Abstract
Hello and welcome to the first edition of the Police Journal for 2018.
We would like to take this opportunity to introduce ourselves as the new editorial team, say a few well-earned thank-yous, and outline briefly how we hope to build on the great work of our predecessors in making the Police Journal one of the foremost in its field for academic researchers, police, and allied policing and security practitioners.
First, we would like to thank Chantal Stillwell and her team at Sage for giving us the opportunity to be part of such a great journal. Second, we would especially like to thank the previous editors, Professor Colin Rogers and Dr Tim John, for passing on to us such a popular, well-oiled and well-respected journal-producing machine. Finally, we would like to thank all the readers and contributors to the journal over the past few years, particularly those that have submitted papers for consideration over the past six months; please bear with us as we are dealing with these as a priority, and if you have not already done so, then you will be hearing from us very soon.
Our vision and aims for the Police Journal are simple: to carry on increasing its relevance to both academic research and policing internationally, by ensuring that all editions reflect contemporary ‘real-world’ police issues. We think that this is evident in the present issue, where the articles reflect current issues at a variety of different levels of policing, from the governance and accountability of policing (McDaniel), experiences of diversity within the police (Southern), awareness and responses to diverse needs within the community (Race and Hogue) and the use of new policing methods (Francis Aiello) to a rare longitudinal evaluation of alley-gating as a burglary prevention intervention (Rogers). The book review in this issue is An Introduction to Criminal Justice by Geoff Coliandris.
With the support of a new editorial board, we aim to improve the quality of the published papers by employing a rigorous (but fair) peer review system comprising an army of international peer reviewers of academic researchers, police and allied practitioners (and those with feet in both camps, referred to as ‘pracademics’ at a conference one of us attended recently), without whom the Police Journal would simply not be feasible. With your help we promise wholeheartedly to strive to maximise the appeal and impact of the Police Journal to both police and allied policing professional readers, as well as to academic researchers and scholars.
We do intend to call for papers for special editions of the journal in the near future, so please do email us with any ideas that you may have for dedicated editions on specific topics or policing areas.
Thank you for your continued support, and please do let us know about your ideas and comments on the journal using our email addresses below.
Please do keep the papers coming in, along with your ideas for book reviews, as Denise is keen to hear suggestions from those of you interested in either writing book reviews or having your books reviewed.
We look forward to working with you in the future.