Abstract
Welcome to the first issue of 2017! As ever we would like to take this opportunity to thank all of you who help out with the journal, by submitting and reviewing papers for us and by encouraging contributions from your colleagues. We would like to single out for special thanks Dr Marion Vannier who, for two years, has been the editorial assistant, untangling issues on Manuscript Central and working efficiently in distributing the papers for review. In her place, we would also like to extend a warm welcome to Marina Bell, who has taken over from Marion, and we look forward to working with her. We wish Marion well in the next stages of her academic career.
As those of you who read the journal online will have noticed, along with the rest of SAGE journals, Theoretical Criminology has a new web site. We welcome your thoughts and comments on it and any ideas you may have for how we can develop it.
As the politics and practice of crime control and criminal justice the world over is touched by the instability of the era in which we live, the role of academics in promoting critical and tolerant debate is ever more urgent. Theoretical Criminology has always been a site for such debates. The best articles address not only intellectual matters, but also matters of wider relevance and reach. We invite our readers to submit papers to us that speak to the current challenges facing the world, with particular attention to the rise of the new Right, racism, and the impact and nature of mass migration.
It may be that the website can be developed to allow greater open access to some articles. We also run a regular Editor’s choice selection on which papers are free to download. Where possible, SAGE encourages authors also to publicize their papers on mainstream press and blogs. When that happens, arrangements can sometimes be made to allow a wider distribution of the paper.
Not all academic research is aimed at the public. And Theoretical Criminology remains committed to all scholarly research of the highest caliber. However, as so-called ‘post-Truth’ politics becomes ever more entrenched, a clear burden falls on those of us who work in the academy to share our findings and ideas. Please contact us with thoughts you have on how the journal can support this kind of work.