This section seeks to provide a space for creative writings, such as poetry and short stories, which reflect on personal experiences with the criminal justice system, restorative justice, criminology or related areas. Authors may submit their works under a pseudonym if they wish. The word limit for creative contributions is 10,000 words.

Author guidelines

Creative writings should be between 200 and 10,000 words (including title and endnotes), be submitted in OpenOffice or Word format. If the author does not have access to a word processor, please contact the journal editors and we will see how we may possibly assist you.

Creative writings include poetry, short stories, diary or journal entries, essays, vignettes, letters, speeches, song lyrics, and scripts for short (screen)plays.

Creative writings are preferably sole-authored but may be co-authored.

If the submitted creative writing is part of a series, please indicate to the editors in the "comments for the editor" section if one or more preceding items of this series have been:

1. published elsewhere
2. published in DCJ
3. submitted to DCJ and are still part of the selection pool
4. submitted to DCJ but were withdrawn from the selection pool.

General layout

A4, portrait, margins 2.5cm left, right, top and bottom

Body Text: Calibri Light 11pt, justified, double-spaced

First level headings: Calibri Light, 11pt, bold, upper case first letter; e.g., Literature review

Second level headings: Calibri Light, 11pt, bold, italic, upper case first letter; e.g., Literature review

Third level headings: Calibri Light, 11pt, underline, upper case first letter; e.g., Literature review

Do not number headings

Title page

A4, portrait, margins 2.5cm left, right, top and bottom

Title: Calibri light, 11pt, bold, first letters upper case; e.g., Moa Constrictor

Author name(s) or pseudonym: Calibri light, 11pt, bold only last name(s); e.g., Anthony Garcia Gonzales

Affiliation(s) if applicable: Calibri light, 11pt, e.g., Auckland University of Technology, Auckland, New Zealand

Mailing address of corresponding author

Email address of corresponding author

First page

Title: Calibri light, 11pt, bold, first letters upper case; e.g., Moa Constrictor

Creative writing: Calibri light, 11pt

Abbreviations

Define non-standard abbreviations at their first mention in the text. Ensure consistency of abbreviations throughout.

Endnotes

Use endnotes instead of footnotes. Number them consecutively throughout the article, using superscript Arabic numbers, e.g. 1

Third party material

If submissions to this journal contain materials that have not been created by the authors or has been used by the authors in previous submissions to this or other publications, authors are required to clear third-party copyright for online use of these items.

Peer review

Submitted creative writings are initially screened by the editors. If the content of the submitted creative writing fits the scope of the journal, authors will be notified that their work has been entered into the pool of creative writings and may be published in a future journal issue.

Works submitted for this section do not fall under the double-blinded peer-review process but the editors and associate editors will jointly select two to three items for each journal issue from the pool of submissions. The selection of creative works may be based on

1. content alignment with articles, commentaries and reviews published in the same issue
2. the type of creative writing or its content (variety/similarity criteria)
3. the submission being part of a series by the same author
4. first come first served.

After each selection round, authors will only be notified if their submission has been selected for publication. If the submitted creative writing was not selected for publication in the next journal issue, it will remain in the selection pool unless authors withdraw their submission from the pool. To withdraw a submission from the selection pool, please contact the editor directly (email preferred).