"My hope is that students, scholars, mental health and criminal justice practitioners, and others who read this book will come away reminded of several important things that can take us further toward preventing, controlling, and responding to crime. First, crime is a common everyday occurrence with very real and often tragic consequences we are all forced to deal with at some level in our everyday lives, whether we are offenders, victims, witnesses, citizens, jurors, or professionals in criminal justice, mental health, or social service. Second, feasible and effective solutions to the prevention and control of crime can come only from the conjoining of scientific and practical perspectives of different disciplines, keeping in mind that nothing about real crime will ever fall as neatly into place as the theories suggest and no empirical study can be so perfectly designed as to provide definitive answers. Third, crime types included in this text that are rarely covered in traditional criminology texts, such as political and copycat crimes, will hopefully inspire researchers to pursue otherwise untouched avenues of research."