HEITH COPES is an associate professor in the Department of Justice Sciences at the University of Alabama at Birmingham . His primary research combines symbolic interactionism and rational choice theory to better understand the criminal decision-making process. His recent publications appear in The British Journal of Criminology, Crime and Justice: A Review of Research, Criminology and Public Policy, and Social Problems , and he has received funding from the National Institute of Justice.

VOLKAN TOPALLI is an associate professor at Georgia State University (GSU) in the Department of Criminal Justice and is a Research Fellow with the GSU Partnership for Urban Health Research and the International Centre for Research on Forensic Psychology ( Portsmouth University , UK ). His research focuses on the general areas of offender decision making and retaliatory criminal behavior of urban street offenders. His work employs mixed method (i.e., quantitative and ethnographic) approaches, relying on theoretical principles found in traditional criminology as well as social and ecological psychology. He has numerous publications in journals such as Criminology, Justice Quarterly, The British Journal of Criminology , and Aggressive Behavior and has received funding from the National Institute of Justice and the National Science Foundation.