Java -- Older Thread-Safe Collections

Any collection class can be made thread safe by means of "synchronization wrapper":

List<E> synchArrayList = Collections.synchronizedList(new ArrayList<E>());
Map<K, V> synchHashMap = Collections.synchronizedMap(new HashMap<K, V>());

The methods of the resulting collections are protected by a lock, providing thread safe access. 

You still need to use "client-side" locking if you want to "iterate" over the collection while another thread has the opportunity to mutate it:

synchronized (synchArrayList) {
    Iterator<K> iter = synchArrayList.iterator();
    while (iter.hasNext()) ...;
}

In the case, that an array list is frequently mutated, a synchronized "ArrayList" can outperform a "CopyOnWriteArrayList".