General Editors Introduction

The Clarendon Studies in Criminology series aims to provide a forum for outstanding theoretical and empirical work in all aspects of criminology and criminal justice, broadly understood. The Editors welcome submissions from established scholars, as well as manuscripts based on excellent PhD dissertations. The Series was inaugurated in 1994, with Roger Hood as its first General Editor, following discussions between Oxford University Press and Oxford’s then Centre for Criminological Research. It is edited under the auspices of three centres: The Centre for Criminology at the University of Oxford, the Institute of Criminology at the University of Cambridge, and the Mannheim Centre for Criminology at the London School of Economics. Each supplies members of the Editorial Board and, in turn, the Series General Editor or Editors. Ailbhe O’Loughlin’s Law and Personality Disorder offers a thoughtful and detailed analysis of the legal, practical, and ethical challenges in criminal justice responses to ‘dangerous’ offenders. Through careful study of the Dangerous and Severe Personality Disorder (DSPD) Programme, an initiative established to develop techniques for treating and managing people in the DSPD category in prisons and secure hospitals in England and Wales in the early 2000s, as well as its successor, the Offender Personality Disorder (OPD) Pathway, she raises a series of difficult questions about how this particular group of people are treated, before suggesting some alternative possible approaches.