.

This article examines the TV series Banged Up and media reactions to it. In doing so it seeks to argue that it served a wider public service purpose, or public criminology, than simply entertainment. A number of other ‘experiments’ and the crossover between those and reality TV are also explored. The series was not universally admired and no attempt is made to hide this. In addition to engaging with theoretical matters the experience of one of the authors of being part of the programme is set out. (Authors' abstract)

This article describes the visit of Charles Dickens to the USA in 1842, and his criticisms of the Eastern Penitentiary in Philadelphia. It is suggested that this visit and Dickens's reactions to what he saw in the prison not only influenced his later writing but was also the basis for his subsequent disenchantment with the USA.

A case study of a convicted paedophile and the relationship between his 'thinking and doing' is presented to reveal how his fantasy life, his use of the Internet and his contact offences against children are linked. More broadly, the authors propose a generic 'offending space model' to chart how, and in what circumstances fantasy becomes reality. 'It was my own world. It was a place I felt safe in, I could get everything I wanted out of it and I didn't have to feel inadequate'. (James - convicted paedophile) What is the relationship between thinking and doing? Specifically, how does the fantasy life of a paedophile relate to his contact offending against children? For James - not his real name - 'my own world' is an individual place where thinking, dreaming, imagining and fantasising tussle for dominance and without fear of constraint from normality or reprimand from the real world. It is a place where his hopes, aspirations, fears and desires can be mentally played out, recalled and rehearsed, and where criticism, taboo and embarrassment are invited only by the self, and not imposed by others. This place is highly individual, and whilst we all may choose to share aspects of our 'own world' with our partners, friends and family, our darkest, sexiest and most secretive desires are more likely to remain purely as fantasies. This was not the case with James, who stands in modest contrast to Quayle and Taylor's (2003) observation that 'there appears to be little support for the allegation of a direct causal link between viewing pornography and subsequent offending behaviour' (p.72). But how did his thinking lead to doing? More generally, it should be remembered that sexual fantasy best represents that part of all our 'own worlds' that remains internalised as secret erotic desires that serve to sexually arouse and excite, but where sharing and acting upon those desires would be deemed inappropriate.

This article is concerned with the origins and development of the first state penitentiary at Millbank, and with the reaction of the public to events at the prison. Using a variety of sources - including the work of Charles Dickens, it particularly seeks to understand how the prisoners responded to their incarceration by the State, and applies contemporary penological theory to historical episodes at the jail.

Prisoner autobiographies are used to construct an understanding of how therapy at HMP Grendon 'works', grounded in Genders and Player's 'therapeutic career model'. The use of these sources - or 'voices' - provides the listener not only with a deeper understanding of how the therapeutic process operates, but also raises issues which have not previously been described in the academic literature about the prison, or within the 'what works' debate. In particular the idea of a therapeutic 'champion' is introduced. This article seeks to describe how HMP Grendon 'works' by using the voices of the prisoners themselves to describe the impact of the therapeutic process. As such it is based on primary research undertaken in the prison, where one of the authors sat in on a variety of therapy groups, but is largely based on a critical analysis of three autobiographies by ex-Grendon inmates: Hard Cell by Frank Cook, A Product of the System by Mark Leech and The Longest Injustice by Alex Alexandrovich. So as to triangulate the material Frank Cook was also re-interviewed at length about themes that emerged from his book, as his account dominates this discussion. Throughout, an attempt is made to view therapy through the eyes of those undergoing ther- apy, and whilst this is grounded in the 'therapeutic career model' (see below) developed by Genders and Player (1995), interesting differences emerge between formal research about the prison and the views of the pris- oners, all of which can be set within, but also as a modest challenge to, the 'what works' debate (see McGuire 1995, 2000). So as to provide a context for the critical analysis, some brief details about the prison are provided, as well as an outline of the principles that dominate the prison's therapeutic community.

This article presents the results of a study exploring the consequences of working within a Christian-dominated penal system upon a group of Imams who regularly visit prisons. The Islamic religion is currently the fastest growing non-Christian religion in British prisons and so it was considered to be important to document the experiences of the spiritual guides of this faith. Interview data revealed that the Imams face many disadvantages as a result of belonging to a non-Christian religion, amounting to a form of 'institutional racism'. However, many of them revealed that they were not the passive victims of institutional racism (and sometimes direct racism also), but rather struggled against their material conditions in order to force the prisons in which they work to respond to their own needs and those of the prisoners whom they serve. Nonetheless, it appears that any opportunities for change are limited by the structural imbalance between Christian and non-Christian faiths within the penal system.