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17 Psych., Crime & L. 1 (2011)

handle is hein.journals/pcyceadl17 and id is 1 raw text is: Psychology, Crime & Law | Routledge Vol. 17, No. 1, January 2011, 1 T Tayor&FrandsGroup Editor's introduction to the special edition As readers of this journal will know, those individuals who come to the attention of the criminal justice system come in many guises. For various purposes, within both practice and research, distinctions are made between offenders according to a range of criteria; these criteria include the individual's personal characteristics such as their age or gender, or personality, or psychological and intellectual functioning, or risk of further delinquency. Indeed, some of these characteristics define whole areas of research within criminology generally and psychology and crime specifically. One particular longstanding niche within criminological research and legal practice concerns the interplay between intellectual disability and criminal beha- viour. The coexistence of intellectual disability and criminal behaviour has raised three basic forensic issues for a long time. First, there is the matter of criminal responsibility: can people with an intellectual disability be held to be culpable for their actions in the same way as people without such a disability? If the answer to this question is negative, then a means of assessing reliably the individual's intellectual functioning and risk to the community needs to be established in order that the law can be applied fairly. Second, given that this group exists within the criminal justice and mental health systems, the provision of services (in terms of both physical facilities and professional input) relies on an understanding of the level of prevalence and the characteristics, psychological and criminological, of offenders with intellectual disabilities. Third, the critical question is whether services for this group work in that they reduce reoffending and enable the individual to return safely to the community. These issues are all addressed in detail in an excellent group of papers drawn together by Bill Lindsay and his colleagues. The material they present in this special issue has the collective weight of scholarship that comes from experts and is a master class on the topic of offenders with intellectual and developmental disabilities. I learned a great deal from reading the material and I'm confident that other readers of the journal will do likewise. Clive Hollin ISSN 1068-316X print/ISSN 1477-2744 © 2011 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/10683160903392186 http://www.informaworld.com