# FOREWORD

Because I know well that the reader who comes across the magazine first of all looks at the contents of the number, I find somewhat dubious to comment the list of the papers accepted for this issue. In addition, it might seem like I feel the need to better interpret the ideas of individual authors or to connect them in some clever way. Thus, there is only one possibility for the author of the foreword: to find an idea behind the whole number, and to reveal it to the reader in advance.

We launched the first issue Studies on Criminology on the occasion of the Prague European Society of Criminology conference in 2014. The aim was to open the door of Czech criminology to the Europe and to settle it even more firmly into the world context. The just published new thematic issue of AUC could therefore be used to put a foot in the open door so that someone could not accidentally close it. However, this is not a very elegant metaphor, and the current state of criminological research practically excludes such a possibility. Nevertheless, we want to open the door: among the authors we get colleagues from other institutions, we broaden the spectrum of topics and we look forward to gaining further cooperation opportunities. It is not just about foreign readers. Criminological research, which we are referring here, brings a great volume of valuable data: that is why we will be glad if other professionals or students of all levels of study start to be interested in them. But we also do not hide the intention of presenting our department as an environment in which research is succeeding and in which many young researchers are developing their talents.

This number contains 7 articles and its baseline leads from empirically oriented studies to theoretical and methodological issues. First of all, we include contributions from “visiting” authors although this label is not entirely accurate. A comprehensive and detailed analysis is offered in the article “Recidivism as a Measure of the Effectiveness of Sanctions: Experience from the Czech Republic” by Jan Tomášek and Jan Rozum. Eva Krulíchová submits a title “Life satisfaction and happiness: discussing the impact of fear of crime and victimization”, and she is trying to find out to what extent victimization experience and fear of crime influence life satisfaction and happiness of Czechs. The results of her analysis reveal a direct relationship between fear of crime and subjective well-being.

The research program of the Sociology department is represented by two papers of J. Buriánek and Z. Podaná. The first one, entitled “Violence against Men as Moderated by Couple’s Self-Control Configurations”, offers an original typology of couples, the second paper focuses on the important cultural patterns that characterize the Czech society. In
her “Corporal punishment of children by parents in the Czech Republic: Attitudes, prevalence rates, and intergenerational transmission of violence” Zuzana Podaná analyzes the use of corporal punishment of children by parents in Czech society, while making use of several quantitative surveys conducted both among adolescents and in the adult population.

A good example of student's involvement into research is given in the case of the study based on results of Iveta Čermáková's (2016) master thesis. The article “Alcohol use by youth in the Czech Republic and Finland: an empirical test of Skog's theory of the distribution of alcohol consumption” (I. Čermáková and Z. Podaná) focuses on alcohol consumption among Czech and Finnish adolescents. It describes the situation regarding alcohol consumption in both countries, including trends in consumption in recent years, and it presents and tests the theory of the distribution of alcohol consumption by a Norwegian sociologist Ole-Jørgen Skog, which has had an influence on many alcohol policies.

A huge theoretical background demonstrates the study of Pavla Homolová on “Theories of police legitimacy – its sources and effects”. The article of our young doctoral student Tomáš Diviák “Sinister connections: How to analyze organized crime with social network analysis?” addresses a fashionable topic of networks. In criminology, social network analysis (SNA) provides a promising tool for analysis of organized crime. This paper introduces basic network terms and measures as well as advanced models and reviews their application in criminological research.

I hope that this initial review of the content will push the reader to entry and to taste the rich variety of incentives. It is nice that a monothematic issue sacrificed on Criminology does not mean that it looks as monolithic. Finally: here is the idea searched behind!

Jiří Buriánek