Word by Guest Editor

Abstract

Dear readers,

Welcome to the first English edition of the Journal of Issues in Criminalistics!

The growth of sociopathological phenomena in post-war Bosnia and Herzegovina, particularly in its urban centers, has given rise to a need for a more systematic approach to analysis, prog-nosis, and prevention of criminal behavior. This volume reflects the journal’s commitment to advancing knowledge about crime and crime-control strategies.

Nebojša Bojanid is one of the foremost scholars of crime prevention, judicial reform, women’s rights, and domestic violence, subjects on which he has published two treatises and numerous articles. Irma Deljkid, the distinguished criminology scholar, specializes in, and has published two treatises and numerous articles on, the subjects of crime prevention and criminology-research methodology. Their fascinating article, Rape Offender Profiling: the Characteristics of Rape Offenders in Bosnia and Herze-govina, is descriptive and draws its data entirely from Bosnia and Herzegovina. It presents provocative research results and lays out with precision the general char-acteristics of rapists in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Its most notable findings are that most rapists in Bosnia and Herzegovina are men in their early adulthood, who are unmarried and unemployed, and that the majority of them are psychologically and socially normal other than with regard to the offenses that they have committed.

Recognizing Child Abuse and Neglect in the Dental Office and Terrorism and Tour-ism are primarily normative in nature and are directed at practitioners, pediatric dentists and tourism-industry officials, respectively. Amra Arslanagid Muratbegovid is a Senior Assistant at the Faculty of Dentistry at the University of Sarajevo, who recently published a treatise, entitled Oral Health Related to Demographic Features in Bosnian Children Aged Six. Her article, Recognizing Child Abuse, is a thoughtful mapping of the child abuse and neglect indicators to which dentists who treat chil-dren must pay attention in order to aid in the detection of the types of physical abuse, sexual abuse, and dental neglect that dentists most commonly come across in the course of their work. In doing so, it possesses the great virtue of being a view from the outside the profession.

There is perhaps no area in which public concern about crime control has been greater than in the area of terrorism. Nedžad Korajld and Želimir Kešetovid are two of the most thoughtful scholarly commentators on public responses to terrorist incidents, and we received a particularly thought-provoking article from them. Professor Korajld is the former Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs for the Zenica-Doboj Canton and the current Director of the Institute of Criminology, Forensic Investigations, and Court Expertise at the Faculty of Criminalistics, Criminology, and Security Studies at the University of Sarajevo. He is one of the most distinguished scholars in Bosnia and Herzegovina of criminalistics, criminology, and crisis man-agement and the author of numerous articles and ten books, including one of the most authoritative treatises on the subject, Kriminalistička metodika. Professor Kešetovid is one of Serbia’s leading scholars in crisis management. He has authored more than 150 articles and seven books, including Crisis Management – Prevention and Police Education and Training in a Global Society. Their article, entitled Terror-ism and Tourism, turns a new light on the question of post-terrorism crisis man-agement, making a convincing case for how, after serious terrorist acts and their aftermath, tourism crisis managers in the tourism industry should employ creative and skillful crisis communication to restore the image of stability in tourist destina-tions affected by terrorist attacks. For those interested in the interplay between terrorism and the media, few subjects could be more important.

Tag It and Bag It – U.S. Social Policy Toward Native Americans and Formal Manifes-tations of Organized Crime in Bosnia and Herzegovina are also primarily normative in nature but are directed at policymakers in the United States and Bosnia and Herzegovina, respectively. Laurence Armand French is one of the best-known scholars of international and comparative social, human, and criminal justice, Na-tive American issues, and neuro-, clinical, and forensic psychology and a longstand-ing participant in public-policy debates on United States policies toward Native Americans. He is a life-member and Fellow of the American Psychological Associa-tion and a Fellow of the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues. He was a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Sarajevo and a Visiting Endowed Chair of Criminology and Criminal Justice at St. Thomas University. He has more than 280 publications, including fifteen books, including his latest book Running the Border Gauntlet: The Mexican Migrant Controversy. Goran Kovačevid is a member of the American and European Societies of Criminology and specializes in war trauma, terrorism, multiethnic societies, and police structures. Their article, entitled Tag it and Bag It, offers fascinating reflections on the legal provisions and systemic solu-tions that the United States Government has utilized to solve problems in Native American communities, especially in the context of health care, which, as Professor French and Mr. Kovačevid point out, has long been the responsibility of Congress pursuant to its treaty obligations.

Mile Šikman specializes in, and has published numerous books and articles on, the subjects of police education and organized crime. Formal Manifestations offers a sweeping account of new forms of organized crime in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the institutional and criminal responses to them in the hope that its results can be applied toward the successful prevention and combating of these forms of crime. In doing so, it elicits a subtly that the subject of organized-crime prevention sorely needs. I believe that it will become the seminal statement on the forms of orga-nized crime in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Marija Lučić-Ćatić specializes in, and has published several articles on, the subjects of criminology, criminal law, and penology. She is the President of the Assembly of the Association of Criminalists of Bosnia and Herzegovina and a member of the working group drafting a code of ethics for police conduct at the Bosnia and Herze-govina Ministry of Security. Her article, entitled Challenges in Conducting Prison Research, is also primarily normative but is directed toward criminology research-ers. One of its most compelling aspects is its measured tone. In the most fascinat-ing part of the article, Ms. Lučić-Ćatić reflects on the tension experienced in re-searching the prison world with both qualitative and quantitative styles of research and focuses on the inconsistencies between official data and the information pro-vided by prisoners and the significance of the emotional reactions and narrative accounts of inmates, staff, and even researchers during interviews in correctional settings. This is a provocative interpretive approach. The article provides critical insights into conducting prison research and offers a particularly nuanced account of some of the problems that can arise when researching prisons and prisoners.

The remarkable articles gathered here cover topics ranging from the characteristics of rapists, child abusers, and organized criminals to policies involving Native Ameri-cans, terrorists, and prison researchers. It would be impossible to tie all of those threads together in one introduction. It is possible, however, to draw a few termi-nological and analytical conclusions, some of which might point the way toward future research.

(1) Vigilance is at the core of effective crime prevention, whether in the form of effective profiling of rapists, attentive care of pediatric patients, measured re-sponses to large-scale crises, recognizing new forms of criminal organizations, or even becoming aware of our own emotions while conducting research. In the words of Wendell Phillips: “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.”

(2) Traditionally, criminology has existed in the shadow of the law, including those governing criminal sentencing and prison conditions, mandatory reporting of crimes, media freedoms, international treaties, and privacy laws. As the lines be-tween criminal and civil law blur, the responsibility for crime prevention no longer rests just with police and prosecutors, but is shared among a wide range of organi-zations, institutions, and individuals. Traditional criminology has been too limited by its emphasis on the state and state-centered constructions of criminality and by its failure to come to terms with how social injustices are reproduced through pri-vate institutions and modes of expertise constituted on the margins of the state, like health-care systems, the communications media, and corrupt business enter-prises.

(3) The terms “criminology,” “criminalistics,” and even “crime” are employed wide-ly, enthusiastically, and inconsistently. Their definitions are often bandied about with only implicit suggestions as to the criteria being applied, let alone the reasons for adopting those criteria. Ultimately, one must intuit definitions that make sense in the context of a particular intellectual project.

(4) From my biased perspective, at least, this volume presents an extraordinarily rich range of offerings – from reflections about how research becomes “me search,” how treaties get honored in their breach, and how incidents become crises to detailed typologies of rapists, the signs of child abuse, and organized crime. If there is a thread that links this work together it is this: crime touches everyone. But the opposites of crime – outlets and safe havens, tourist vacations, and problem solving – are important too. Hopefully the articles in this volume can spur us to look at safety with the same historical care, analytical precision, and occasional utopian romanticism that we display when looking at crime.