2024
Some of these individuals participated in the ASC Oral History Project. For more information, please go to the Oral History of Criminology Project page.
Donald Black
“Behavior is the variable aspect of reality.” These are the resounding opening words of Donald Black’s first major theoretical work, The Behavior of Law (1976). With them, Donald announced his intellectual mission: explaining variation in a realm of reality that was to preoccupy him for the next half century: social life.
Donald was born in 1941 in Mount Vernon, New York. He grew up in Indianapolis and graduated from Indiana University with a degree in sociology. After completing his sociology Ph.D. at the University of Michigan in 1968, he went to Yale Law School, where he was first a Russell Sage post-doctoral fellow, 1968-1970, and then a lecturer, 1970-1973. From 1970 to 1979, he was a faculty member in the Department of Sociology at Yale (Associate Professor from 1974 on). He moved to Harvard Law School in 1980 and to the University of Virginia Sociology Department in 1985 where he was Department Chair until 1988. That year, he was appointed University Professor of the Social Sciences, a position he held until his retirement in 2016.
Over the course of his long career, Donald produced a body of sociological theory unmatched in originality and explanatory power. He published five books and edited or coedited two more. His most important early work was The Behavior of Law, which advanced what is still the only general sociological theory of law. From there, Donald broadened his gaze to the larger universe of conflict management, including violence, avoidance, settlement, negotiation, and toleration. That work culminated in his major mid-career work, The Social Structure of Right and Wrong (1993). He broke still more fresh ground with a third major opus: Moral Time (2011), which presented a radically new general and testable theory of the causes of conflict. In between these books, he authored a series of brilliant publications, including The Manners and Customs of the Police, Sociological Justice, “Crime as Social Control,” and “The Geometry of Terrorism.” Some of his work extended beyond crime, violence, law, and conflict into other topics such as the sociology of ideas and scienticity (the degree to which ideas are testable, general, valid, simple, and original). Unusually for a sociologist, he drew as freely on anthropological and historical materials as on modern data, allowing him to explain variation in social behavior in all societies and across time.
Donald did not just create new theories. He created a new theoretical paradigm, a profoundly innovative way of conceptualizing and explaining social behavior – with its location and direction in social space, or its social geometry. He came to name this pure sociology for it eschewed three P’s found in virtually every other form of social theory – psychology, purposes, and people. He discussed these and other distinctive features of pure sociology in several papers, most notably “The Epistemology of Pure Sociology” (1995). In all his carefully constructed writings, he was never content merely to repeat himself but always sought to build upon his prior work. The result was unprecedented: an entire intellectual system with a new subject matter, namely the behavior of social life. Several other scholars have been inspired to use his system to develop geometrical theories of various aspects of social control. Many more applications will surely be generated in the future.
He was a charismatic teacher who influenced many fledgling sociologists. He took teaching seriously, creating course syllabi that were comprehensively referenced and elegantly structured. His classes were an intellectual treat for he saw teaching as an opportunity to develop new ideas. Beyond the classroom, he was an encouraging mentor, ready to offer advice and feedback, especially to younger scholars.
Donald was a man of principle. He took matters of morality very seriously and did what he thought right regardless of the crowd. Yet his commitment to value free sociology was such that he never told his classes or his readers what they ought to think or say or do.
Donald’s involvement in his work was absolute. To avoid distractions, he lived much of his adult life in a house in the woods. Yet he liked to meet graduate students or friends for an occasional beer and could talk for hours on diverse topics. He had novel things to say about virtually everything – painting, the stock market, poetry, restaurants, design, football, politics, academia, music, religion, travel, science, students, and, a particular fixation, the titles of books and articles. One topic obsessed him above all others, however: creativity – in any realm but especially the intellectual.
Coming of age in the 1960s, Donald was strongly influenced by that decade’s spirit of youthful experimentation, cultural unconventionality, and irreverent fun. Those qualities can be seen in everything he wrote, including the exuberance and democratic radical simplicity of his prose.
Donald was a Fellow of the American Society of Criminology and the American Anthropological Association. He received the Law and Society Association’s Harry Kalven Jr. Prize for outstanding scholarship. He was awarded the Theory Prize and a Distinguished Book Award from the American Sociological Association (ASA) (for The Social Structure of Right and Wrong), a Distinguished Scholarship Award from the ASA (for “The Epistemology of Pure Sociology”), and the inaugural Outstanding Book Award of the ASA Section on Altruism, Morality, and Social Solidarity (for Moral Time). Several of his books were translated into other languages.
Donald died suddenly at his home outside Charlottesville at the end of January. Although he is no longer among us, he will remain a powerful intellectual presence. His razor-sharp writings, elegant geometrical paradigm, and powerful theories will continue to attract and inspire all who seek to explain that familiar yet mysterious dimension of reality we humans create through our social interactions.
Prepared by Mark Cooney and Roberta Senechal de La Roche
Daivid Greenberg
David Greenberg (1942-2024) – The Department of Sociology at New York University mourns the passing of our longtime colleague David Greenberg, who passed away on Tuesday July 9, 2024, from heart failure. Greenberg taught in the Sociology Department for 49 years, from 1973 to 2022, when he retired. He was 82 years old.
Greenberg was born in 1942 in Evanston, IL, the eldest of Louis and Lena Greenberg’s three children. A gifted student, Greenberg received his BA (1962), MA (1963), and PhD (1969) in physics, all from the University of Chicago. He specialized in theoretical physics, a mathematically demanding subfield in which his lifelong interest in math found an outlet.
While in graduate school and during a postdoc at Carnegie Mellon, however, Greenberg’s promising career in academic physics was stunted by a difficult job market and his growing involvement in the social and political movements of that era. In particular, he became heavily involved in in the anti-prison movement of the late 1960s. His first publication on this topic appeared as a report for the American Friends Service Committee in 1970, entitled The Problem with Prisons. Greenberg’s early essays on prisons established him as a rising young scholar in a field for which he had no formal training, and, after a year teaching criminology at Columbia College in Chicago, he came to the attention of the New York University (NYU) Department of Sociology, where he was hired as an assistant professor in 1973.
During his long academic career at NYU, Greenberg’s restless mind drove him to explore many topics, although criminology and criminal justice were his central focus. His sophisticated background in mathematics helped to make him a highly respected figure in quantitative methods in criminology, and he published extensively on this topic.
In addition to his methodological writings and research on prisons, he was also well-known for research on criminal careers, empirical studies of capital punishment, and many and varied contributions to Marxist and radical criminology. One of Greenberg’s major contributions was to subject the assumed “incapacitative” crime-reduction effects of imprisonment to empirical analysis and critique. He had already published a major article on this topic in Law & Society Review in 1975 and made important contributions to the high-profile debate in the 1990s. Among the many honors and awards he received for his scholarly work, Greenberg received the American Sociological Association Section on Crime, Law, and Deviance’s Distinguished Scholar Award in 1983 for a lifetime of outstanding scholarship on the sociological understanding of crime, law, and deviance and was elected a Fellow of the American Society of Criminology in 1994.
Beyond his research and writing in the field of criminology, in 1988, after many years of research, Greenberg published The Construction of Homosexuality (University of Chicago Press 1988), a 635-page work of deep scholarship that traced the social construction of same-sex relationships from the ancient world to the present from the perspective of the sociology of deviance. This work was selected by the Publishing Triangle in 2004 as one of the “100 Best Lesbian and Gay Nonfiction Books”.
Greenberg was a dedicated mentor and teacher to his graduate students, teaching classes in criminology and law and society to decades of undergraduate students at NYU. His undergraduates often enjoyed the quirky personal stories he frequently told to illuminate points in the readings. Among graduate students, he was known to be a very careful reader and critic of research papers, especially those employing varying types of quantitative methods.
Greenberg is survived by his nephews Richard Hecht, Martin (Marty) Hecht, Brian Karzen, Todd Karzen; and his brother-in-law Alan Karzen.
Prepared by Jeff Manza, Department of Sociology, New York University.
Tim Hartnagel
Timothy Frank (Tim) Hartnagel passed away on July 15, 2024, at the age of 82.
Tim was born in Los Angeles, California, in 1941. Growing up, he was actively involved in various sports and was also a child actor, appearing in numerous television shows and movies. His longest running role was in the Spin and Marty series on the Mickey Mouse club. His acting career continued while attending Santa Clara University but after graduation, he gave it up to pursue an academic career. Around the same time he met Patti, his wife to be, on a blind date. They married and moved to Bloomington, Indiana, where Tim obtained a Masters and PhD in Sociology from Indiana University.
With their young family, they relocated to Washington, DC, for three years while Tim served in the military. In 1970, the Hartnagels moved to Edmonton where Tim had accepted a teaching position at the University of Alberta. The Californians thought it would be a temporary stop. What began as a short adventure evolved into Tim’s 40-year career as a Professor of Sociology specializing in Criminology. Tim retired in 2007 as a Professor Emeritus.
Tim was among the most balanced academics we have ever known. He was a fine teacher and supervisor, an accomplished scholar, someone who selflessly provided extensive service to the profession, his university, the department of Sociology, and his community, all with a commitment well beyond the norm.
Students in Tim’s undergraduate classes appreciated and respected his teaching style and depth of knowledge. He supervised a significant number of MA and PhD students who now inhabit the worlds of academia and government in both Canada and the United States. His graduate students speak very highly of his mentorship and support. Colleagues remember Tim for his thoughtful, principled, and effective contributions to department and university governance.
Tim’s research interests were broad and generated multiple competitive grants and many publications in journals and book chapters. His diverse and important contributions to criminology include but are not limited to: Television violence and violent behavior (Social Forces); Female social roles and female crime (Sociological Quarterly); Perception and fear of crime (Social Forces); Income inequality and homicide rates (Criminology); Urban crime in Canada (Canadian Journal of Criminology); High school drop-outs and crime (Youth and Society); Crime and social control among high school dropouts (Journal of Crime and Justice); Street youth and criminal violence (Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency). His published work also provided insight into gun violence, labor market problems and crime, and youth crime and justice — to delineate only a partial list.
Tim’s service contributions at the University of Alberta included being Associate Chair and acting Chair of the department of Sociology, Director of the BA Criminology program, acting Director of the Population Research Lab, Dean of St. Joseph’s College for two terms, and innumerable committee memberships. He played an important role in establishing and maintaining the M.A. Corrections and the B.A. Criminology programs at the University of Alberta. More broadly, he was active in the American Society of Criminology, a consultant for government agencies and boards, a journal editor, and a reviewer for sociology and criminology journals, book publishers, and academic programs in other universities.
Tim’s many contributions to the academy were complemented by his commitment to giving back to the community, particularly through his personal involvement in refugee settlement programs, English as a Second Language initiatives, the Food Bank, and a decades-long involvement with the Canadian Catholic Organization for Development and Peace (CCODP).
Tim enjoyed a very full life through his family, career, and volunteerism. He is survived by his wife of 59 years, Patricia, his children Gregory (Lorna) and Julia (Ron), his grandchildren Lauren and Eric, and his sister Kathleen (John).
Tim Hartnagel was highly regarded in his profession. His impact on countless students over the course of his career was positive and inspiring. He will be missed but always remembered fondly.
Prepared by: James Creechan, Harvey Krahn and Robert Silverman
Barry Krisberg
We are sad to pass on the news of the death of Barry Krisberg on February 13, 2024.
Barry received BA, his MA in criminology and PhD in sociology from the University of Pennsylvania and in 1971, joined the UC Berkeley faculty as an Assistant Professor in Berkeley’s School of Criminology. In 1977, he joined the staff of the San Francisco office of the National Council on Crime and Delinquency (NCCD) as a Senior Research Associate. Six year later, he was named its president, a post he held until 2010. After retirement, Barry occasionally taught at UC Berkeley.
During his tenure, NCCD was and remained the premier policy research organization in the United States. He had the ear and respect of everyone; his staff, radical criminologists, religious leaders, editorial writers for the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, key legislators everywhere. He helped dozens of NGOs set and remain focused on their priorities. Barry recruited first rate and committed researchers, who together, produced short, focused and convincing research reports that were both sophisticated and readable.
During a period when adult prison populations were sky rocketing, juvenile custody dropped precipitously. Barry played a decisive role in this. He was successful in convincing legislators almost everywhere that “youth is different.” Perhaps his single greatest (certainly one of his proudest) achievement took place in Washington, D.C., during testimony before a House Committee, where he convinced it to add an amendment on a huge funding package that would prohibit federal funding to states that locked kids up with adult offenders. This accomplishment set the pattern for the states. We suspect that he was responsible for keeping more juveniles out of custody than any other single person in the United States.
He also devoted considerable attention to crowding in custodial facilities. Perhaps his single most important report in this vein was as an expert witness in Brown v. Plata, where he assembled findings of a great many studies showing that decisions to significantly reduce prison populations have no measurable effect on subsequent crime rates, findings that found their way into the three judge trial court panel and into Justice Kennedy’s surprise opinion in the 5-4 Supreme Court decision.
Barry Krisberg was a giant among giants in the never ending battle to fight for dignity and decency.
Barry is survived by his wife Karen McKie and their sons Moshe and Zaïd
Prpared by Malcolm Feeley and Rosann Greenspan, UC Berkeley
Rick Rosenfeld
Criminology has lost one of its brightest stars. Richard Rosenfeld, Curators’ Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of Missouri-St. Louis (UMSL), passed away peacefully on January 8, 2024, leaving behind a loving family and countless friends and colleagues.
Rick received his PhD in Sociology from the University of Oregon in 1984 and taught briefly at Skidmore College before taking up a post-doctoral fellowship in the School of Urban and Public Affairs at Carnegie Mellon University under the mentorship of Al Blumstein. In 1989, he joined UMSL as an Assistant Professor, remaining at the university for the duration of his long and distinguished career.
Rick was one of the nation’s most influential criminologists. His research interests ranged widely, but he is best known for his pioneering work on economic conditions and crime trends. He published extensively on this topic and at the time of his death had just received the galleys for a forthcoming book dedicated to the issue, Crime Dynamics: Why Crime Rates Move Up and Down over Time (Cambridge University Press).
Rick co-authored, Crime and the American Dream, which proposed a theory of institutional anomie to explain cross-national differences in crime rates. This theory, further developed in articles and subsequent editions of the book, links patterns and levels of crime to the balance and functioning of social institutions, and draws attention to the important role played by the social-welfare state in buffering the impact of economic hardship on crime. Crime and the American Dream has become required reading in criminology classes and is widely acknowledged as being part of the criminological canon.
Rick also advanced the study of crime-control policy, bringing rigorous, non-partisan research to bear on policy debates over issues such as racial disparities in police stops and searches, the impact of police enforcement strategies on crime, and prisoner re-entry effects on community crime rates. He was committed to the St. Louis region and collaborated with local agencies on anti-crime initiatives. In 2012, he served as “Criminologist in Residence” for the City of St. Louis Department of Public Safety and the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department, during which time he worked on projects aimed at reducing violence in high-crime neighborhoods.
Rick’s sterling record of research brought him many professional accolades. He was an elected Fellow of the American Society of Criminology (ASC), served as the Society’s President, and received its highest honor, the Edwin H. Sutherland Award, for his outstanding scholarly contributions to criminology. Rick cared deeply about the ASC. He attended every annual meeting, where he was generous with his time and often could be seen chatting in the hallway with students and junior colleagues about their research.
Far from being an ivory tower intellectual, Rick was dedicated to informed engagement with the public and policymakers. He was one of criminology’s most effective communicators, serving as an important resource for the media on criminological matters. His careful analyses routinely appeared in important national and international media outlets such as NPR, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and The Guardian. He also chaired or served on numerous government advisory panels of, among others, the National Academy of Sciences and the National Science Foundation.
Rick played a key role in building what was to become one of the nation’s strongest Criminology and Criminal Justice PhD programs. He did so not only through force of his scholarly reputation, but also by his commitment to celebrating excellence in his students and colleagues. He was a wise and gracious mentor who was every bit as pleased by the successes of others as he was by his own achievements.
No short review can do justice to a life as full and well lived as Rick’s. Suffice to say that we will not see his likes again. Shortly before he passed, Rick recorded a podcast in which he looked back on his career with an eye to the future. It is his gift to the discipline he loved.
Rick is survived by his wife, Janet Lauritsen, two sons, Jake Hoffmann Rosenfeld and Sam Hoffmann Rosenfeld, daughters-in-law, Erin McGaughey and Erica de Bruin, brother, Robert Rosenfeld, and three grandchildren.
Prepared by: Richard Wright, Steven F. Messner, and Lee Slocum
Vincenzo Ruggiero
Vincenzo Ruggiero passed away in his adopted ‘home’ city of London on Saturday 2nd February 2024 with his partner and his daughter at his side. Vincenzo was the Renaissance Man of international criminology – a critical polymath and scholar of politics, economics, sociology, history, literature, languages and art – all of which, in unique style, he brought to his original and stimulating essays, books, lectures and wonderful conversations over food and wine.
Born to Neapolitan parents in Ferrara, Italy, in 1950, his family, like so many southerners, migrated to the north of the country for work but remained deeply rooted in their Neapolitan heritage. He lived for many years in Torino where he studied and taught and, in the 1970s, was a dedicated political activist along with many of his friends during the period of social conflicts and unrest that came to be known as “The Years of Lead”.
In this decade he moved between London, where he worked as a porter at University College hospital, and parts of Italy, where he was involved in penal reform campaigns. In 1976 he founded a bi-annual paper on prison issues, coordinating a network involving prisoners, their families and reform activists and in 1977 established a new publisher – ‘Senza Galere’ (‘Without Prisons’) – later renamed ‘Ruggiero Edizioni’. The press mainly published fiction and poetry and all authors were either prisoners serving a sentence or ex-prisoners. As Vincenzo suggested, this was surely an early example of ‘Convict Criminology’. In the following years, between 1979-1983, he published his first academic books, on prison issues and drugs debates, writing about communities he saw as marginalised but engaged in resistance and it was important to him that he had undertaken this research and advocacy from outside the formal bounds of the university system.
Between 1986-1990 he studied for his Doctorate in Sociology and Criminology at the University of Bologna but in the early 1990s settled in London, feeling an affinity to bohemian Fitzrovia and Soho. He took up posts as, initially, a visiting fellow at the London School of Economics and then a Research Fellow at Middlesex University, subsequently – and swiftly – becoming a Reader and then Professor (1996) at Middlesex, contributing to its rich tradition of being a centre for critical criminology. In 1998 he undertook a secondment to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime in Vienna leading pathbreaking research on Transnational Organised Crime and contributing to the study of human trafficking at a point when its significance was still only emerging. In Vienna he also founded a journal, Forum on Crime and Society and was among the organisers of the 2000 UN ‘Congress on Crime and the Treatment of Offenders’ (writing most of the official papers for conference deliberations), as well as contributing to the formulation of the UN Convention against Organised Crime, launched in Palermo in 2000. He was a long-standing member of many professional associations and took on committee roles for the European Group for the Study of Deviance and Social Control (1986-1993), and the American Society of Criminology Divisions on International Criminology (2016-2017) and Critical Criminology (2017-2018). He also served as Director of the Centre for Social and Criminological Research at Middlesex University.
Vincenzo was not only one of the leading theorists within our field but also an innovator in the use of multi-methods approaches to data-gathering – very often in contexts that are among the most hard to research – the worlds of organised criminals, corrupt politicians, traffickers, and political activists. He could be the classic lone scholar – disciplined in sitting at his desk, working his way through his piles of books and papers, then launching into a new writing project but he also led various funded research collaborations and initiatives and was a great co-author and co-worker, sociable and inspirational. Vincenzo loved to write, to set down ideas and engage with his peers and students and in doing so he was astonishingly productive. He spoke and published in Italian, French and English and his work was also translated into German, Spanish, Portuguese, Greek, Lithuanian, Turkish and Mandarin Chinese. His many publications include numerous academic articles and pieces of journalism as well as books such as: Western European Penal Systems (1995), Eurodrugs (1995), Organised and Corporate Crime in Europe (1996), The New European Criminology (1998), Crime and Markets (2000), Movements in the City (2001 Winner of the ‘Premio Nazionale G. Arena – Città di Acri’), Economic and Financial Crime in Europe (2002), Crime in Literature (2003), Crimes of the Economy (2013), Punishment in Europe (2013), Power and Crime (2015), Dirty Money: On Financial Delinquency (2017 Outstanding Book Award, American Society of Criminology, Division on White Collar and Corporate Crime), Organised Crime and Terrorist Networks (2020), Visions of Political Violence (2020), Critical Criminology Today: Counter-Hegemonic Essays (2021). In 2016 he received the Lifetime Achievement Award of the American Society of Criminology, Division on Critical Criminology and Social Justice.
He completed his latest book just two months before his death and was able to choose a cover design while in hospital. Appropriately the book is a survey – in inimitable style – of Keywords in Criminology: A cultural dictionary (Routledge, 2024).
Vincenzo leaves behind a daughter, Lucia, and his partner Cynthia, with whom he formed a civil partnership after 33 years together – as well as an international family of friends, students and admirers who will all remember Vincenzo as embodying gioia di vivere – he will be missed so much. Please raise a glass….
Prepared by: Nigel South, University of Essex.
Jerome H. Skolnick
Jerome H. Skolnick, prolific scholar of policing, law and society, and President of the American Society of Criminology in 1994, passed away on February 22 in New York City. A native New Yorker who grew up in Brooklyn, he received a BA in sociology from City College. He met Arlene while in college and married her as soon as possible, which he said was “the only truly smart thing I’ve done in my life.” They both received PhDs at Yale’s department of sociology in 1962.
At Yale, Jerry studied with the anthropologist Ralph Linton, and Richard Donnelly and Harold Lasswell in the Law School. Doctorate done, he was drafted into the Army, where he served at Ft. Sam Houston in San Antonio. He returned to Yale to work in the Law School’s new law and social science program, which was developing on the heels of its Legal Realism project. His son Alex writes that Jerry fulfilled his Reserve duty on campus with the office of Army Intelligence, “which gave him an early, behind-the-scenes look at the simmering, oncoming conflict in Vietnam. This instilled in him a strong antiwar sentiment, a generation ahead of the late 1960s anti-war movement. His unintentional glimpse into the military industrial complex” set a foundation for his later scholarly work on state power and protests against its security claims.
Jerry’s association with Yale anthropologists and the residue of the Chicago school, along with Lasswell’s encouragement, led him to pursue ethnographic methods in fieldwork. His dissertation covered the culture of alcohol use, and he then began studying the occupational culture of police. The result was Justice without Trial: Law Enforcement in Democratic Society (1966). The book was pioneering and inspirational for generations of scholars. In it, Skolnick explained how police exercise their vast discretion and impose situational sanctions without arrest and trial — practices which emerge from their distinctive occupational culture. He identified conflicts with the rule of law inherent in police work despite the fact that police are expected to enforce the law. The work was only the second deeply researched study on police practices (after a neglected 1950 dissertation by William Westley that was subsequently published in 1970, in light of Skolnick’s work). Justice Without Trial, along with the American Bar Foundation’s study of the Administration of Criminal Justice (of which Jerry was a part), and Caleb Foote’s earlier work on the administration of bail, all were instrumental in opening the field of empirical research on legal practices and especially the administration of criminal justice. The book was influential far beyond the study of police and became a model for numerous books and articles by others who examined powerful low visibility institutions. It was the worthy recipient of a number of awards.
Skolnick then turned to researching and writing his second book, The Politics of Protest (1969), along with Elliott Currie and Tony Platt. The book explored the tensions between state control over political protest and First Amendment constraints on that power — constraints which paradoxically must operate to protect disorder. This work became the Task Force Report on Violent Aspects of Protest and Confrontation to the National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence, which was established by President Johnson after the release of the Kerner Report.
Jerry’s time at Yale was followed with brief periods of teaching at Chicago, Berkeley, and San Diego, and he settled in Berkeley in 1970 on the faculty of the School of Criminology. Tom Blomberg, today Dean of Florida State’s College of Criminology and Criminal Justice, writes that “I took an undergraduate course from Jerry after he had just completed Justice Without Trial and was able to hear about his time studying the Oakland Police. Such fascinating stories — all interwoven with relevant theoretical interpretation. It was Jerry who recommended that I read Mill’s Sociological Imagination and I remember him recounting how as a graduate student at Yale he would drive to Columbia University to hear Mills lecture.”
Malcolm Feeley recounts that during this time “Jerry served as the second Chair of Berkeley’s internationally renowned Center for the Study of Law and Society (following its founder Philip Selznick) from 1972 to 1984. Under their leadership, the Center supported a number of large-scale research projects and hosted dozens of scholars from around the world. In his teaching, Jerry produced a legion of loyal students, some of whom became leading reform police chiefs in big cities, and others major scholars on the administration of criminal justice, including Elliott Currie, Candace McCoy, Jonathan Simon and Frank Zimring.”
But it was a turbulent time, and Berkeley’s School of Criminology was disbanded after strong political pushback – particularly from then-Governor Ronald Reagan — against many of its left-leaning faculty. As a tenured faculty member, Jerry then joined the Law School’s new doctoral program in Jurisprudence and Social Policy, where he remained until 1994. During that time, he published extensively in a variety of law and society journals. His insights about occupational culture in policing and social control also resulted in more books. For House of Cards: Legalization and Control of Casino Gambling, Jerry went to Las Vegas and shadowed the security forces regulating gaming, interviewing everyone from pit bosses to casino owners. He managed to obtain an interview with the powerful gangster Meyer Lansky. Arlene Skolnick reports that he thought Lansky recognized “another smart Jewish guy” in Jerry and was willing to confide in him about how casinos skated around legal regulation without triggering crackdowns.
The next book, co-authored with David Bayley, was The New Blue Line: A Study of Police Innovation in Six American Cities (1986). Candace McCoy, Skolnick’s research assistant at the time, recalls visiting Jerry and David and Arlene at a condo in Truckee, California where David and Jerry were surrounded with piles of notes and articles. “They would write all morning and ski all afternoon. I learned so much from Jerry about criminal justice, but I also learned from him that you have to know when to stop working and get outdoors.” He was an accomplished skier and avid bicyclist, regularly riding to the summit of Grizzly Peak from his home near the UC campus. Jonathan Simon, who also was Jerry’s student and teaching assistant before joining the Berkeley faculty himself, states that “Jerry helped invent the modern law and society scholar, certainly in the criminal justice area. His casual manner, generosity, social justice values and physical adventureousness were models for me of what an academic should be like.”
As Jerry told it, he got a call from the late Jim Jacobs of New York University soon after he decided to leave UC Berkeley under an unusual retirement offer to senior faculty. Jerry said that Jim was “the godfather” who “made me an offer I couldn’t refuse,” so he and Arlene returned to New York where he taught criminal procedure and seminars on policing at NYU Law School. With James Jacobs, he also served as co-director of NYU’s Center on Criminal Justice. He co-authored with James J. Fyfe his final book on police practices as shaped by the organizations’ militarized culture: Above the Law: Police and Excessive Use of Police Force (1993). After a big party at NYU, Skolnick retired in 2011.
Jerry received widespread recognition in the United States and abroad throughout his long career. Among them were Guggenheim and Carnegie fellowships, National Science Foundation support, the presidency of the American Society of Criminology (1994), ASC’s August Vollmer Award (1972), and the prizes for distinguished scholarship from the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences (1984) and the Western Society of Criminology (1988). He was also a consultant to and advisor of numerous local, state, and national government bodies.
Skolnick’s prodigious scholarly output throughout these “two careers” included several edited volumes and text books, one with his Yale colleague Richard D. Schwartz, and still others with colleagues John Kaplan, Elliott Currie, Malcolm Feeley, and Candace McCoy. Most of his books have been reprinted or came out in revised editions and are still in print. Moreover, the name “Skolnick” is associated not only with policing, law and society but with the sociology of the family, as Jerry and Arlene co-authored a leading textbook on the subject that marched into sixteen editions. “It’s tough being married to the world’s leading expert on the family,” he would tell students and co-workers as he left the office in time to get home for dinner.
He is survived by his wife, Arlene, and their two sons, Alex and Michael, all of New York City.
Prepared by: Malcolm Feeley, Professor emeritus, Jurisprudence and Social Policy Program, University of California, Berkeley & Candace McCoy, Professor emerita, Graduate Center and John Jay College, City University of New York
2023
Some of these individuals participated in the ASC Oral History Project. For more information, please go to the Oral History of Criminology Project page.
Gray Arco Cavender III
Gray Arco Cavender III passed away on August 8, 2023 from cancer, surrounded by his loving wife, daughter, and son-in-law. Gray served as Professor of Justice Studies at Arizona State University until his retirement in 2017.
He was born on February 24, 1947 to Nell Catherine Choate Cavender and Gray Arco Cavender, Jr. in Princeton, Kentucky, but he grew up in Waverly, Tennessee, where he was a member of the Waverly High School band and a DJ for the local Waverly radio station. He earned his bachelor’s degree in Business from the University of Tennessee (1969), followed by his J.D. degree from the University of Tennessee Law School (1971). After law school, Gray worked as a probation and parole counselor for the State of Tennessee Department of Corrections. In 1972, he assumed a position as Staff Attorney and Supervisor of Judicial Planning with the State of Tennessee Criminal Justice Planning Agency, and was eventually promoted to Assistant Director of the agency. While in this position, he also completed a Master’s degree in Psychology at Middle Tennessee State University, located in Murfreesboro, Tennessee.
Despite the importance of his position in criminal justice planning, Gray longed to return to academic life, to study criminology in greater depth, and to become a university professor. In 1975 he was accepted into the PhD program in Criminology at Florida State University, and so he packed his bags and moved to Tallahassee. In 1977, he accepted a position as an assistant professor at the growing Arizona State University in Tempe, Arizona. While an assistant professor at ASU, Gray completed his PhD in Criminology from FSU (1979). Gray remained on the faculty at ASU for the next 40 years, rising to the rank of Professor and focusing his research and teaching on media, crime and deviance, punishment, and law and society. Gray played a central role in the creation of the nation’s first PhD program in Justice Studies in 1985, serving as its inaugural director. With Pat Lauderdale, he published articles about the rationale for the creation of Justice Studies university degree programs. Over the years, he was a visiting scholar at New York University, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, University of California, Berkeley, Tulane University, and the Institute of Sociology at the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic.
Gray was an outstanding teacher and mentor, much admired by students. He was the recipient of several awards for his teaching, and in student exit surveys Gray was frequently mentioned as students’ most influential professor. He brought a wide knowledge of literature, history, and popular culture to his lectures and readily offered inspiration, encouragement, and support for research and theoretical projects. He was beloved by his graduate students, many of whom stayed in close touch with him right until his passing. Gray was an incredible mentor of graduate students and junior faculty alike, gently pushing them to be better and to focus on their goals and aspirations. Many students and colleagues have shared the experience of turning to Gray with a worrisome dilemma and receiving a thoughtful, practical solution. Talking with Gray meant everything would be alright. His students have gone on to prestigious careers as university professors, attorneys, and in other professions across the globe.
In addition to his stellar record as a teacher and mentor, Gray was a nationally and internationally recognized expert in crime, punishment, and the study of media coverage of justice issues. He is the author of scholarly articles, book chapters, and academic books. His work focused on the construction of crime, criminality, and justice policies that reinforced societal inequalities. His study of parole was among the first to point out that, despite its ostensible rehabilitative purpose, parole actually served as a mechanism for the extension of social control of so-called dangerous populations (Parole: A Critical Analysis, Kennikat Press, 1982), Later, he critiqued the popular turn to the “justice model,” which advocated retributivism and just desserts as a justification for punishment policy (e.g., Criminology, 1984). His work on corporate and governmental deviance tackled the issues of why our legal system and popular media often fail to recognize the gravity of organizational wrongdoing. Expression of this theme included analyses of the cases of the Ford Pinto deaths, the Iran Contra Scandal, GM Pickup defects/deaths, and Enron price gouging and disintegration (e.g., Corporate Crime Under Attack: The Fight to Criminalize Business Violence, Anderson, 1987, 2006, with Francis Cullen, William Maakestad, and Michael Benson). He then directed his conceptual and methodological expertise toward media constructions of crime, reality, and justice. He began by focusing on the ways that reality crime television programs presented themselves as falsely authentic to viewers (Entertaining Crime: Reality Television Programs, Aldine Gruyter, 1998, with Mark Fishman). His media studies interests also included the presentation of gender and doing justice in fictional crime programs (Justice Provocateur: Jane Tennison and Policing in Prime Suspect, University of Illinois Press, 2012, with Nancy Jurik). His most recent publications included collaborations with Czech and US colleagues on gender, entrepreneurship and justice.
Gray was actively involved in the American Society of Criminology and the Society for the Study of Social Problems throughout his career. He served on several editorial boards during his career for journals such as Criminology, Justice Quarterly, and Crime Media Culture, and served as Budget, Finance and Audit Chair for the Society for the Study of Social Problems.
While at ASU, Gray met a colleague who would later become his romantic partner for over 38 years, Nancy Jurik. Gray and Nancy were also research collaborators, giving presentations and publishing research on gender, work, criminal justice, and entrepreneurship. They spent lots of time traveling, hiking, and seeing many movies that they would talk about endlessly (or so said their friends). In 2017, Gray retired from ASU and began to devote most of his writing to crime fiction. His mystery novels, novellas, and short stories (Death of the Ayn Rand Scholar, The Pandemic Casebook of Jillian Warne, and forthcoming compilation, Echoes from Cherry Bottom) can be found on Amazon.
Survivors include his wife Nancy Jurik, daughter Jennifer Cavender Vaden and her husband James, grandson Michael Cavender Smith and his wife Melissa, and a great-grandson, Leo Smith. Gray was extremely proud of his family. He also had close ties to cousins Miriam Longino, John Longino, Daniel Gray Longino and their families (Sujata, Lela, and Diana). Gray will be missed by many students, colleagues, neighbors and friends. Gray was a kind, intelligent man who was always happy to help his friends and students. He told great stories, whether oral or written, always with a disarming sense of humor. We will miss him very much, but he will live on in our hearts.
There will be a memorial/life celebration event on Friday, October 13, 2023 from 4:30-7:30 pm at the ASU University Club, 425 E. University Dr, Tempe, AZ 85281. Donations in his name can be made to the ASU Foundation for the Gray Cavender Undergraduate Justice Studies Scholarship. Checks can be mailed to PO Box 872401, Tempe, AZ 85287-2401. Condolences or memories can be shared, or information about the memorial obtained by email at CavenderMemorial@gmail.com
Marjorie Zatz, University of California-Merced
Paul Knepper, San José State University.
Malcolm Ward Klein
Criminology lost an influential scholar with the passing of Malcolm “Mac” Klein on August 1, 2023 in Los Angeles, just short of his 93rd birthday. His legacy includes a distinguished record of scholarship, institutions he fostered, and generations of scholars he influenced.
Mac made noteworthy contributions to knowledge about patterns of delinquent offending, self-report methods of crime measurement, juvenile diversion, deinstitutionalization of status offenders, community policing, program evaluation, and cross-national comparisons of these issues. Most recognized for his scholarship on street gangs, the first of several books, Street Gangs and Street Workers (1971), derived from two gang programs he evaluated in the 1960s. Trained as a social psychologist, Mac studied group cohesiveness, leadership patterns, organization, and structure and how these processes influence individual and group behavior, including – but not limited to – crime and violence. He insisted that a science of gangs was predicated on common definitions and comparable research methods and did much to advance the field in these areas. Accordingly, he was recognized as a fellow by the American Society of Criminology, the American Psychological Association, and the American Psychological Society and was awarded ASC’s Sutherland and Vollmer awards as well as the Marvin Wolfgang Award for Distinguished Achievement in Criminology.
Mac was an institution-builder. He chaired the department of sociology at the University of Southern California for 13 years and established the Social Science Research Institute there. Together with Josine Junger-Tas, he convened the first gathering of researchers that would go on to develop the International Self Report Delinquency Study, currently in its 4th sweep. One of his proudest achievements was the formation of the Eurogang Research Program. This group of international researchers encourages the use of multi-site, multi-method research to study gang activity. Over the course of 21 workshops beginning in 1998, the group has agreed upon a consensus definition of street gangs, developed common instruments, and edited six volumes reporting original research on gangs and gang-like groups throughout the world.
In the first sentence of his 1971 book, he declares, “I’ve had it with gangs.” The two of us, and generations of gang scholars, are grateful he changed his mind. Our thoughts are with his fellow traveler and wife, Margy Gatz, daughter Laurie Klein and three grandsons. We are glad he was in our lives.
Cheryl Maxson and Finn Esbensen
William F. McDonald
It is with great sadness that the Division of International Criminology informs of the passing of Professor William F. McDonald, Emeritus Professor and Former Chairperson, Department of Sociology, College of Arts and Sciences, Georgetown University; and Co-Director, Institute of Criminal Law and Procedure at the Georgetown University Law Center Professor. His expertise was in crime and the administration of criminal justice. He taught and published widely on these issues in their many aspects including victims, undocumented immigrants, police, prosecutors, defense counsel, courts, pre-trial processes, sentencing, globalization and international cooperation. His scholarship on crime and the administration of criminal justice covers virtually all dimensions of those topics including victims, undocumented immigrants, police, prosecutors, defense counsel, courts, pre-trial processes, sentencing, globalization and international cooperation. His two recent areas of interest were: the immigration-crime-justice nexus and transnational law enforcement cooperation. Major publications include: The Criminal Victimization of Immigrants, (2017); Immigration, Crime and Justice, (2009); Crime and Law Enforcement in the Global Village, (1997); Plea Bargaining: Critical Issues and Common Practices (1985); The Defense Counsel (1983); Plea Bargaining with J.A.Cramer (1980); The Prosecutor (1979); Criminal Justice and the Victim (1976); Immigration, Crime and Justice (2008).
For excellence in scholarship related to victims of crime, he was awarded the Stephen Schafer Award of the National Organization of Victim Assistance in 1979. Formerly on the faculty of Florida State University, he earned his doctorate from the University of California, Berkeley in 1970. In the same year he joined Georgetown University’s Institute of Criminal Law and Procedure at the Law Center as a Senior Researcher and began teaching a course in the Sociology Department which had just been established. Subsequently that appointment was expanded into a tenure tack position as the Department grew. His courses included: criminology; sociology of criminal justice; methods of social research; social statistics; social stratification; 19th and 20th century American civilization; and introductory sociology. He was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship to the Netherlands, a Vocational Rehabilitation Administration fellowship and two Visiting Fellowships to the National Institute of Justice, U.S. Department of Justice. He was either the principal investigator or a senior research participant in research projects awarded to Georgetown University for a total of about $2 million. Bill contributed his expertise, sound judgement and positive outlook to the ASC DIC in a variety of positions on the Executive Board. His international scholarship was an inspiration to many, and he will be dearly missed.
HAL PEPINSKY
Professor Emeritus Hal Pepinsky of Indiana University, Bloomington – Department of Criminal Justice passed away on January 28, 2023. Hal earned the Jurisprudence Doctorate from Harvard University in 1968 and the Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1972. He was trained in sociology, Chinese, and law. Professor Pepinsky spent his scholarly life describing crime and violence, their roots, their antithesis, and the ways in which people can and do make peace. Hal Pepinsky was a Senior Fulbright Scholar in Norway and conducted field research around the world. He published fifty peer-reviewed articles, four books and edited four volumes.
Borrowing from a variety of ancient indigenous knowledge-based justice systems from around the world and incorporating these various models of conflict resolution, Hal Pepinsky founded the modern field of peacemaking criminology. Using numerous cross-cultural practices and informal strategies, these modern models of conflict resolution are now widely practiced in many different settings.
Hal was a member of many ASC Divisions, especially the Divisions of Critical Criminology and Social Justice, Women and Crime (now Feminist Criminology), and People of Color and Crime. Hal was committed to giving voices to crime victims and supported the Division of Victimology.
~John Braithwaite: “Hal was a delightful conversationalist who cared passionately about the future of our field. He was a great builder of critical criminology, where the biggest of many contributions was in peacemaking criminology. This work shifted circuits of thought and laid a foundation for many other strands of positive criminology in which healing mattered. I was a friend of Paul Jesilow who was so supported by Hal, and in turn so admired by Paul, as they did influential and provocative work together on “Myths that Cause Crime.” Hal Pepinsky will be missed for his supportive way of being with many criminologists.~
HAL PEPINSKY
HAL PEPINSKY
I met Hal through Joan Petersilia, Gilbert Geis and Paul Jesilow. Paul and Hal were colleagues at Indiana University. After Paul returned to the University of California, Irvine, Department of Criminology, Law and Society – Paul mentioned he wrote a book with Hal. Hal often spoke how peacemaking applied to victimization in tribal communities. Hal’s last words whispered, “Quinney, Quinney” about Richard Quinney, his friend he so loved.
Hal leaves spouse, Jill Bystydzienski (Emerita – Ohio State U), their daughter, Katy, son-in-law, Christian, and grandchildren, Mila (age 15), and Evan (age 12).
Julie C. Abril – Independent Social Scientist
RICK RUDDELL
Our friend and colleague, Dr. Rick Ruddell, passed away on January 2, 2023. He worked at the University of Regina since 2010 as a Professor of Justice Studies in the Faculty of Arts, and he was the Law Foundation of Saskatchewan Chair in Police Studies. Following the completion of his doctoral work at UMSL, he served as Director of Operational Research with the Correctional Service of Canada and held faculty positions at Eastern Kentucky University and California State University, Chico.
Rick’s national and international academic reputation far exceeds any standardized metric. His papers, reports, and books are used and referenced around the world. In particular, his contribution to rural crime has been significant in the field of criminology. Rick has published over 130 peer-reviewed articles, 14 books, and numerous research reports throughout his career.
Dr. Ruddell’s important scholarly contributions to criminology are bookended by his personality. His kind, generous, and caring personality radiated to countless persons that entered his orbit. Rick was always eager to talk with his colleagues and students about the projects they were working on. He routinely provided support and mentored junior faculty. As a colleague and friend, Rick will be sadly missed.
________________________
In early January 2023, the criminological community lost a dear friend – Rick Ruddell, the Law Foundation of Saskatchewan Chair in Police Studies in the Department of Justice at the University of Regina. Rick Ruddell’s scholarship focused on issues important to Saskatchewan but generalizable to a much larger criminological audience, including the impacts of resource-based booms on rural communities, community perceptions of law enforcement, and policing rural and remote communities, including indigenous communities.
Rick received his BA from the University of Saskatchewan (1982), a BSW from the University of Regina (1987), and received his Masters of Criminal Justice at New Mexico State University (1997) and a Ph.D. from the University of Missouri-St. Louis in Criminology and Criminal Justice (2003).
For many years (1984-2001), Rick was a front-line supervisor in the Ministry of Corrections, Public Safety and Policing for the Province of Saskatchewan, and Director of Operational Research for Public Safety, Canada in 2009-2010. In between, he was an assistant professor of Political Science (Criminal Justice Program) at California State University, Chico (2002-2006) and then an associate professor there in 2006. In 2007 he moved to Eastern Kentucky University where he was an Associate Professor of Criminal Justice until taking up the Law Foundation position in 2010.
Rick was a highly productive scholar, publishing over 130 articles, technical reports, and encyclopedia entries, plus he authored and edited 13 books. He is one of the pioneers in the development of rural criminology, especially his influential books on Oil, Gas, and Crime: The Dark Side of the Boom (Palgrave Macmillan) and Policing Rural Canada (de Sitter Publications). Other significant books include Criminal Justice (Oxford University Press) and Contemporary Corrections: A Critical Thinking Approach (Routledge).
There was no better colleague and academic partner than Rick Ruddell. He was an enthusiastic participant in recent internationally-based, collective efforts to build up the scholarly infrastructure of rural criminology through online participation in roundtables for the International Society for the Study of Rural Crime, and contributions to the Encyclopedia of Rural Crime (Routledge, 2022). He was a founding member of ISSRC and served on its executive committee, and was a member of the Editorial Advisory Board for the International Journal of Rural Criminology, which is co-sponsored by ISSRC, the Working Group on Rural Crime for the European Society of Criminology, and ASC’s Division of Rural Criminology.
On behalf of the Rural Criminology community, Joseph F. Donnermeyer
TJ TAYLOR
Terrance James (“TJ”) Taylor died on Thursday, February 23, 2023 in St. Louis, Missouri. TJ was born and raised in Wahoo, Nebraska by James and Maralee Taylor. He is survived and adored by his sister Danielle (“Dani”), Dani’s husband Kyle and their daughters (Mallory, Camryn, Hadley, Ellie), his sister Chrissy, and adored by his extended family, friends, and colleagues. TJ began his academic career at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln as an undergraduate student in Criminal Justice. He earned graduate degrees (MA and PhD) in Criminal Justice from the University of Nebraska at Omaha (UNO). During his tenure at UNO, TJ worked diligently with Finn-Aage Esbensen and TJ’s fellow graduate students and office staff in implementing and managing the National Evaluation of Gang Resistance Education And Training (G.R.E.A.T.). TJ’s research interests centered primarily on youth violence and prevention, and evaluation research. In 2002, TJ was a research associate in the Institut für Kriminologie at the University of Tübingen. Later in 2002, TJ joined the faculty in the Department of Criminal Justice at Georgia State University (GSU) as a tenure-track assistant professor. He also held a faculty associate position at GSU with the Institute of Public Health. In 2005, TJ started a new path in the Department of Criminology & Criminal Justice at the University of Missouri-St. Louis as a research associate. TJ earned tenure as an associate professor at UMSL in 2013. TJ authored and co-authored articles, encyclopedia entries, book chapters, and a book on gangs, youth violence, and youth victimization. TJ held memberships in the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences, Alpha Phi Sigma Criminal Justice Honors Society, American Society of Criminology, Golden Key International Honor Society, Homicide Research Working Group, and World Society of Victimology.
2022
Some of these individuals participated in the ASC Oral History Project. For more information, please go to the Oral History of Criminology Project page.
David Friedrichs
See https://www.jenningscalvey.com/obituaries/david-friedrichs
We lost a giant.
Edward J. Latessa, the long-time leader of the University of Cincinnati School of Criminal Justice, passed away on January 11, 2022. Ed’s passing was peaceful, marking the end to a long battle with cancer. The School mourns his loss, along with his family and his legion of former students, partners, and friends he leaves behind.
EDWARD J. LATESSA
Ed was school head for nearly 40 years. Blessed with tremendous administrative skills and a keen understanding of human motivation, Ed could get things done with an elite level of efficiency. His straightforward communication style and ability to speak truth to power allowed him to develop an outsized presence in the University as well as the field more broadly.
Among his accomplishments was the development of our Ph.D. program. Flanked by his long-time colleagues, Francis Cullen and Lawrence Travis, Ed helped build a program that filled an important gap and has grown into a powerhouse. Since its inception, our doctoral program has sent nearly 200 scholars into academia, the field, and the community.
Ed was also a serial entrepreneur. He used his skills to generate resources that supported faculty to pursue their own research agendas. He embraced innovations and was not afraid to take risks. Under Ed’s leadership, the School of Criminal Justice received over 300 funded grants totaling more than $60 million in external funds.
Of course, none of this would have been possible had his academic work been shoddy. At the time of this writing, his Google Scholar page shows more than 12,000 citations, with a sustained rate of ~900 citations per year for nearly a decade. Ed was a high-level scholar who saw the value of translational work long before it was trendy.
During the fall of 2021, the University named the School of Criminal Justice conference room in his honor. This was a fitting tribute because it was only due to his salesmanship that the room was even included in the building’s renovation plans. In fact, it caused a minor dust-up with the Dean before it was approved. But it was the right call, and Ed knew it.
We will use that space to carry forward Ed’s great legacy … to stand on his shoulders.
A memoriam page has been setup at the following location: https://researchdirectory.uc.edu/p/latessej. There you can find links to videos featuring Ed, as well as his obituary and details about his March 12 memorial service.
R. Barry Ruback was passionately and perpetually interested in understanding social behavior and advancing the social psychological study of crime. His decades of devoted scholarship and service to the discipline leave a profound legacy.
Barry was born on March 29, 1950, in Omaha, Nebraska, and graduated from high school in Dallas, Texas.
He earned a bachelor’s degree from Yale University, where he met many lifelong friends. Barry attended class reunions as often as possible and cherished his time in New Haven. Upon graduation, Barry earned his J.D. from the University of Texas School of Law and went on to earn his Ph.D. in Psychology from the University of Pittsburgh.
Barry began his academic career at Georgia State University in 1979, where he was later promoted to Professor of Psychology. While at Georgia State, Barry met his future wife Jasmin (Riad), an expert in natural disasters. In 1996, Barry accepted a position as Professor of Criminology and Sociology at The Pennsylvania State University. Married in 2002, Jasmin and Barry settled down in State College, and Barry spent the rest of his career at Penn State. In 2004, the joy in Barry’s life grew as he and Jasmin welcomed daughter Miriam Rose.
Throughout his career, Barry published dozens of articles and books and accrued thousands of citations. He explored many important research questions, with special attention to themes including victimization, hate crime, decision making, crowding, environmental stress, and sentencing. To address his inquiries, Barry was willing to engage in innovative research methods. For example, drawing upon his undergraduate degree in history, Barry conducted some studies using historical analyses. He collected his own data, rather than relying solely on secondary data sources and existing instruments that did not perfectly address his research questions. When selecting and developing projects, Barry’s primary motivation was knowledge generation. Worthwhile projects, in his view, had both real life implications and theoretical implications.
Because his mind was constantly active, Barry would occasionally have epiphanies while walking to work or during his regular swims at the campus pool. More than once during his time as my mentor, Barry presented me with notes written on paper towels from the pool locker room capturing his insights on a project.
Part of what led to Barry’s prolific publication history was that he was always prepared, completing work well before any deadlines, allowing ample time for thoughtful revision. Barry lived the philosophy that he never wanted to be the bottleneck in a process. He would read student work and provide feedback within 24 hours. He completed reviews of journal articles promptly and recognized service to the discipline as an important part of his professional role.
One of Barry’s strengths was that he always knew what to say and how to say it – and how to make people laugh. He was not one for small talk, but when Barry spoke, people listened. He gave sound and honest advice, and although he never sought to be the center of attention, he had many close relationships and imparted his wisdom through conversation.
Indicative of the wide respect Barry earned, he served as a visiting fellow with the National Institute of Justice (1986-1987), a Judicial Fellow of the Supreme Court of the United States (1995-1996) and a visiting fellow of the Bureau of Justice Statistics (2017-2020). Furthermore, he received three prestigious Fulbright Fellowships, allowing him to spend a great deal of time in India. Barry had immense appreciation for India and the many colleagues and friends he met there.
Outside of his professional life, Barry was extremely devoted to his Synagogue where he served in multiple leadership roles, including three terms as president. In fact, the family requested that in lieu of flowers, donations be made in Barry’s honor to Congregation Brit Shalom. He enjoyed traveling, and was particularly interested in national parks and historic battle sites, which he visited often with Jasmin and Miriam.
Barry passed away unexpectedly of a heart attack on July 14, 2022, in State College, Pennsylvania.
Barry’s impact on criminology will persist, as his citation count will continue to climb, and the students he trained will carry on his traditions at their respective institutions. But for those who knew and loved Barry, there is much more to remember and honor than his academic accolades. His laugh, which he shared freely during meetings, was boisterous and joyful. He was a person of great integrity and character who provided mentorship, friendship, and scholarship. He will be greatly missed by his beloved family, devoted friends, countless students, and research collaborators in the US and abroad.
LESLIE SEBBA
Professsor Emeritus Leslie Sebba of The Hebrew University of Jerusalem – Institute of Criminology, passed away on July 9, 2022, at the age of 84.
Leslie earned his M.A., from Queen’s College Oxford (1964); an L.L.M., from London School of Economics (1966); and the Dr. Juris., from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (1976). He joined the Institute of Criminology in 1967. Since then, he has been a central figure and a much-esteemed member of the Institute.
Leslie was a prominent internationally known scholar in victimology. His 1996 volume ‘Third Parties: Victims and the Criminal Justice System’ became a very widely cited work in the field of victimology. Leslie was founding editor of ‘International Review of Victimology’, which became a leading international peer-review journal. He also held many other editorial positions, serving on boards of the ‘Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology’, ‘Journal of Quantitative Criminology’ and ‘Interdisciplinary Review of Children’s Rights.
He was a Member of Scientific Commission, International Society of Criminology; Acting Chairperson, Israel Society of Criminology; Former Head of the Institute of Criminology and Former Chair, Legal Committee of Prisoner Rehabilitation Council in Israel.
Leslie’s concern with victims of crimes was part of his general humane worldview. His fields of interest as a scholar and citizen spread far beyond victimology to include sentencing, the criminal process and human rights in general. Indeed, in 1972, together with like-minded collaborators, he was among the founders of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel.
All those who knew Leslie were impressed by his gentle nature, his professional and personal integrity, his modesty, generosity, and his subtle sense of humor.
Leslie was a devoted and supportive mentor for his students, especially those whom he supervised at the Masters and Ph.D. levels. Essentially, he was actively involved in teaching almost until the end.
In his last few years, despite of his grave medical condition he was determined to continue with his academic activities, perhaps with the awareness that time was short.
During all these years, Leslie was my closest friend, in times of joy and times of difficulties. We shared professional as well as personal matters, and could always count on our profoundly deep friendship.
Leslie is sorely missed by all those who knew and appreciated him. His passing away is a loss not only for his family, but for Israeli and international Criminology.
Simha F. Landau, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem
ELMAR G.M. WEITEKAMP
Our friend and colleague, Elmar G.M. Weitekamp (December 16, 1954 – February 5, 2022) passed on February 5, 2022, at the age of sixty-seven. Elmar had been in poor health for several years. We always saw him as an unstoppable force with an indomitable spirit. We were wrong on the first assumption, but correct on the second, as we believe his spirit will live on in the body of his work, especially in victimology. In the early 2000s, Elmar suffered a sudden-onset medical emergency, complications from which would, nearly 18 years later, cost him his life. He died far too young at a time he should have been enjoying the fruits of his labors.
Elmar grew up in a small village in Germany, the place where his family owned and operated a local sawmill and where his cremains will be interred. The journey in between was by any measure epic. For a while, Elmar received a rigorous secondary education at a Catholic boarding school in Belgium. He returned to Germany to finish his secondary education after what he described as a heated “disagreement” with priests at the school. Although he rarely talked about his required military service, Elmar served in the German Navy, the Kriegsmarine. When pressed he would only say that he achieved several “policy changes” in this august institution, the first of many such policy impacts he would cause. Perhaps a part of Elmar’s propensity to challenge authority and the status quo derived from this eclectic upbringing. But most of it was pure Elmar.
Elmar received an MSW degree in 1980 from Fachhochschule Niederrhein (Mönchengladbach, Germany). His first U.S. degree was an M.A. in Criminology from the University of Pennsylvania in 1982, followed seven years later by a Ph.D. in Criminology from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. It was at Penn that Elmar developed a life-long professional interest in cross-national and longitudinal studies, thanks to the mentorship of Marvin Wolfgang and Thorsten Sellin. It is no coincidence that Elmar’s dissertation was on an alternative form of punishment, restitution. His examination of justice philosophies continued throughout his career, as he turned his critical-thinking and analysis skills to Restorative Justice over his final 20 years as an academic, both at the Eberhard Karls Universität’s (Tübingen, Germany) Institute of Criminology, where he was a senior research associate (1990-2001, 2004-2015) and as a Professor of Criminology, Victimology, and Restorative Justice with the Faculty of Law at Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (Belgium, 2001-2004). In keeping with his comparative criminological emphasis, Elmar was also Distinguished Adjunct Professor of Sociology at Central China Normal University in Wuhan, China. In recognition of his work in the international arena, he was awarded the Gerhard O. W. Mueller Award from the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences in 2006.
Elmar Weitekamp was one of the co-founders of the Eurogang group, an international collaboration of scholars, practitioners and others interested in the youth/street gang phenomenon. Elmar was a co-organizer of the first EG meeting in Schmitten, Germany (1998) as well as four subsequent meetings in Germany. His organizing efforts were instrumental in the continued development of this international collaborative group of researchers. He also was one of the co-editors of the first collection of Eurogang research.
Elmar was a widely recognized victimologist and was a member of the World Victimology Conference. For many years, Elmar served as a co-director of the Post Graduate Course on Victimology, Victim Assistance and Criminal Justice at Dubrovnik’s Interuniversity Center, and moved the course to the Vrie Universiteit (Amsterdam) during the Balkan Wars from 1993 to1997; Elmar continued to participate as a co-director well into the second decade of the 21st century when his ongoing medical issues caused him to retire from active academic work.
Over his 40-year career, Elmar presented hundreds of lectures, talks, and formal papers on victim’s rights, social justice, and restorative justice at dozens of conferences and courses around Europe, North America, and Asia. He was a regular participant at the American Society of Criminology and the European Society of Criminology. He also engaged in original research on the longitudinal and cross-national aspects of crime and delinquency, and criminal justice practices. Two examples are worthy of note. First, Elmar and his colleagues at the University of Tübingen’s Institute of Criminology, principally Hans-Jürgen Kerner, developed a conceptual and empirical knowledge base about xenophobia, hate crime, and right wing violence just as Germany reunited in the 1990s, lessons that should not be lost on US policy makers today. Second, Professor Weitekamp’s contributions to the restorative justice literature are both broad and deep, including multiple presentations at the Word Symposium of Victimology, the World Congress of Criminology, and similar multinational conferences, as well as journal articles and book chapters. He was particularly proud of his contributions to the literature on Truth and Reconciliation Conferences for victims and survivors of mass violence.
Elmar was always one to foster “Gemütlichkeit” and group cohesion through social events, whether the activity was at a Eurogang Workshop, Dubrovnik’s Postgraduate Victimology Course, or some other gathering of criminologists. A Eurogang workshop or Dubrovnik course was not complete without either a collective outing to a cultural/historical site or a dinner at a local restaurant (or both). And, to all of you who had a beer (or two) with Elmar, you will remember the Final-Final. Here’s to Elmar!
Submitted by Finn Esbensen, Tom Winfree, and Hans-Juergen Kerner
[Photo Courtesy of Institute of Criminology, University of Tübingen, Germany; Photo Copyright IOC, Tübingen, Germany]
2021
Some of these individuals participated in the ASC Oral History Project. For more information, please go to the Oral History Project page.
HARRY E. ALLEN
Our beloved friend and colleague, Harry E. Allen, passed away at his home in Palm Springs, California on July 4th, 2021. He will be greatly missed by all who knew him but especially by his partner and husband of 22 years, Bruce Ponder.
Harry E Allen was born in Selma, Alabama on February 16, 1938. His stepfather was a career military officer of his residency in earlier years was geographically scattered. He attended college at Stetson University in Deland, Florida, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1960. He was ordained a Southern Baptist minister in 1959. He continued his education at Vanderbilt University, obtaining a Master of Arts degree before he enrolled at The Ohio State University to study under Simon Dinitz and Walter Reckless. A newly-minted Ph.D. (1969), he taught at Florida State University briefly before being recalled to Ohio to serve as Executive Secretary of the Ohio Governor’s Task Force on Corrections.
His work for the Task Force led to an invitation to join the School of Public Administration at The Ohio State University as a tenured Associate Professor (1971) and Professor (1975), and as Director of the Program for the Study of Crime and Delinquency. He recruited and surrounded himself with exceptional doctoral candidates and undertook an extensive research program culminating in over 100 papers presented at professional meetings of relevant criminology and justice programs, 20 monographs, many chapters in books, and 19 books authored, co-authored or edited. With graduate student Clifford Simonsen, he authored in 1975 what is the longest continuously published corrections textbook, now in its 15th edition (Corrections in America). He took particular pride in the careers and performances of his former doctoral graduates, including Edward Latessa, Gennaro Vito, Chris Eskridge, Rick Seiter, and Charles Eden, among numerous others. He was an exceptional mentor to his students.
In 1978, when The Ohio State University was buffeted by arctic weather and a 63 degree wind chill factor, he received and accepted an offer to teach at San Jose State University in the Department of Justice Studies, San Jose, California. He taught a wide variety of core and elective courses and retired in 1998 to return to seminary at the Pacific School of Religion on “Holy Hill” in Berkeley, California. Professor Allen remains Professor Emeritus, San Jose State University.
Professor Allen was extensively active in the leadership of professional organizations. He was the first criminologist to serve as President of the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences and the American Society of Criminology. In the Academy, he served as Program Committee Chair, Secretary-Treasurer, President (Second Vice-President, First Vice-President, President and Immediate Past President), among other roles.
Harry Allen received many recognitions, awards and honors, including the Block Award (American Society of Criminology). In 1996, he was recognized as the most-often cited scholar in Corrections, was a Fellow in the Western Society of Criminology, Recipient of the Founders Award and an Outstanding Mentor Award of the Academy, among others. In 2001, he was Distinguished Scholar in Residence at the University of Louisville.
In 2002, Harry Allen began online teaching for the University of Louisville, team-teaching with his husband Bruce Ponder on a wide variety of courses, including Corrections, Community Corrections, Victimology, Alternatives to Incarceration, International Terrorism, Intelligence and Homeland Security, Drug Abuse, and Ethics[1].
________________
[1] The summary of Professor Allen’s professional career was taken from Willard Oliver, Celebrating 50 years, 1963-2013, Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences.
Oral History of Criminology Project Interview
Michael Buerger (age 70) left us on Christmas morning, 2021, and the world is a sadder place for those of us who knew him. It is interesting to say that we knew Michael. I considered him my best friend, and there is so much about him that I did not know. Michael was an extremely private person who held his personal life in abeyance and shared little with even his closest friends and acquaintances. I could talk about all his accomplishments, but that is not what made Michael important to us.
Despite his reticence to divulge much about himself and his life, those of us in his world knew the most important thing about him. He had the biggest heart in the world and cared for everyone around him. He was there whenever you asked for help but he never sought help in return. He would put off taking care of himself and turn down offers of assistance so that he did not burden others and so those around him would not be inconvenienced or miss out on something.
Michael met his wife and children and became a family man late in life. While he did not talk much about his family, his joy with them was obvious when you could get him to open up. He would tell me about the successes of his children and he was very proud of their accomplishments. His family, beloved wife, children, his late mother and father, and his brother were the most important to him.
His work was his life. I was able to lure him to Bowling Green in 2001 to help launch our fledgling Masters in Criminal Justice degree program. He was in his office seven days a week throughout the year, excepting only when he was at a conference, working with colleagues on projects, or taking care of family members. He worked hard to improve our program and the field of criminal justice. He was loved by his students for his undying passion to see them succeed and his caring attitude. It is interesting to hear those words from students when they also found him to be one of the toughest, most demanding faculty members (he was a “grammar Nazi”). He challenged them at every turn, yet his graduates always praised him. As a colleague, he would sit and listen and could discern what was important. He would offer to write up thoughts on a topic for the department and would then produce a long, detailed missive that got to the target with clarity and precision. He worked with many organizations over the years and was sought after to aid them in their missions.
Michael had eclectic interests that benefited from his early classical liberal arts education. He had a breadth of knowledge that often left his colleagues scratching their heads (and I was certainly one of them). He had a broad vocabulary that would often confuse his listeners and challenged us to learn more. Michael loved literature, music, politics, and world events.
I will remember and miss Michael most for his knowledge of comic books and superhero movies. Like myself, he collected comics and we could talk for hours about the story lines and characters, and colleagues could often hear us talking about how the movies got the story wrong and that they did not follow the “real story” from the comics. Those around us would walk away shaking their heads.
Finally, those who knew him will remember his sense of humor. He decorated his office with cartoons and social commentaries that poked fun at everything. He was able to see humor in the world around him and make people laugh. That is something we will all miss. The world has lost a beacon of joy and a fount of knowledge that benefited us all. We are all the lesser because of his passing.
If I had the “Infinity Stones”, I would bring him back to us. Excelsior!
Steve Lab
ARNOLD BINDER
Arnold Binder, inaugural chair of the Department of Criminology, Law & Society at the University of California, Irvine (UCI), and founder of the Social Ecology program, died Oct. 2. He was 97.
A first-rate scholar and academic visionary, “Arnie,” as he was gladly referred to by many who knew him well, had major positive influences on colleagues, his department, school, campus and the University of California system for over four decades. Former Social Ecology Dean Daniel Stokols notes, “His legacy of academic innovation and community service is renowned and admired by colleagues around the world. He will be sorely missed.”
After receiving his Ph.D. in psychology from Stanford University, Arnie joined the faculty at UCI in 1966. He previously was a professor of psychology at Indiana University and a professor of industrial engineering at New York University.
As the first director of the Social Ecology program, he oversaw its development and growth. Binder founded the program to provide direct interaction between the intellectual life of the university and recurring problems of the social and physical environment. Begun with a handful of professors as “an experiment,” decades later it remains a thriving school with 80 faculty across three departments. Its interdisciplinary roots have since been emulated both nationally and worldwide. Binder outlined a novel roadmap for the program, including a requirement that each undergraduate student participate in public service through a “field study” course. Always ahead of the curve, Arnie championed the hiring of female faculty which saw Social Ecology with the highest proportion of women of any academic unit on campus as early as the 1970s. He oversaw the hiring of first-rate senior scholars including criminologist, Gilbert Geis among others, and freshly-minted Ph.D.s, including psychologists, urban and environmental scholars, and criminology, law and society, and criminal justice researchers C. Ron Huff, Joseph Weiss, Robert Meier, Peter Scharf, Henry Pontell, and Kitty Calavita. He later urged Joan Petersilia, then with the Rand Corporation, to obtain her Ph.D. in Social Ecology at UCI. Soon thereafter, Joan became the only graduate student ever elected President of the American Society of Criminology. Arnie later led the successful faculty effort to appoint Petersilia as a tenured professor upon her graduation.
In 1992, the UC Regents recognized Social Ecology as a school at UCI, and Binder served as the initial chair of the Department of Criminology, Law and Society during its first year of operation. In 1998 he served as interim dean of the School of Social Ecology, during which time he helped secure the initial grant leading to the creation of first online degree program at the University of California, the MAS in criminology, law and society, which has repeatedly been ranked #1 in the nation.
In 1972, Binder founded and initially led the Youth Service Program (later Community Service Programs and now Waymakers), an intervention project providing counseling, housing and other services for delinquent youth and their families.
Arnie was also heavily involved in University service and affairs, serving in numerous elected positions including Chair of the Irvine Division of the Academic Senate, and Chair of the UC system-wide Academic Senate in 1993-94. In 2002, his outstanding contributions to university governance were recognized with the Oliver Johnson Award for Distinguished Leadership in the Academic Senate.
Administrative roles aside, Binder is known for his work on juvenile delinquency, juvenile justice, mathematical psychology, research methodology, policing, and hate crimes, among other areas. He wrote several books, including “Juvenile Delinquency: Historical, Cultural, Legal Perspectives”, and “The Badge and the Bullet: Police Use of Deadly Force”.
Arnie was a Fulbright Scholar in Ireland during the 1974-75 academic year, and was awarded nearly $2 million in grants over a 30-year period for his research. His other honors included being named “Headliner of the Year” by the Orange County Press Club in 1977, being the recipient of the Western Society of Criminology President’s Award in 1985 and the Governor’s Award for contributions in victimology in 1986.
Since 2003, the Criminology, Law and Society Department has awarded an annual $500 Arnie Binder scholarship to one or more doctoral students in recognition of outstanding service contributions. The award is funded by the sales of the book, “Contemporary Issues in Crime and Criminal Justice: Essays in Honor of Gilber Geis” (H. Pontell and D. Shichor, eds., Prentice Hall, 2001).
Current Interim Social Ecology Dean, Mona Lynch notes, “His great legacy lives on, as scholars continue to work across disciplines on major social challenges to improve life conditions for those near and far.”
Binder’s daughter Jen Capasso said UCI held a special place in her father’s heart. “We are so proud of the legacy he has left and the lives he positively impacted at UCI and through Waymakers. We hope that his memory and impact will continue into the future.” She also noted that her father loved travel, meals, and wine with his family. “We all miss him beyond words.”
Binder is survived by his wife of 51 years Virginia; children Andrea, Jeff and Jennifer; and grandchildren Julia, Clare, Elliott and Damien, a freshman at UCI.
No memorial services are planned, but notes may be sent to: Virginia Binder, 100 Timber Ridge Way NW, Unit 620, Issaquah, WA 98027. Donations in Binder’s honor may be made to Waymakers or Carry the Future, an organization Capasso leads that helps refugees.
MITCH CHAMLIN
Our colleague and friend, Mitch Chamlin, passed away too soon on June 3, 2021 in Toledo, Ohio. A close friend described his loss by observing, “there will never be another.” These words perfectly described the force that was Mitch. He was such a unique character: a self-described rebellious Jewish New Yorker.
Mitch graduated from Forest Hills High School in Queens, New York and earned his undergraduate degree in History and PhD in Sociology from the University at Albany, SUNY. He joined the faculty at University of Oklahoma in 1985, earned promotion to full professor at the University of Cincinnati, and was a Professor in the School of Criminal Justice and Criminology at Texas State University at the time of his death. Mitch was a prolific scholar in the field of macro-social criminology, and regularly published in the top journals in criminology and criminal justice. Mitch’s work on deterrence, threat, social altruism, and crime control is profound. He was a foremost expert of ARIMA analyses, and employed the technique to study the reciprocal relationship between crimes and arrests, as well as a tool for social policy analysis.
While editor of the Journal of Crime and Justice (2007-2010), Mitch devoted much time and effort to mentor authors and provide detailed feedback, and he loved mentoring students and teaching research methods courses to graduate and undergraduate students. In 2011, he received the inaugural ACJS Minority Mentorship Grant Award.
Scholarship was central to his identity, but it wasn’t his entire identity. Mitch was high energy, loved basketball, and was an avid runner, finishing the Flying Pig Marathon and several half marathons. An avowed Deadhead, Mitch was also committed to passing along the genius of Monty Python to another generation. He was a devoted husband to Beth. He appreciated smoking a good cigar and drinking a nice glass of scotch. He looked forward to walking his dog, Maggie. He enjoyed spending time with good friends and recounting stories about his graduate training at SUNY.
Mitch placed great value in friendship–demonstrated in the over 100 friends and colleagues who participated in his Zoom memorial. He made the extra effort to stay in touch, and was generous with his time–always willing to help others. Even as a graduate student, he would spend significant time to explain concepts to others who didn’t grasp as quickly. Mitch was a deep thinker who was just as brilliant in his everyday conversation. He liked to make the rounds to connect with colleagues for a quick conversation, mostly stand in the doorway to talk about whatever was on his mind and never in a whisper.
Born in Queens, New York to the late David and Betty Chamlin, Mitch is survived by his wife of 24 years Beth Sanders; as well as his brother, Rick (Theresa) Chamlin; nieces Michelle and Alex; nephew, Nick Chamlin, and great nieces and nephews. Donations can be made to the Scleroderma Research foundation at https://srfcure.org/donate/ OR the Kevin Shimek Memorial Endowed Criminal Justice Scholarship at Texas State University at https://secure.ua.txstate.edu/site/SPageServer/?pagename=main_donation_form.
XIAOGANG DENG
Xiaogang Deng (1955-2021) rose from modest beginnings in China through considerable personal determination. He had a gift for connecting with people, including meeting his lifelong love Yuan Zhang while the two were 16 year old steel workers in Beijing. His formal education was delayed because the Cultural Revolution required him to work in a factory during much of his high school years. After passing the necessary exams, he started his sociological studies at Nan Kai University. With fellow graduate students, Xiaogang translated D. P. Johnson’s textbook on Sociological theory. In 1986 he left China to pursue a Master’s degree in sociology at Baylor College in Waco, Texas. He continued his graduate studies at the University of Oklahoma, and in the fall of 1989 entered the doctoral program in sociology at the University of Buffalo, where he focused on criminology. His interest in criminology related to his search for the causes and reasons for China’s rising crime rate. Xiaogang’s dissertation critically examined rational-choice and deterrence theories, drawing on data that he collected on a county-wide stop-shoplifting program.
In 1994, Xiaogang was hired as an assistant professor of sociology at UMass Boston, where he worked until his retirement in 2020. Xiaogang was a vital and highly valued member of the Sociology department and university. He helped develop and served as director of a large criminal justice program, bringing to it the same sociological sensibilities that shaped his research. In 2014-2015, Xiaogang was a Research Fellow at Harvard’s Edmond J. Safra Research Center, where he examined the impact of Guanxi (personal business networks) on economic and political corruption in China. Xiaogang was a beloved instructor, regularly teaching courses in cybercrime, criminology, and research methods. Xiaogang was a kind and generous colleague, providing friendship, collaboration, and mentorship, particularly to his sociology colleagues and to fellow Chinese and Asian colleagues across campus. In 2020, the department named a graduate student paper award in his honor to recognize his many contributions.
Yuan accompanied Xiaogang right from the beginning of his academic journeys, and together they were able to pursue and live the American Dream. This included happily seeing his son, Simon (who happened to have the same first name as his dissertation chair), and grandchildren live that dream as well. Xiaogang is survived by Yuan, Simon, daughter-in-law Lorraine, and his two grandchildren, Camille and Chandler.
Simon Singer, Northeastern University
Andrea Leverentz, University of Massachusetts Boston
SATYANSHU MUKHERJEE
Satyanshu Kumar Mukherjee (13 September 1935 – 28 August 2021) died at his home in Australia, just shy of his 86th birthday. In America Satyanshu was known as Muk, in the rest of the world as Sat. He was a remarkable man and a great criminologist who will be dearly missed by all those who knew him.
Muk already had a Master’s degree from the Tata Institute for Social Sciences in India when he earned the first MA in Criminology ever awarded by the University of Pennsylvania. He later earned two PhD degrees – the first from the University of Delhi (Social Work) and the second from the University of Pennsylvania (Sociology) working with Thorsten Sellin and Marvin Wolfgang. After receiving his Penn degree in 1971 Muk and his family moved to Rome where he served as a Research Expert at the United Nations Social Defense Research Institute. Moving to Australia in 1977, he joined the Australian Institute of Criminology, first as Senior Criminologist and then, in 1985, as Principal Criminologist, a post he maintained until his retirement in 2000. Throughout his career Muk traveled widely and was a Visiting Fellow at the University of Chicago Law School, Visiting Professor at the University of Manitoba and the University of Alberta, and, on several occasions, a Visiting Expert at the United Nations Asia and Far East Institute in Tokyo.
Muk was a prolific scholar whose contributions to international and Australian criminology are astounding. He is the author of well over 100 books, reports, and articles and his work has fundamentally shaped understanding criminal behavior and the criminal justice system throughout Australia. In Crime Trends in Twentieth-Century Australia he collected and analyzed police, court, and corrections data from 1900 to 1976 in one of the largest and most comprehensive trend studies ever conducted. In many subsequent publications Muk continued to examine crime trends as well as exploring related topics such as women and crime, juvenile justice issues, ethnicity and crime, and firearms and violence, to name a few. Whatever the topic, Muk’s research was thorough and meticulous, guided by his strong statistical skills.
When he turned his mind to policy he focused on developing criminal justice policies that are both humane and scientifically informed. Nowhere is that more evident than in his work with the Queensland Criminal Justice Commission in Brisbane (1990-93). The work of that commission, heavily influenced by Muk’s research, uncovered long-term systematic political corruption and abuse of power in the Queensland criminal justice system and led to fundamental changes in the law, policing, and the political landscape in Queensland.
Throughout his life he held a steadfast belief in the value of education and what it would bring. In his case, it brought a life of scholarship that included important contributions to criminology in Australia and beyond. It also brought him deep and abiding friendships throughout the world and, most importantly, it brought a wonderful family. Predeceased by his wife of 49 years, Minoti, he leaves his sons Sujit and Jeremy, Sujit’s wife Laura, and his three grandchildren. Muk was devoted to his family and they to him, caring for him until the very end. His was a life well lived. We will miss him but will be forever grateful for having known him.
Submitted by Terence P. Thornberry and Robert A. Silverman
Charles R. Tittle passed away on May 6, 2021 at the age of 82. He is survived by his beloved partner Mabe, his son Mark, and his faithful service dog Kota. He will be remembered as a passionate scholar, devoted mentor, and loyal friend.
Always the scholar, Charles was high school valedictorian and pursued a BA in sociology and history then eventually completed a PhD in Sociology. His career included positions at Indiana University, Florida Atlantic University, Washington State University, and North Carolina State University where he was the Goodnight-Glaxo Wellcome Distinguished Chair of Social Sciences. He retired in 2015 and since then spent his time reading, writing and enjoying the outdoors from his cabin in the mountains of Eastern Tennessee.
Charles spent his career illuminating the theoretical intricacies and empirical properties of social control. His early work focused on deterrence and the mechanisms through which sanctions affect behavior. This work, coupled with Charles’ interests in theory testing, measurement and integration, inspired his control-balance theory. The resulting book, Control Balance: Toward a General Theory of Deviance (1995), won the American Society of Criminology’s (ASC) Michael J. Hindelang Award and the American Sociological Association’s (ASA) Albert J. Reiss Distinguished Scholarship Award. In the following years Charles made significant contributions to cross-national research on causes of crime in understudied socio-cultural contexts around the globe.
Charles published several books and his many articles (often co-authored with graduate students and junior faculty whom he mentored over the years) appeared in our discipline’s top journals, including Criminology, a journal for which he served five years as editor (1992-1997). In this role he helped to cement Criminology as the premier outlet for cutting-edge, theory-driven criminological scholarship. In recognition of his contributions, he was inducted as a fellow of the ASC and received ASC’s Edwin Sutherland Award for a career of distinguished scholarship.
Charles had high expectations of himself, his students, and those he cared about. He showed a fierce loyalty to those he was close with, fostering enduring friendships. Charles also loved to entertain. He was an excellent chef and a consummate host. He valued intellectual exchange, but also appreciated light-hearted conversation and a good laugh. Sociology and Criminology are mourning the loss of an intellectual giant and those of us lucky enough to be close to him are mourning the loss of an influential mentor and loyal friend.
Lisa Broidy, Olena Antonnacio, Katya Botchkovar, Patty McCall and Jon Brauer
HANS TOCH
Criminology has lost a giant figure with the passing of Hans Toch at age 91. One of the founding faculty of the University at Albany’s ground-breaking School of Criminal Justice in 1967, Toch was the author of over 30 books, widely admired for their readability, wit, and insight.
He received the August Vollmer Award from the American Society of Criminology in 2001, and in 2005 he was recognized with the Prix DeGreff award for distinction in clinical criminology by the International Society of Criminology. He was a fellow of the American Society of Criminology and of the American Psychological Association, and in 1996 served as president of the American Association for Forensic Psychology.
Working with the other founding faculty members of the University at Albany School of Criminal Justice — William Brown, Fred Cohen, and Donald Newman — Toch helped design the pioneering “Albany model” of criminal justice and principally offered classes in the segment of the curriculum devoted to planned change and innovation. Generations of students were mesmerized by his intellect and insights. His opinions resonated loudly in the School’s hallways and faculty meetings, where he engaged over the years in “lively” exchanges with the likes of Michael Hindelang, Leslie Wilkins, Travis Hirschi, Marguerite Warren, Graeme Newman, Michael Gottfredson, and Frankie Bailey. He was not hesitant to offer advice to a series of deans including Vince O’Leary, Don Newman, Terry Thornberry, David Bayley, Julie Horney, and David Duffee. His cigar smoke—until, to the relief of many, it was banned under University policy—his fortissimo and staccato laugh, the pounding of his typewriter, and occasionally his wandering pet dog were among the reminders that Toch was in his office.
As an immigrant who escaped the horrors of the Holocaust, first to Cuba and then to the United States, Toch was a fiercely patriotic American, inordinately proud of his military service in the Navy defending San Diego during the Korean War. It was in the Navy that Hans met Doug Grant, his co-author on books like Reforming Human Services: Change through Participation (1982) and Police as Problem Solvers (1991), to whom he credits some of his best ideas. Grant, who became the research chief for the California Department of Corrections was also Toch’s gatekeeper into criminology. Toch’s initial research in psychology had little to do with criminal justice. His formal education began with a psychology degree from Brooklyn College in 1952 and a Ph.D. from Princeton in social psychology in 1955, where he was once accused of “trouble-making masquerading as research” when he proposed to study a student protest against the wearing of academic gowns in the dining halls.
In his early career, he wrote an important and fascinating book on The Social Psychology of Social Movements (1965) that included an interrogation of the Nazi movement, lynch mobs and cults. That work led to stints as a Fulbright Fellow in Norway and a Visiting Lecturer in the Department of Social Relations at Harvard in the 1960s. However, it was the chance occurrence of being asked to teach a course on legal and criminal psychology while at Michigan State University in the 1960s that led to his lifetime passion of criminal justice reform.
There were broadly three strands to this research (although these strands frequently and fruitfully entwined) including: the social psychology of violence as in his classic book Violent Men, the lived experience of incarceration as in Men in Crisis: Human Breakdowns in Prison, and the reform of policing in books like Cop Watch. In all of this work, there is a common theme of “change through participation” which he developed in his last great work, summarising a lifetime of work: Organizational Change Through Individual Empowerment. In short, Toch had an unshakable belief in the idea of bottom-up reform, involving staff and ‘clients’ in the process of organisational change. He had searing disdain for elite experts or abstract theorising. He believed in ordinary people and the value of democratic participation to create genuine change. In an authoritarian field based around control and restraint, Toch also stood out as a believer in humanistic approaches to corrections. He saw “handcuffs or tight supervision” as “a superfluous management tool as well as an obstacle to effective performance.”
No one in academia worked as hard as he did, writing every single day on his electric typewriter. He wrote, “I would argue that in doing psychology it must be the doing as much as the psychology that counts as productivity.” There was no doubting his own productivity, in terms of the sheer volume of output. But, far more importantly, Hans contributed some of the most original and transformative ideas to the field of criminal justice, including ground-breaking work on the concept of ‘community policing’ and ‘therapeutic communities.’
Hans himself sees his career path as “more of a cautionary tale, redolent with incidents in which aspirations appeared to have been blunted by obdurate realities and successes proved annoyingly evanescent.” Indeed, to the end, he never felt like he achieved all that he could, but it never stopped him trying.
His greatest achievement, he would say, was the bestselling book Violent Men, first published in 1969, released numerous times since, including a recent anniversary edition with American Psychological Association Books. In this incredibly readable work (among the first popular academic books on the subject of violence), Toch pioneered the, now fashionable, method of participatory peer research, utilising peer researchers (prisoners, ex-prisoners and ex-police officers) in both the data collection and data analysis processes in an attempt “to blur the line between the observer and the observed.”
On a personal level, Hans was not a fan of memoirs, although he read many written by friends and contemporaries. “I might as well record that my private life has been conventional and my inner life is overwhelmingly pedestrian. My job has consisted of teaching at the university level. Some of my students claim that in doing this I have come across as intimidating, but I am in fact a pussycat.”
With his ever-present cigars, beard and thick Austrian accent, Hans bore a passing resemblance to Sigmund Freud and was not averse to playing up the associations, although his relationship to psychoanalytic theory was an appropriately ambivalent one. He once wrote: “if you want to become a well-rounded psychologist, a smidgen of psychoanalysis is good for you,” and among his first ever publications was a 1956 psychoanalysis of “eccentric mail sent to the United Nations.”
He had a deep love of Scotland and the single malt scotch he collected on his visits there, and he did important work for the Scottish Prison System. In 2003, the Institute of Criminology at the University of Cambridge held a conference in his honor on the subject of the Effects of Imprisonment, timed with his 75th birthday. Toch sat with the legendary convict criminologist John Irwin (one year his senior), both of whom were going deaf by then, and also had no compulsion about loudly conversing during the lectures (“What is this kid trying to say?” “No idea but I wish he would get on with it”). They were the picture of the balcony-seated muppets Statler and Waldorf with a running critical commentary of the proceedings.
Toch retired in 2008, but maintained an active writing agenda in the ensuing decade. His last book, a co-edited volume, Living on Death Row: The Psychology of Waiting to Die (American Psychological Association, 2018), received the 2019 Association of American Publishers Award for Professional and Scholarly Excellence (PROSE Award) in Social Sciences: Psychology. At the time he left his academic post Toch was a Distinguished Professor in the SUNY system, and in every meaningful sense of the term.
Toch is survived by his son Jay Toch, his daughter Michelle Dinsmore, his son-in-law Daniel Dinsmore and his two grandchildren. Please join them for a celebration of life on July 11th.
2020
Some of these individuals participated in the ASC Oral History Project. For more information, please go to the Oral History Project page.
JO DIXON
Jo Dixon, 70, passed away unexpectedly, on March 7, 2020, at her home in Estero, FL. A professor of sociology at New York University until her retirement last year, Jo received a BA in sociology at the University of North Carolina, Greensborough in 1972, her MA in sociology at Emory University in 1981, and her PhD in sociology at Indiana University in 1989. Jo was an accomplished and highly regarded scholar and a deeply committed teacher and mentor. Her studies on criminal sentencing, domestic violence policies and practices, responses to sexual violence, gender stratification in the legal profession, and other topics were published in the top journals of her field including Law and Society Review, the American Journal of Sociology, Social Problems, and Criminology and Public Policy.
At the time of her death, Jo was completing a comparative justice project that examined the role of state building in efforts by elites to select transitional justice tools capable of attaining the often-contradictory goals of justice and state building. Her research is widely cited and will have a lasting effect on sociological and criminological scholarship for years to come.
Jo valued teaching and mentoring. She was recognized for her teaching by New York University in 1999, when she was awarded NYU’s Distinguished Teaching Award, and in 1992, when she was awarded NYU’s Golden Dozen Teaching Award. She directed NYU’s interdisciplinary Institute for Law and Society and its Law and Society graduate program for many years. Jo was an excellent mentor of graduate students. Several of her Ph.D. students received dissertation awards from the National Science Foundation or the National Institute of Justice, and her Ph.D. students have gone on to obtain faculty positions at prestigious universities and have themselves made important contributions to the discipline. Jo has also influenced universities around the world, teaching or conducting research at the University of Vienna and at NYU’s programs in Prague and Abu Dhabi.
Jo was an active member of several professional associations, having served as a member of the Board of Trustees of the Law and Society Association, organizer of multiple programs for the American Society of Criminology, and council member of the Law and Society Section of the American Sociological Association. She also served on the editorial board of the American Sociological Review, Law and Society Review, and Law and Social Inquiry.
Jo had an inspiring sense of adventure and curiosity. She was beloved by her family and friends, maintaining strong, cherished bonds with friends for decades. She had a wonderful laugh, cheered for her friends’ successes and comforted them at times of sadness and loss.
Jo was born in Dunn, North Carolina on November 20, 1949. Her parents were Wallace and Annie Laurie Dixon. She is survived by her loving husband, Mari C. Engracia, her brother Wallace (Dana) Dixon, sisters-in-law Danna Sue Dixon and Ann Tart Dixon, as well her stepchildren, Jennifer, Judith and Jay and many nieces and nephews. She was predeceased by her parents and her brothers EB Dixon and David Dixon. Memorial contributions can be made to the American Tinnitus Association.
HAROLD G. GRASMICK
Harold G. Grasmick, Professor Emeritus of the Department of Sociology at the University of Oklahoma and one of criminology’s great minds, left our world on April 4, 2020. Harold and his co-authors, Charles Tittle, Bob Bursik and Bruce Arneklev (Grasmick et al. 1993), developed a 24-item attitudinal scale based upon their interpretation of Gottfredson and Hirschi’s (1990) conceptual definition of self-control. This measure, known as the Grasmick Scale, continues to be used widely in tests of Gottfredson and Hirschi’s theory. This publication cemented Harold’s national reputation as a scholar and renowned criminologist. Harold mentored and published research with many students. Over the course of his career, Harold published a book, 54 research articles, and has been cited over 13,500 times. At the University of Oklahoma, Harold was recognized for his achievements with several awards, including the David Ross Boyd Professorship, a Presidential Professorship, and the Kinney-Sugg Award for Outstanding Professor.
Harold served as Chair of the OU Sociology Department from 1982 to 1988, which was a challenging time institutionally as OU was transforming to a national-level university with an emphasis on research. At that time, there were two units, Sociology A and Sociology 1, and new faculty lines were offered in only the research unit. Harold was hired to teach and lead in research, and as part of this, he developed the Oklahoma City Survey, which provided research and statistical training for students. His focus on the creation of knowledge through research also positioned the department to be approved by the Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education to grant doctoral degrees. This new teaching style on the graduate level, which focused on learning through research, allowed students to become active participants in the profession through their research, conference presentations, and publications.
Harold’s research was about illegal behavior and norm violations in general, particularly guilt, shame and embarrassment, and their parallels to legal or formal sanctions. Much of his work in the 1990s focused on neighborhoods, social control, and crime, including his book co-authored with Robert J. Bursik, Neighborhoods and Crime: The Dimensions of Effective Community Control. Inspired by the Oklahoma context, Harold noticed that religion was influential to society, and he began to focus his research on how religion shaped people’s attitudes towards punishment, and he published several articles in this area.
Harold was a supportive colleague and dear friend. One colleague remarked, “His presence was huge and unforgettable. He was everything you could ever want in a professor. He was brilliant, accomplished, funny, and just a little bit naughty.” Harold deeply cared for his students, and he was a friend of the OU Department of Sociology. Upon his retirement, he helped establish a fund to support graduate students in mentored research during the summer. As he described it, it was a way to keep our students busy with research and away from working in the bars next to campus. Through the Grasmick Summer Fellowships, Harold’s devotion to students and passion for the creation of research continue.
Harold is remembered as a loving grandfather, father and son and will be missed by many. He is survived by his son Jacob, daughter-in-law Kate and grandson Atlas, of Denver, Colorado.
Loretta Bass, University of Oklahoma; Trina Hope, University of Oklahoma
JAMES B. JACOBS
James B. Jacobs, who was Warren E. Burger Professor of Constitutional Law and the Courts at New York University – and a proud Fellow of the ASC – died on 19th March 2020 from complications of ALS.
Jim was one of America’s most prolific, wide-ranging, and important criminal law scholars. A researcher of astonishing energy and ambition, he achieved world-wide renown as a leading authority in a dozen different specialties, from imprisonment and criminal records to corruption and organized crime, by way of gun control, drunk driving, and hate crime. Academic audiences in Asia, Europe, and Africa have marveled at his grasp of detail, his piercing practical insight, and his contrarian disregard of conventional wisdom. As a criminologist and legal scholar, he stood at the pinnacle of academic achievement and distinction.
Born in Bronxville in 1947, the son of a lawyer and a home-maker, Jim grew up in Mount Vernon and attended local public school. He went on to graduate from Johns Hopkins with a BA in Sociology and from the University of Chicago with a JD and a Sociology Ph.D.. His doctoral dissertation was a tour de force that combined prison ethnography and organizational sociology with ‘law and society’ and was published in 1977 as Stateville: The Penitentiary in Mass Society – a classic that has been in print ever since.
Jim began his career at Cornell where he was jointly appointed in Law and Sociology before moving to NYU School of Law in 1982. He held visiting appointments at Columbia Law School, University of Capetown, and University of Leuven, as well as a J.S. Guggenheim Fellowship. At NYU, Jim taught criminal law, criminal procedure, and federal criminal law, and a variety of other topics including the regulation of vice, guns, and cybercrime. He was a devoted institutional citizen who did more than anyone to make NYU a leading center of criminal law and criminal justice scholarship. For three decades and more he was, as a colleague remarked, “the sun around which New York’s criminal justice community orbited.”
In 1983, Jim established, and became the Director of, the Center for Research in Crime and Justice at NYU Law School. In the decades that followed, Jim created and ran the Center’s monthly Colloquium series and weekly Criminal Law Seminars, both of which brought together policymakers, judges, prosecutors, and practitioners with academics to create a unique criminal law community, centered in NYC but stretching across the globe. To his fellow professors at NYU Law, Jim was the quintessential colleague, whose relaxed, unpretentious demeanor and breezy good cheer made them happy to belong to the same institution. To students and entry-level academics, he was the supportive, challenging mentor to whom many of them owe their careers. And to visitors, whoever they were and wherever they were from, he was the open-handed host, issuing invitations, drawing them in, connecting them to a vibrant intellectual community here at the heart of New York City.
Let me say a little about the influences and ideas that Jim brought to bear in his astonishing oeuvre – which included 17 books and more than one hundred scholarly articles.
Jim’s early works bear the unmistakeable stamp of his training at Hopkins and Chicago and the world-class mentors he found there. Without Norval Morris, there would be no Stateville. Not because of Norval’s ideas – the intellectual influence of Edward Shils is more prominent in the book – but because it was Norval who first dispatched Jim to do research in the Illinois prisons and taught him the importance of realism and pragmatism in the pursuit of the ideal. And without Morris Janowitz, it is unlikely that Jim would have written two books on the socio-legal aspects of the military (though perhaps Jim’s own military service provided insights that Janowitz helped him develop into a sociological thesis.)
Jim went on to become a leading authority on both of these topics. But his most distinctive writing, and his characteristic intellectual voice, is most apparent not in these books, nor even in the books on organized crime. Jim’s signature style is, I think, most fully on display in the series of books he wrote on the ironies of American social policy. To explain what I mean, let me distinguish three distinct ‘genres’ that, I would suggest, together constitute Jim’s body of published work.
First genre: the work on prisons and imprisonment.The leading works here are Stateville: The Penitentiary in Mass Society; Guard Unions and the Future of Prisons; and Perspectives on Prisons and Imprisonment. And alongside these books there are dozens of articles: including classics such as “Sentencing by Prison Personnel” in UCLA Law Review (1983) – an unmatched tour de force on a topic that was, before Jim wrote it up, completely ignored.
These prison publications are notable for their insiders’ view and their up-close understanding. But Jim’s most original contribution is a sociological one: it is his insistence on situating imprisonment within the large-scale changes taking place in American society and revealing the surprising effects these have had on the inner life of the prison.
Second genre: the work on Organized Crime and Racketeering.This section of the collected works consists of 5 books that form a remarkable series – perhaps the most sustained effort to understand racketeering ever undertaken by a single scholar. These organized crime books mostly tell quite positive stories, describing prosecutions that worked; industries that have been cleaned up; and labor unions that have been purged of corruption. If I remind you of some of their titles you’ll see what I mean: Breaking the Devil’s Pact; Gotham Unbound; Busting the Mob; and Organized Crime and its Containment
Third genre:his work on “the ironies of American social policy”If the study of organized crime finds Jim in an optimistic mood, this third genre is much more sardonic in tone. I think of these books as constituting the “Jacobean studies in skepticism.”Each of these contrarian books takes a policy reform that has been universally embraced by liberals and by the legal academy – more or less the same thing, Jim would have said – and proceeds to show, in loving detail, why these reforms backfire. Books in this group include: Can Gun Control Work?; The Pursuit of Absolute Integrity; and Hate Crimes: Criminal Law and Identity Politics. And there are several articles that follow a similar formula, dousing liberal ideas with large quantities of cold water: “Should Hate Be a Crime?” “Can We Ever Clean Up the Javits Center?” and “Will New York’s Safe Act Make Us Safer?” While Jim is best known for his books on prisons; the Mafia; and criminal records I believe that his “studies in skepticism” are the ones that best express his distinctive authorial voice and his personal world-view.
Isaiah Berlin famously said that there were two kinds of writers: foxes (who know many things) and hedgehogs (who know one big thing). In these terms, Jim was undoubtedly a fox. He certainly didn’t believe in “one big thing.” He was a painstaking empiricist and a hard-headed realist who abjured all forms of dogma and who was allergic to any kind of grand theory. As a result, Jim’s thinking was always interestingly at odds with the conventional wisdom.
As a colleague, Jim was tough-minded, and opinionated, and often contrarian. He was also ever-present: these 17 books didn’t write themselves – and it was clear that he relied enormously on his remarkable wife Jan Sweeney, whom he adored, and who enabled his academic work, as well as their family and cultural lives, while holding down an academic job of her own. As an intellectual, Jim was beholden to no one: there was no party line; no big theory; no ideological purity. His attention was always trained on the real world, on facts and practices, and on what criminal justice actors were actually thinking and doing.
Jim’s work, did, of course, contain certain working assumptions. These a prioris include: That not all problems are solvable; That more government is usually not the best solution; That problems like crime and corruption are endemic and have to be regulated; That zealous regulation is liable to produce its own problems; That the role of organized crime in the history of the nation has never been fully recognized. But the lesson that Jim’s work – and his life – told over and over again, was that we need to have faith in people, to look for their positive virtues, and to work together to celebrate our common interests and work to make the world a better place.
Jim was a world-renowned academic and a prolific author of well-researched, book-length monographs – the last of which, a study of New York gun control, appeared late last year. But among those who knew him – and there are hundreds and hundreds of us – Jim will mostly be remembered for his warmth, his humor, and his humanity. Above all, he will be remembered for his ability to bring people together in ways that enhanced their lives.
Astonishingly, given his productivity as a scholar, Jim was also renowned for the remarkable extent of his “hinterland” – the busy, adventurous, fun-filled life that somehow co-existed with his non-stop academic activity. Jim was an avid skier, an aficionado of the arts, a Yankees fan, a dog-lover, a NYC boulevardier, a loving husband, father, and grandfather to Jan, Tom, Sophi, and his four young granddaughters – and this too would be absolutely essential to any accounting of who Jim was and of the life he led.
He had an amazing gift for forming and sustaining friendships. He cared for people. He wanted to know how they are. He never forgot to call, to email, to stay in touch – sometimes over decades and great distances. And, with a twinkle in his eye and something funny or interesting or contrarian to say, he would make us laugh, and make us think, and make us better. Quite simply, Jim enriched the lives of everyone around him. And those of us who were privileged to count ourselves as friends of this distinguished colleague, illustrious scholar, and altogether remarkable man long cherish his memory and smile when we hear his name mentioned – as it will certainly be for decades to come.
David Garland, NYU.
NICHOLAS KITTRIE
Nicholas Kittrie passed away in December at the age of 93. He served as the President of the American Society of Criminology in 1975. A professor at American University’s Washington College of Law, Dr. Kittrie was the College’s longest-tenured faculty member, and taught for more than 50 years. See below for a more detailed obituary.
MICHAEL J. LEIBER
Michael J. Leiber’s (1956-2020) friends and colleagues are sad to announce his untimely passing. Mike should be best remembered for his desire to see the world become a better, fairer, and more equitable place. He believed in advancing knowledge to correct the many challenging social ills in society, and this concern for social justice guided his career. Mike grew up in and cherished his home town, Milwaukee. He earned his BA from Marquette University, and then entered the MA program at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. He transferred to The University at Albany, where he earned his MA and Ph.D. He held academic positions at the University of Northern Iowa (1989-2005), Virginia Commonwealth (2005-2010), and the University of South Florida (2010-2020), where he also served as department chair (2011-2019). His research focused primarily on juvenile justice and disproportionate minority contact with the criminal justice system. He authored over 100 publications, including 76 articles and book chapters, and more than two-dozen government reports, and received more than $700k in grants and contracts. Mike was the recipient of several scholarly awards of which he was proud, including those from the Division of Minorities and Women (Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences), a lifetime achievement award from the Division on People of Color and Crime (American Society of Criminology), the W. E. B. Du Bois Award from the Western Society of Criminology, and a Distinguished Alumni Award from the University at Albany, among others. He served as editor of the Journal of Crime and Justice, and more recently, Justice Quarterly. He was often an invited speaker at programs and sessions sponsored by the Office of Juvenile Justice & Delinquency Prevention, Washington, D.C. Many knew Mike in a variety of capacities: distinguished scholar, colleague, mentor, and friend. In his personal life, he was a devoted animal lover to his multiple cats and “fidos.” An avid sports fan, he loved his Green Bay Packers, along with the Milwaukee Brewers and Bucks, and the Wisconsin Badgers. He maintained a pristine early 1970s Alfa Romeo Spider. He is survived by his beloved wife of eight years, Lana. Condolences may be sent to her at: 4946 Ebensburg Drive, Tampa, Florida, 33647.
TED PALMER
(October 20,1931-March 14, 2020) Our esteemed, longtime colleague and friend, Ted Palmer, passed away peacefully on March 14, 2020. Ted’s research and legacy are classic to the field of criminology and corrections. His contributions include being one of the “firsts” to implement a randomized trial in a juvenile justice setting and pioneering the identification of programmatic factors that affect the quality of interventions. In his 2004 presidential address to the ASC, Francis Cullen recognized Ted as one of the 12 people who “saved correctional rehabilitation.” Ted was later recognized by the ASC Academy of Experimental Criminology which awarded him the 2011 Joan McCord Award.
As lead researcher for the California Youth Authority and the California Department of Corrections during the 1960s and 1970s, Ted produced a remarkable body of research. One of his most well-know projects, the Community Treatment Project, utilized a rigorous experimental design, amassed a wealth of knowledge about juvenile offenders and developed strategies for identifying and addressing their differential needs. Throughout his career and in retirement, Ted addressed the issue of correctional effectiveness. Most notably, he countered a 1974 article in which Robert Martinson reviewed 231 correctional program evaluations and concluded that no therapeutic model worked to reduce youth recidivism. Ted meticulously reanalyzed Martinson’s data and reported that 48% of the 231 studies actually showed positive or partially positive results and that many programs had worked for some offenders and not others.
In retirement, Ted was a regular attendee of the ASC meetings. He befriended and advised many younger scholars. Although he never pursued a career in academe, he was a precious mentor who offered wise and gentle counsel. He was regularly sought after as a dinner companion and valued friend. In 2005, Ted and a former colleague established the Marguerite Q. Warren and Ted B. Palmer Differential Intervention Award, an award offered through the ASC Division of Corrections and Sentencing. Ted helped to insure the legacy or rigorous research and instilled in many the value of research in action settings and collaboration with front line agencies.
Friends and colleagues were fascinated by Ted’s life. He was born in 1931, after his parents, Mary Korn and Jack Puchalski, left Poland to escape economic hardship and rising antisemitism. Ted is a veteran of the Korean War where he served as an Army medic providing mental health services to soldiers suffering from “shell shock” (PTSD). He later received his doctorate degree in psychology from the University of Southern California. He was multilingual and an avid student of astronomy and art. In his 70s and 80s, Ted pursued a rigorous travel agenda, which included long trips to such exotic places as the South Pacific Islands, the Great Wall of China, Mongolia, Antarctica, India, Nepal, and Tibet. At the time of his death, he was planning another trip to Southeast Asia which included paragliding in the Seychelles and a stop in Brazil on the way home.
Ted’s wife, Mildred, passed away in 2019. He is survived by a daughter, Cara, and a son and daughter-in-law, Clay and Jocelyn.
We were privileged to know you, Ted,
Pat Van Voorhis, Francis Cullen, Fay Taxman, Phil Harris, and Kathleen Heide
CINDY J. SMITH
Cindy J. Smith, past chair of the Division of International Criminology, past Secretary/Treasurer of the Division on Corrections and Sentencing, and most recently, Director of the United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute (UNICRI), passed away January 18, after courageously battling cancer.
Cindy was born in Fostoria, Ohio. She held a Ph.D. in Social Ecology from the University of California Irvine, a M.S. in Education Administration from the National University, Irvine, a M.S. in Justice from American University and a B.A. from Baldwin Wallace College.
She began her career at the University of Baltimore, as Associate Professor and Director of the Master’s in Criminal Justice Program (2000-2005). As a first-generation university student, she mentored others like her as well as international students, particularly Turkish National Police managers. Intrigued by Turkey, she enjoyed a year there as a Fulbright Senior Researcher. She shifted smoothly between the academy and policy work, serving as Chief of the International Center at NIJ (2005-2008), Associate Professor at the University of Baltimore (2008-2010), Lead Foreign Affairs Officer at the Department of State (2011-2012), and Senior Coordinator for International Programs in the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons at the U.S. Department of State (2012-2015). In 2015, the Secretary-General of the U.N. appointed her Director of UNICRI, the first woman to serve in this capacity. She retired from this post in 2018.
Her research covered a wide range of topics, including juvenile justice, corrections and human trafficking. She was instrumental in convincing international policymakers to use criminological knowledge to better guide their work.
Cindy’s friends remember her as unfailingly positive and a force to be reckoned with. She thought the world was flawed, but woke up every day asking herself, “what can I do about it?” She started “saving the world” one child as at a time by serving as a foster mother and adopting children. Frustrated that she could not do enough, she pursued her doctorate so that she could do more. Ultimately she set her sights on helping the whole world and joined the U.N. She was humble, energetic, and unforgettable. Her stories were legend and made us laugh until we cried. We will miss her greatly.
She is survived by her husband Rick Smith, seven children, 16 grandchildren and 5 great grandchildren.
Rosemary Barberet, John Jay College of Criminal Justice
Joanne Savage, Illinois State University
Jodi Lane, University of Florida
PAUL E. TRACY, JR.
Paul E. Tracy, Jr. passed away unexpectedly on January 5, 2020, shortly after retiring from the University of Massachusetts Lowell where he served as professor and graduate director for the School of Criminology and Justice Studies for 8 years. Paul’s long and successful career also included serving on the faculties and impacting the lives of many students at the University of Texas at Dallas, Northeastern University, and the University of Pennsylvania.
Paul’s earned his B.A. from Rhode Island College and his Ph.D. in 1978 in Sociology from the University of Pennsylvania. He was Senior Research Associate for the Criminal Justice Program Evaluation Center at the Mitre Corporation, then returned to Penn as a faculty member to collaborate with his mentor, Marvin Wolfgang, becoming Director of the Graduate Program in Criminology and part of the move from Arts & Sciences to Wharton. He served as Associate Director of the Sellin Center for Criminology & Criminal Law, a position that enabled him to help assure that the 1958 Philadelphia Birth Cohort study was able to include the follow up to age 26 for those 27,160 subjects. In 1985, Paul moved to be close to family and taught at Northeastern for 7 years, leaving to help establish a crime and justice program at the University of Texas at Dallas, where he worked for 19 years, before returning to his favorite part of the country and joining the Lowell faculty.
A skilled methodologist and staunch advocate for improving criminal justice policies, Paul’s scholarly contributions focused on measurement and analysis of criminal careers over the life course, juvenile justice, drug prohibition, prisoner re-entry, and capital punishment. He was author or co-author of eight books, numerous articles and technical reports. He also served as Editor-in-Chief of Crime & Delinquency for 15 years. His scholarship was recognized by the Western Society of Criminology President’s Award in 2003.
A beloved teacher of courses at all levels, he served on or directed nearly 40 dissertations. Paul’s outstanding teaching was accorded Distinguished Teaching Awards by both Penn and Northeastern, the Social Science Teaching Award by UT-Dallas, and the Chancellor’s Outstanding Teaching Award by the University of Texas Systems.
Paul was a proud father, husband, and patriot. He cared about veterans, especially those who had served in Vietnam, as he had. He loved fast cars, spicy food, and practicing the martial arts, at which he was an expert. He will be missed by many.
Submitted by Kimberly Kempf-Leonard
2019
Some of these individuals participated in the ASC Oral History Project. For more information, please go to the Oral History Project page.
KAUKO AROMAA
Criminologist Kauko Aromaa passed away suddenly in his sleep on 18 January 2019 in his home at the age of 75.
Kauko Aromaa was a colorful person who left a visible mark on Finnish criminology. He started his career in 1970 at the Institute of Criminology, a precursor for the current Institute of Criminology and Legal Policy at the University of Helsinki. His very first study, ‘Everyday Violence in Finland’ (1971), paved the way for the development of national victimisation surveys and indicators for the measurement of crime and crime damages, a field in which Kauko played a leading role throughout the 1980s and 1990s. As a result of his activity, Finland also became an active participant in international victimisation studies from the very first survey in 1989 onwards.
Kauko took an active part in international co-operation and in the development comparative criminal statistics, both as a member of the European Sourcebook Working group and as a member of several working groups of the European Society of Criminology.
Kauko was a member of the board of the ESC in 2005-2006 and he acted as president of the association in 2006-2007. He was also the key organiser of the 3rd annual meeting of the European Society of Criminology, held in Helsinki in 2003.
Kauko was a key person in Nordic criminological meetings from the 1970s onwards. He gave lasting input into the development of Nordic research co-operation and to the building of connections between researchers and research institutes across the Nordic countries, continuing here the work that had been instigated by his predecessors at the Institute of Criminology, Inkeri Anttila and Patrik Törnudd, during the 1960s. Kauko Aromaa was a long-standing member of the board of the Scandinavian Criminological Council in 1989-2002 and he acted as president of the Council in 2001-2003.
In 2000, he was appointed as the director of the European Institute for Crime Prevention and Control, affiliated with the United Nations (HEUNI). Thanks to his vast networks, Kauko engaged the institute in various European research projects, thus expanding HEUNI’s research endeavours into new areas. This included research in 2008 on labour exploitation and human trafficking for the purpose of forced labour; he was among the first in Europe to take up this topic. Upon retirement in 2001, he was appointed a professor at the University of Manchester, continuing his career in academia. He continued to participate in European research projects until his death.
In November 2011 Kauko Aromaa was awarded the Freda Adler Distinguished Scholar Award by the American Society of Criminology. Kauko travelled to Washington, D.C. to receive the award together with his wife, Kaarina.
As a criminologist, Kauko could be characterised as one of the last ‘Genuine Generalists’. His expertise and interest covered a broad field of major issues of criminological interest; an increasingly rare feature, when research seems ever more to know more and more about less and less. In his capacity as a researcher, he was brimming with ideas. His reactions to societal changes were quick and incisive, and he had broadened the horizons for research into cross-border crime, corporate safety and human trafficking already by the 1990s. A subject which particularly intrigued him in the 1990s was the criminality in Finland’s neighbouring countries—both Russia and the Baltic countries. Kauko worked closely with Baltic colleagues and contributed with significant input into the development of victimisation surveys in the region.
Kauko Aromaa did not isolate himself in the ivory tower of academic research. Instead, he took his media responsibility seriously and was always willing to comment and consult with the media. In the course of numerous TV interviews and newspaper reports, he became a familiar figure for the Finnish audience as a criminologist who had the ability to place problems into their appropriate scale and to do so in a language that everyone could understand.
Getting Kauko to attend a meeting, or to make a speech or presentation, was not difficult. In his own words, ‘even the worst seminar is better than staying at home’. Indeed, for the ESC-members and his Nordic colleagues, Kauko was a regular sight at conferences and seminars—his figure pushing through the crowds, always with his black ‘Marimekko bag’ full of all sorts of strange stuff, joking, laughing and talking practically to everyone. During the social events around the conferences we— more often than not —had the opportunity to witness Kauko’s talents as a singer, often inspired either by songs from the resistance movements or Finnish tango. There wasn’t an occasion that would have been unfit for a little song, whether it would be a high-level Nordic criminology meeting with several hundred participants or a singing contest with an ex-Russian general at HEUNI international advisory board dinners.
Kauko carried the intellectual and social heritage of the radical 1960s — the protection of the weak and socially marginalised — throughout his whole life. As a student, he was already one of the founding members of the social liberal movement established in Finland in 1967 against social injustices and for the improvement of prisoners’ rights and the living conditions of homeless people. And after his retirement he continued to work in the Federation of Mother and Child Homes and Shelters, supporting children and families in difficult and insecure situations and preventing domestic violence.
Those who have had the opportunity to work together with Kauko remember him as a colleague who never lost his temper and good mood, and who always had time for discussion—and always with a point. We remember him also as a man who loved books, so much that he seemed to want to be literally to be surrounded by them. Some of us still imagine Kauko sitting in his room and surrounded by a massive fortification of stacks of books and papers so that his presence could only be confirmed by the occasional glimpse of his beard and spectacles between the piles.
But most of all, we remember Kauko as a well-read person within whom education and intellectual curiosity combined with friendliness and a good sense of humour.
MARGARET E. BEARE
Dr. Margaret E. Beare (1946-2019) Professor of Sociology and Law, York University and Osgoode Hall Law School
On August 10, 2019, Margaret Beare passed away after a courageous battle with cancer. For those in the criminology community that knew Margaret, she was a passionate believer in the advancement of knowledge to ameliorate the many social ills that challenge a civil society. She was a regular attendee at the ASC Conferences, as well as the renowned Cambridge Conference at Jesus College. A frequent contributor to local Canadian news organizations on issues related to crime, organized crime, and public corruption, Margaret was a prolific researcher who published many articles, co-edited and co-authored several books, as well as publishing, Criminal Conspiracies: Organized Crime in Canada (2015).
Dr. Beare was instrumental in establishing the Nathanson Center for the Study of Organized Crime and Corruption in 1996. Committed to exporting the research of those who challenged traditional notions of organized crime, Margaret was in the fore-front of ensuring that organized crime research was given a diverse platform from which new and innovative approaches could be researched, critiqued and successfully implemented. Inviting renowned social scientists from across the globe to participate in conferences and symposiums organized and funded by the Nathanson Center, Margaret championed conflicting means and methods in describing organized crime and its attendant social and political consequences. She was certainly not shy about enlisting the cadre of conflict and Marxist criminologists in the “war against organized crime,” advancing the belief that much of what is defined or described as organized crime are crimes committed by the state against its people. This certainly set the stage for much after-hours discussions that veered into the wee hours of the morning.
A world traveler, Margaret ultimately adopted the love of her life, Nhai Nguyen-Beare. A devoted mother, Margaret provided Nhai with a wholesome home filled with many academics that came to visit her on a regular basis in Toronto, Canada, exposing Nhai to the diversity that Margaret came to believe was the essence of life. She will be sorely missed by her daughter, and her sisters. And without doubt, by the community of criminologists and students that she infected with her sense of optimism and spirit of adventure. Rest in peace our dear friend and colleague.
Frederick T. Martens, former President of IASOC
HELEN EIGENBERG
Tribute to Our Feminist Scholar Sister
Last night we lost our dear sister, Helen Eigenberg. Helen was an amazing scholar and friend who was also an incredibly dedicated teacher and community and campus activist. And she had the best sense of humor.
Had Helen not been stricken with stage 3B breast cancer at the age of 38, at the same time she was denied tenure in an outrageous act of sexism (the case was settled out of court), we are confident she would have published even more cutting-edge feminist contributions to criminology. We can’t recognize everything, but here are some examples:
- Eigenberg, H. (1990). The National Crime Survey and Rape: The Case of the Missing Question. Justice Quarterly, 7(4):655-671. This article was influential in drastically changing how rape was asked in the NCVS (from the NCS).
- Eigenberg, H., K.E. Scarborough, & V.E. Kappeler. (1996). Contributory Factors Affecting Arresting Domestic and Non-Domestic Assaults.” Journal of Police, 15(4):27-54. This was the first empirical documentation that police are significantly more likely to arrest in non-DV than DV assaults.
- Helen’s numerous publications on rape in men’s prisons (e.g., Journal of Criminal Justice, 2000; Prison Journal, 1989 & 2000; chapter in 1994 edited book Violence in Prisons), including guards’/COs’ views of prisoner rape, where in one she reported “in the prison vernacular” the guards “seem to offer little assistance to inmates except the age-old advice of ‘fight or fuck’” [as cited on p. 277 in a 2012 article by James E. Robertson in the Federal Sentencing Reporter). This scholarship on prison rape resulted in her being interviewed on 60 Minutes March 3, 1996 (Episode 25, Season 2) (something she felt was the nail in her coffin for being denied tenure by some jealous colleagues).
Helen was a founder of the journal Feminist Criminology (FC) and when FC’s first editor had to suddenly step down, Helen took it on with no backlog of accepted articles and worked tirelessly to keep our journal alive, including to assist many new feminist scholars in getting their manuscripts up to speed for FC. (Jo was Helen’s “Deputy Editor” which we quickly renamed “Deputy Dog”. Jo spent her spring break and first time in Chattanooga working on some of these manuscripts with Helen in her house which was an amazing time together.)
In addition to her dedication to Feminist Criminology, Helen’s commitment to the DWC is far too extensive to cover (as are her publications, advocacy, and friendship) in this tribute, but here are some:
- In 2012, Helen was the inaugural winner of the DWC’s Sarah Hall Award, named after Susan Case’s predecessor of over 3 decades, Sarah Hall, who was a huge friend to our division. This award recognizes outstanding service to the DWC and professional interests regarding feminist criminology (see https://blog.utc.edu/news/2012/12/dr-helen-eigenberg-earns-inaugural-national-award/).
- 2008 recipient of the DWC’s Inconvenient Woman of the Year Award, given for her implementation of the Green Dot program to fight campus rape at the University of Tennessee-Chattanooga, as well as countless other activism resisting violence against women on and off of UT-C’s campus.
- She was the DWC website guru from the beginning of our website, until someone else took it over after years of Helen doing this. She was also chair of the DWC nominations for years.
The four of us (Joanne Belknap, Mona Danner, Helen Eigenberg and Nancy Wonders) met through various ASC and ACJS events starting in we think in the late 1980s, but primarily bonded through the DWC. We bonded over being feminist criminologists, there weren’t so many of us in those days, and our similar senses of humor and love of life. After an incredibly intense DWC meeting in San Francisco in 1991 where many members righteously and powerfully disclosed sexual exploitation and assaults by male colleagues at professional meetings and on our campuses, our fearsome foursome friendship was the most solidified. The last day we were there (a Saturday or Sunday) we went to Haight-Ashbury and realized we were all born in 1958, and we became the 58 GRRRLS. Since 1991, 3 of the 4 of us have had breast cancer and 2 of the 4 of us had painful “no-confidence” votes in our positions of chair by colleagues we thought were our friends and for whom we’d advocated. We saw each other through other painful life and work events with an enduring and solid love and respect for each other. The year we turned 50, Helen organized our first no-work event, renting a cabin near Gatlinburg. Our last night, drinking wine by a fire, Mona asked us all to think what we thought our work legacy would be, and we all said it would be the amazing students we’d had the honor to teach. We have always loved talking about our teaching and students. Since then, we have had had many mini-vacations together in varied places and varied times of the year, most recently again in a cabin near Gatlinburg and again organized by Helen, for 5 days before the ASC conference in November (2018).
A year ago, in January 2018, Helen was diagnosed with terminal cancer in her lungs, bones, and later, her brain. Her courage and humor over this last year is nothing short of heroic. Her doctors didn’t think she could survive the intensive chemo, radiation and surgeries of the initial treatments starting last January (so hadn’t put in a port). She obviously did to the doctors’ amazement. The 3 of us went to stay with her last March. One of our goals was to help her put some weight back on and we (and her doctors) were thrilled when she’d put on 5 pounds. (Jo put on 8 pounds—true story.) Last summer, Helen came to Jo’s & Scott’s (Jo’s partner) in Colorado to buy marijuana—on the advice of her palliative care providers— to help with her pain and the treatment-induced nausea, which we turned into a week-long adventure. Jo’s Boulder medical friends assisted in the advice on the best dispensaries and brands at a dinner at her house, where Molly Bowers, was also present. Molly had a terrible wrongful conviction case that the DWC was very helpful in and she had wanted to meet Helen for a long time (via Jo’s reports of her and Helen’s support of Molly’s unsuccessful appeal for a new trial). Helen has referred to Scott as “The Saint” for years, for being able to live with Jo given the rate of lost keys and wallets; insufficient clothes and toiletries, at ASC conferences. Of course, The Saint loved Helen! He made a wonderful meal Helen, Molly, Jo, Scott, and their medical friends ate in the backyard. Later we heard tat at another dinner party someone said, “that’s probably the first and last time I’ll eat a dinner where both a former incarcerated person and a former prison guard [Helen] discussed how fucked up the prison system is!” One of many priceless moments was in one of the dispensaries when many people were in line with Helen and Jo and a cheery, loud, youthful voice said, “Hi, Professor Belknap!” and everyone in the dispensary (about 30 people) burst out laughing.
Although we’ve known Helen was dying for the last year and originally hadn’t expected her to live past March 2018, she was so vibrant last summer on the pot quest and in November in our Tennessee cabin, we didn’t realize we would never see her again. She had plans for another dispensary trip to Colorado in December and we were all talking about our next adventures together, believing we had more time. In December she got pneumonia and went downhill quickly. She passed January 25, 2019.
This world lost an amazing feminist scholar, teacher and activist, and our very dear, smart, generous, and hilarious sister.
With Great Sadness but Also Gratitude for Having Been Loved by Helen,
Jo, Mona, and Nancy
M. KAY HARRIS
M. Kay Harris, age 71, Associate Professor Emerita of Criminal Justice at Temple University, passed away after a sudden illness on November 16, 2018.
Kay was a founding faculty member of Temple’s Criminal Justice Department in 1981. Over the next three decades, Kay was instrumental in the department’s development to a highly ranked Ph.D. program. Kay’s research, teaching and wide-ranging service to the field was focused on issues related to institutional and community-based corrections and informed by her deep-seated desire to create a more just system of criminal justice.
In 1997, while department chair, Kay worked with Lori Pompa to develop the Inside-Out Prison Exchange program, through which Temple students and incarcerated individuals studied together in semester-long courses. Kay helped shape Inside-Out into an internationally recognized program of transformative education and, following her retirement in 2012, continued to nurture Inside-Out and contribute to discourse on correctional policy. Kay also worked with the Lifers Initiative at the SCI- Grateford prison (an organization comprised of and run by life-sentenced individuals) advocating for alternatives to life sentences in Pennsylvania. On multiple occasions, she organized mini-conferences at the prison bringing together incarcerated men and world-renowned criminologists to tackle pressing issues in the correctional field.
Kay’s commitment and contributions to criminal justice reform predated her time at Temple. Before joining Temple, Kay was already a prominent figure with major reform and advocacy organizations such as the ABA. She served on the staff of the 1967 Johnson Crime Commission, which in many respects is where the multidisciplinary field of criminal justice took off.
Kay also left a lasting mark on the lives of many undergraduate and graduate students she taught, many of whom have gone on to promote her social justice ideals in their own careers.
Kay was an adventurer who enjoyed traveling throughout the United States and the world. She often combined travel with her commitment to criminal justice reform by visiting prisons and correctional agencies on multiple continents, constantly working for peaceful social transformation.
Kay enjoyed contra and swing dancing and while travelling for business or pleasure would look for opportunities to join in local contra and swing dance nights. She will be fondly remembered for her boundless joie de vivre and optimism, her deep compassion and wisdom, and her long-lasting friendships.
Kay received her B.A. from the School of Social Welfare at the University of Kansas and her M.A. from the School of Social Service Administration at the University of Chicago.
Contributions in her honor may be made to the Kay Harris Inside-Out Education Fund HERE, or at: www.insideoutcenter.org/our-supporters.html. (Please be sure to specify that the tribute is in Kay’s memory.)
Contributed by (alphabetically): Alan Harland, Brett Harris, Phil Harris, Peter Jones, Lori Pompa, Cathy Rosen, Ralph Taylor, and Rely Vîlcică.
C. RON HUFF
Our dear friend and colleague, C. Ron Huff, passed away on March 31, 2019 after bravely battling pancreatic cancer. A long-time professor in Criminology, Law and Society at the University of California, Irvine and at the John Glenn College of Public Affairs at The Ohio State University, Ron served as Dean of the School of Social Ecology at UCI and Director of the John Glenn College at OSU, where he also served as Director of the Criminal Justice Research Center.
Ron began his interest in the field working in corrections in Ohio, after receiving a MSW degree from the University of Michigan. He earned a doctorate in sociology from Ohio State in 1974, studying criminology with Sy Dinitz. After teaching at UC Irvine and Purdue, Ron returned to Ohio State, where he produced a distinguished body of research and established himself as a great academic administrator. He came to UC Irvine in 1999 to lead the School of Social Ecology, which he did for more than a decade, before returning to the faculty to focus full-time on his teaching and scholarship. He continued to produce impressive scholarship and undertake innovative teaching (such as creating an online course that quickly became a favorite).
Ron’s scholarly legacy includes at least three major lines of influence: formative work on the idea and importance of wrongful convictions, research and policy recommendations about youth gangs, and a career-long dedication to the obligations of the public university in scholarship and education about pressing issues of policy.
Ron was one of the first scholars to emphasize the problem of wrongful convictions and his early work along these lines helped bring research and scholarship on miscarriages of justice into the center of criminology and public policy debates. He began researching and writing about innocence among the convicted before most believed that systematic research on the topic was a realistic possibility and when most policy-oriented research in criminal justice was focused on crime reduction and prevention. His books (Convicted but Innocent (with A. Rattner, and E. Sagarin) and Wrongful Conviction with Martin Killias) are foundational to the field.
Ron’s scholarship has stimulated an extensive amount of academic and policy work on theory and research about gangs. Ron and his colleagues used multiple methods to study gang formation and behavior, to assess police and other intervention methods and to analyze official gang definitions and recording of gang members. His three edited volumes, Gangs in America, brought foundational research to the field.
In all, Ron authored a dozen books and over 100 journal articles. He is a Fellow of the American Society of Criminology and served as President of the American Society of Criminology, and on dozens of committees and councils of the ASC. His many honors include the Donald Cressey Award from the National Council on Crime and Delinquency, the Paul Tappan Award from the Western Society of Criminology, the Herbert Bloch Award and the August Vollmer Award from the American Society of Criminology, and the Gerhard O.W. Mueller International Award from the Academy of Criminal Justice.
Ron served tirelessly as a consultant to national and state agencies and courts about innocence, gangs, youth violence, and public policy, such as the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, the F.B.I. National Academy, and the American Bar Association committee on wrongful convictions. In retirement, he continued to offer his expertise to those working in the criminal justice system who sought to understand gangs, prevent miscarriages of justice, and otherwise ensure that public policy and practice ensured justice.
At UC Irvine, Ron led the School of Social Ecology for ten years. He became well known for asking three questions: What’s good for the public? What’s good for the University of California? And, what’s good for the School of Social Ecology? With these questions as his guide, he served the public, UCI, and Social Ecology exceptionally well. As he did so he became known for his fundamental decency and his daily acts of kindness. With his leadership, we maintained and further strengthened a “culture of civility” in our School. The tie that binds Ron’s scholarly interests together with his administrative contributions was his belief that basic research is essential for sound public policy and that public universities have an obligation to learn and to teach about how vital that connection is.
At UCI, Ron was widely and justifiably admired by his faculty, and by his colleague dean and vice chancellors, for fairness and decency in administration. And in every way–in his scholarship, in his teaching and in his stewardship of the university–Ron was driven by the highest standards of excellence. His great optimism and sense of humor were unfailing. For these and so many more reasons, he will be greatly missed. Ron is survived by his wife of 51 years, Patricia Huff, and by daughters Tamara Connor (and Michael) and Tiffany Huff and by granddaughters Skylar and Hazel. All of us recall a conversation with Ron that inevitably came around to a loving comment about one or another family member; one quickly understood that his family meant the world to him.
Michael Gottfredson, Valerie Jenness, Cheryl Maxson, and Carroll Seron
Oral History of Criminology Project Interview
PAUL D. JESILOW
Professor Emeritus Paul Jesilow passed away on December 20, 2019 from a series of illnesses, a month shy of his 70th birthday. He was a beloved colleague in the Department of Criminology, Law and Society in the School of Social Ecology at the University of California, Irvine (UCI) over the past four decades. Paul was the only faculty member in UCI’s School of Social Ecology’s history to receive his undergraduate and graduate degrees at UCI. He made highly significant contributions to the University despite dealing with major physical disabilities sustained in a car accident as a teenager. He was a quintessential role model for students, especially underrepresented students and those with physical disabilities, and was a noted scholar, making major contributions to criminology, particularly the study of white-collar crime.
Paul grew up in Pico Rivera and attended El Rancho High School, where he was later inducted into the Hall of Fame. After enrolling at UCI as an undergraduate, he served as a teaching assistant for a prisons course taught by Professor Gilbert Geis, who later became his mentor, close colleague and friend. Paul earned his B.A. in Sociology and Political Science (1972) and his M.A. (1976) and Ph.D. (1982) in Social Ecology, at the time, a novel interdisciplinary academic unit. In 1980, Paul began his professorial career in the Department of Criminal Justice at Indiana University (IU). Paul returned to UCI in 1987 as an Assistant Professor of Social Ecology, and was subsequently promoted to associate and then full professor. He was a truly committed and exceptional teacher. Undergraduates consistently ranked Paul as one of the best professors in the School of Social Ecology. He won the School’s “Outstanding Professor” award multiple times (1999, 2000, 2002, 2004, 2005, and 2006), and was named “Professor of the Year” in the Department of Criminology, Law and Society in 1994, 2002, 2003, 2004, and 2006.
Paul conducted numerous research projects during his career, publishing 6 books and editions, 50 articles and chapters, and additional official reports on topics ranging from healthcare fraud to policing, gender and crime, sentencing, criminal deterrence, social justice, criminological theory, criminal justice evaluation, and white-collar and corporate crime. With IU colleague Hal Pepinsky, he co-authored the acclaimed book, Myths that Cause Crime, which directly challenged a number of criminological shibboleths. Published in numerous editions, it received the Outstanding Book Award from the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences, given annually for a work that makes an “extraordinary contribution to the study of crime and criminal justice.”
He also helped establish UCI as a center for the study of white-collar and corporate crime, and was a Co-PI, along with Gil Geis and Henry Pontell, on the first major research project looking at health care fraud in government medical programs, specifically, Medicaid fraud. He received a major NIJ grant that culminated in a pathbreaking UC Press book (Prescription for Profit: How Doctors Defraud Medicaid), numerous publications in top national and international outlets, and research results that influenced policymaking and law enforcement groups. In 2010, Paul was the Keynote Speaker at the Annual Meeting of the National Association for Medicaid Program Integrity. He also studied healthcare fraud internationally, and in 2002, was a Fulbright Scholar at Stockholm University in Sweden.
Paul was also well ahead of the curve in appreciating and highlighting diversity issues, now a trademark of the academy. He was central to UCI’s efforts early on to advance diversity in all ways in academia. In the early 1990s, he played a major role in recruiting female faculty to the Department of Criminology, Law and Society, where they were at the time underrepresented. He was also an active member of the Chicano civil rights movement on the UCI campus. He was a compassionate and tireless advocate for ensuring campus accessibility for individuals with physical disabilities, and on numerous occasions, the University solicited his opinions regarding construction designs.
Paul enjoyed life to the fullest, despite chronically experiencing what was often extreme physical pain. He participated in campus and department events, and, when he was able to, traveled around the country and world conducting field research and attending academic events. He was a dedicated and knowledgeable basketball fan and former player, and served as a coach for a number of years in the Irvine Youth Basketball League. He attended UCI men’s and women’s basketball games with his daughter, Karolina. His beaming attitude toward life in the face of incredible physical hardship enriched everyone around him, and he was loved by many. He fought brilliantly and bravely through numerous serious health issues for a half-century while accomplishing major professional success and mentoring many others along the way. He leaves his wife Julie, daughter Karolina (age 11) and sons Tavin and Granger (age 5).
Bryan Burton, Sonoma State University
Henry Pontell, John Jay College of Criminal Justice and UCI
Elliott Currie, UCI
Diego Vigil, UCI
CHARLES L. NEWMAN
Dr. Charles L. Newman, age 92 of Louisville, Kentucky passed away on September 4, 2019. Noted criminologist and author, he was a former University of Louisville professor, devoted husband of Della Scott Newman, and member of Southeast Christian Church. Boxing as a sparring partner for Frank Sinatra in his youth, and service in the Pacific during World War II contributed to his grit and determination through almost 93 years, including his final battle with cancer.
He was a former Professor at University of Louisville, the Pennsylvania State University, Florida State University, University of Texas, Arlington, University of North Dakota and others. He was the former President of the Administration of Justice Services, Inc., a Fellow and former President of the American Society of Criminology, former Director of the Dallas (Texas) County Jail, and former Director of the City of El Paso (Texas) Jail.
After spending his early years in Montreal, Charles Newman returned to the U.S. to attend New York University and then enlisted in the Army in 1943, serving as a medic during World War II in the Pacific on Saipan and Guam. After discharge in November, 1946 he completed Bachelors, Masters and Doctoral degrees at New York University in Correctional Administration. Following graduation he taught at Fairleigh Dickinson College and then was a field director with the American Red Cross in Rhode Island and then at Fort Knox, KY. He was then invited to teach at the University of North Dakota, where he introduced a criminology course. He also served as a consultant to help relocate Native American children from the reservation school to surrounding communities due to closing of the Fort Bethold Reservation to make way for the Garrison Dam project.
In 1955, he went to Florida State University where helped establish a Corrections degree program. In 1959, he returned to Kentucky, joining the University of Louisville Kent School of Social Work, where he introduced a specialty in Correctional Social Work. He served on Kentucky Commissions relating to the Criminal Justice System, and helped to organize the KY Council on Crime and Delinquency. He also organized and directed National Institutes on Probation and Parole Supervision at the University of Louisville. In 1966, he was invited to Pennsylvania State University to design and create a curriculum in Law Enforcement and Corrections. He also established the Police Executive Training Program for senior local and state law enforcement officials and for a period of time directed the National Jail Resources Institute. He continued these activities until retiring as Professor Emeritus in 1977.
In 1978 he was invited as a visiting professor at the University of Texas, Arlington, which set the stage for his activities of the next several decades. He was asked by Judge Sarah Hughes to monitor and consult with the Dallas County, TX jails, which were under Federal Court Jurisdiction. The next year Judge Hughes ordered that he take over as Director of the jail system, which he did until it was released from Federal oversight in 1980. During his tenure, operations were reorganized, a number of inmate training programs were introduced and a new facility for low risk prisoners was opened. From their he went to El Paso, TX, where he reorganized jail operations, expanded inmate housing and assisted in planning a new jail. In 1985, he returned to Louisville, where he created a national criminal justice planning and consulting business, which provided assistance to county and state governments on planning, and to architects on cost effective jail design, which led to the construction of modern jails across the country.
He wrote, edited and contributed to 19 books and numerous articles and research reports. He created and edited the journal Criminologica for the American Society of Criminology, of which he later served as President. The journal was later renamed Criminology, and he returned as editor.
Dr. Newman received numerous awards for his research and scholarship, including Fellow of the American Society for the advancement of Science, Fellow of the American Society of Criminology and the Western Society of Criminology. He was given the NYU Trustees award for his scholarship. He is listed in Who’s Who in America, American Authors, American Men of Science among others, and was a Kentucky Colonel. His was an active life, well lived.
JOAN PETERSILIA
Joan Petersilia (1951–2019) was a distinguished scholar, policy advisor, President of the American Society of Criminology, and cherished colleague and mentor to too many people to count. To her, even more importantly, she was a loving wife, mother, and sister; a good friend; an engaged community member; and consummate public servant committed to positioning social science analyses front and center when it comes to doing all we can to ensure criminal justice systems better people’s lives, including by delivering justice.
The daughter of an Air Force General and an Army nurse, Joan was born in Pittsburgh, and she earned her BA degree in sociology from Loyola University of Los Angeles in 1972, her MA in sociology from The Ohio State University in 1974, and her PhD in criminology, law and society at the University of California, Irvine in 1990. During an illustrious career spanning over four decades, she was a Senior Researcher and Director of The Criminal Justice Program at RAND (1989-1994); a Professor of Criminology, Law and Society and the Founding Director of the Center for Evidence-Based Corrections at the University of California, Irvine (1992-2009); and The Adelbert H. Sweet Professor of Law at Stanford University (2009-2018), where she was also the Co-Director of The Stanford Criminal Justice Center. Professor Petersilia was a preeminent scholar and one of the most widely known and respected criminologists in the world. The quality and impact of her work was recognized with the 2014 Stockholm Prize in Criminology, the most prestigious award in criminology (sometimes called “The Nobel Prize in criminology”).
Joan’s principal scholarly focus was on the workings of the criminal justice system, including how it processes people, how it makes decisions about various sanctions, and the consequences of those decisions for both society and those punished. Although her voluminous body of work covered a range of topics, from probation, prosecutorial decisions, criminal careers, and the processing of vulnerable populations such as people with disabilities, she is best known for her innovative work on sentencing, community corrections, and prisoner reentry. Her work on these and other issues focused on improving the corrections system through program evaluation and policy relevant research; in fact, she referred to herself as “an embedded criminologist” as a way of emphasizing that her professional pursuits as a researcher and scholar required her to effectively work from within the criminal justice system.
With an applied interest as her guide, Joan often was ahead of the times. Beginning her research career at RAND in 1974, she was one of the first criminologists to recognize community corrections as an important area for research and to conduct large-scale empirical studies in this area. Beginning in the mid-1980s, much of her research focused on assessing the impact of community-based punishments on offender behavior and public safety. Her research in this area includes a number of specific program evaluations, including evaluations of intensive supervision, electronic monitoring, day fines, drug testing, and work release. With her colleague Susan Turner, she pioneered the use of the experimental paradigm in real-world criminal justice settings to assess the impact of intensive supervision. In a related line of empirical work, she examined the effects of diverting people from prison to intermediate sanctions. This research focused on such questions as how much prison populations could be decreased by diverting specific classes of offenders to community corrections, and how much crime that group would be expected to commit if left at large.
In the late 1990s, Joan turned her attention to a new line of research by focusing on the way in which the justice system deals with individuals with developmental disabilities. Her work along these lines broke new ground by demonstrating that people with developmental disabilities are disproportionately likely to be involved in the criminal justice system as both victims of crime and people who commit crime, and the inability of the system to understand their special needs and problems is a significant public policy problem. As a result of growing national interest in this topic, the U.S. Congress passed the “Crime Victims with Disabilities Awareness Act,” signed by President Clinton in 1998. The Act mandated a National Research Council panel on the topic. Joan was appointed chair of that panel, and in that role she co-wrote the final report, “Crime Victims with Developmental Disabilities,” which was published and distributed by the National Academy of Sciences (2001). Also at the turn of the century, Joan was once again ahead of her time when she directed scholarly and policy attention to what is now commonly called “the prisoner re-entry problem.” As prison populations swelled in the United States, she led the way in understanding two aspects of prisoners’ re-entry into the community: (1) the consequences of releasing large numbers of formerly incarcerated people into communities, and (2) determining what types of re-entry programs are most effective. Related to this concern, she wrote a review essay commissioned by the National Institute of Justice, “Parole and Prisoner Reentry” that also appeared as a chapter in her co-edited book, Prisons (1999). Thereafter, in her (now classic) book titled When Prisoners Come Home (2003), she utilized both qualitative and quantitative data to critically examine the prisoner reentry problem. The Public Interest explained, this book provides a “masterful synthesis” and “sensible recommendations” about how to best address the challenges of re-entry for prisoners and communities.
Throughout her career, Professor Petersilia was called upon by government officials to lead efforts to reform the criminal justice system. For example, she was tapped by the California State Legislature to chair an expert panel on correctional reform in California and thereafter by the Governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger, to chair a strike team charged with the implementation of California Assembly Bill 900, also known as the Public Safety and Offender Rehabilitation Services Act of 2007. For this work, the Governor formally thanked Professor Petersilia for bringing systematic evidence to bear on correctional reform and significantly influencing his thinking about prison and parole reform in California. Her influence on California policy over the years was substantial and consequential. Former California Governor Jerry Brown shared that “Joan was a giant intellect whose contributions to improving our criminal justice system are immense and will thankfully survive us all. I was honored to know and work with her.”
Likewise, Professor Petersilia’s work has been recognized by a plethora of research and service awards from diverse audiences, including academic societies, community groups, practitioner organizations, and government agencies. As just two examples, she was an elected Fellow of the American Society of Criminology and she received its Vollmer Award for scholarship and professional activities that have made outstanding contributions to justice or to the treatment or prevention of criminal or delinquent behavior.
Over the course of her career, Professor Petersilia did not assume that social science research, however well done, will miraculously find its way to public policy makers; thus, she routinely worked with lawmakers, law enforcement agencies, and corrections officials on issues surrounding criminal justice reform. For example, she testified before both the California Legislature and the U.S. Congress on issues pertaining to crime victims with disabilities and parole, successfully encouraging new legislation in these areas; she participated in the National Institute of Justice’s Executive Sessions on Sentencing and Corrections with a group of officials who met quarterly to discuss policy issues; she briefed hundreds of organizations on her research on community corrections, crime and disabilities, and prisoner re-entry problems; and, most recently, she served as the leading expert for many stakeholders, including the governor, on the implementation of California’s Public Safety Realignment Law of 2011 (A.B. 109), the state’s historic attempt to downsize prisons, enhance rehabilitation, and protect public safety.
Joan enjoyed a national and international reputation among scholars, policymakers, and practitioners alike as someone who effectively takes research beyond the walls of academe and into the belly of the criminal justice system, especially corrections. Always asking policy-relevant questions, she was greatly respected for her ability to analyze highly politicized issues in a fair, impartial, and data-driven manner and to cast light on such issues by utilizing rigorous empirical research. For this reason, she is easily recognized as one of the most applauded and decorated applied criminologists in both the United States and abroad.
One of Joan’s mentors, Peter Greenwood, commented that “Joan was well organized and a self-starter from the day she started at RAND. She always had a clear idea of where she was headed and how to get there. As soon as something appears on her ‘to do’ list, she is up at 5 a.m. hammering away on it.” Those who know Joan best would agree and attest to the fact that her passion for the work she did was fueled by the sheer love of doing criminological research and an unwavering commitment to escorting research into arenas where it can make a difference in the lives of real people, families and communities, especially those who most suffer from policies and practices that can be improved by evidence-based considerations. Her compassion for others knew no bounds; it motivated her dogged work ethic and insatiable desire to “get it right.” Likewise, she took great pleasure and pride in cultivating this passion and commitment in others, including her many law students and Ph.D. students over the decades. Indeed, toward the end of her life, she often remarked on how she found inspiration in her students and took great pride in their many accomplishments, knowing they represent the future.
Joan passed away on September 23, 2019, following a hard-fought battle against ovarian cancer. She was 68 and is survived by her husband, Stephen Richard Thomas, her sons Jeffrey Ramme Petersilia and Kyle Gregory Petersilia; her two sisters Margaret (Peggy) Ann Johnson (Douglas) and Jeanne Cora Sydenstricker (Robert Michael), nephews Stephen Michael Sydenstricker and Brent Ramme Sydentstricker, and nieces Lindsay Rosewater Sacco, Andrea Michelle Johnson and Stacy Johnson Kassover. Remembrances may be made to Santa Barbara Special Olympics (281 Magnolia Ave Suite #200, Goleta, CA 93117), a group which held a special place in Joan’s heart.
Michael Gottfredson, University of California,
Irvine Valerie Jenness, University of California,
Irvine Jodi Lane, University of Florida
Mona Lynch, University of California, Irvine
Oral History of Criminology Project Interview
MARC RIEDEL
Dr. Marc Riedel, 80, a resident of Walker, Louisiana, passed away on December 11, 2019.
Marc was an active researcher and teacher in the field of criminology who mentored numerous students. He completed his doctoral studies at the University of Pennsylvania in 1972, under the tutelage of Dr. Marvin Wolfgang, a pioneering researcher of homicide studies. Upon completing his degree, Marc taught at Southern Illinois University, earning the title of Full Professor, and Southeastern Louisiana University, before retiring from the latter in 2015 as Professor Emeritus.
Marc wrote extensively on violence, homicide and the death penalty. His research on racial discrimination and the death penalty was cited in the U.S. Supreme Court case Gregg v. Georgia (1976), which set various guidelines in imposing capital punishment. His most recent textbook, Criminal Violence: Patterns, Explanations and Interventions, is in its fourth edition. In 1985, Marc was awarded the Herbert A. Bloch award for outstanding service to the society and the profession by the American Society of Criminology. In 2013, his research was recognized by Southeastern Louisiana University for the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences Award for Excellence in Research.
Marc was born July 25, 1939 in Tipton, Kansas. Marc is survived by wife Patricia Vickers Moore Riedel, mother of his children Sharon L. Riedel, son Brian Riedel (Lynne), son Eric Riedel, mother of Eric’s children Aylin Altan, brother Michael Jr. Riedel (Jennette), and grandchildren Evan Riedel, Julius Riedel, Erika Riedel, Felix Riedel, and Claire Riedel. He is preceded in death by sisters Alice Havel (nee Riedel) and Laurine Kreipe (nee Riedel) and parents Michael and Anna Riedel.
FRANK R. SCARPITTI
The field of criminology mourns the loss of Frank R. Scarpitti, who passed away on February 28, 2019. He was 82. Frank was born in Butler, PA and moved to Cleveland, Ohio at age 11. He attended junior and senior high school in Cleveland and graduated from Cleveland State University in 1958. He immediately entered graduate school at The Ohio State University, receiving his Ph.D. Degree in sociology in 1962. Although trained in criminology, his first professional position was as director of one of the first community mental health research studies, testing the efficacy of home care for schizophrenic patients. This research was published in the book Schizophrenics in the Community, and received the American Psychiatric Association’s Hofhemier Prize for Research in 1967. Thus began a 44-year career of teaching, research and writing.
After spending four years on the faculty of Rutgers University, he accepted an associate professorship at the University of Delaware in 1967, moving his wife and young daughter to Radcliffe Drive in Newark, a home he and Ellen never left. Two years later he was promoted to full professor and appointed Chair of the Department of Sociology (later Sociology and Criminal Justice). He served in that position for 17 years over several terms. The year 1969 was also notable because their second child, a son, Jeffrey, was born.
Frank was a prolific scholar and writer, authoring, coauthoring or editing 19 books and over 60 articles and chapters. He researched and wrote on mental health, crime, delinquency, corrections, deviant behavior, social problems, drug treatment and the role of organized crime in illegal waste disposal. His coauthored book, Poisoning for Profit, was widely cited by legal and legislative officials as the impetus for legal action designed to curb unlawful waste dumping. He was recognized nationally by being elected President of the American Society of Criminology as well as holding various offices in several other professional organizations. In 1981, he was elected Fellow in the American Society of Criminology, in recognition of his scholarly contribution to the intellectual life of the discipline.
Frank was also committed to the University of Delaware, particularly to ensuring a climate of equality. In 1968, he was appointed by the University President to Chair the Advisory Committee on Policies, Programs, and Services Affecting Blacks and Other Minority Group Students. The committee was tasked with recommending policies to improve the campus climate for minority students. They presented their recommendations in what became known as The Scarpitti Report, which had a large influence on policies designed to increase recruitment of minority students and faculty, and also ensure their representation on the Board of Trustees.
In 2006, Frank was named the Edward and Elizabeth Rosenberg Professor of Sociology and Criminal Justice and received the Francis Alison Award, the University of Delaware’s highest faculty honor. Despite his various honors and awards, he was proudest of the many graduate students with whom he worked and who have assumed a variety of academic and governmental positions. Nearly 50 of them returned to Newark to attend his retirement celebration. In Frank’s honor as a graduate student mentor, the Frank Scarpitti Graduate Student Award is presented annually to a graduate student in the Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice. It is still not uncommon for faculty and students alike to ask, “What would Frank do?” when challenging issues arise.
The most important sphere of Frank’s life was his family. Frank was a devoted husband and father, participating with Susan and Jeffrey in a variety of activities as they passed through their childhood and teenage years. For over 20 summers, the family moved to its farm in Pennsylvania, where they adopted a simpler lifestyle focused on the outdoors and the wonders of nature. For Frank, these were perhaps the happiest years of his life. Although he worked a great deal, he always had time for baseball, mystery novels, and old western movies, a subject he often lectured on.
He will be remembered as a kind, caring person, often generous to a fault, who once said he wanted to be remembered as a “good man.” His family and friends believe he achieved his goal. A memorial service will be held at a future date. He is survived by his wife of 60 years, Ellen Canfield Scarpitti; a daughter, Susan Scarpitti Newstrom, son-in-law, George; daughter-in-law, Lisa Scarpitti; granddaughter, Alyssa Padilla and her children Bella and Matthew Castro; sister, Rita Bournique; brother Ronald; and various nieces and nephews. He was pre deceased by his son, Jeffrey, parents Frank and Geneva Scarpitti, brother Louis, and sister, Alice Lazor.
FRANK R. SCARPITTI
In lieu of flowers, contributions can be made in his honor to the University of Delaware, Gift Processing, 83 E. Main St., 3rd Floor, Newark, DE 19716, including in the check memo line “Frank Scarpitti Graduate Student Award in the Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice.” Gifts can also be made on the University of Delaware secure website, www.udel.edu/makeagift and including the same designation. To send online condolences, visit www.stranofeeley.com.
Oral History of Criminology Project Interview
BENJAMIN M. STEINER
Benjamin M. Steiner passed away on January 22, 2019 at the age of 43 after a hard-fought battle with cancer. Ben was born on March 3, 1975 to Kathy (Jarolimek) and Stan Steiner in Bismarck, North Dakota where he also spent his formative years of schooling.
Ben received his B.S. in Sociology from North Dakota State University in 1997 and worked as a youth counselor and juvenile probation officer in Idaho. Ben earned a M.A. in Criminal Justice from Boise State University in 2002 and received his Ph.D. in 2008 from the School of Criminal Justice at the University of Cincinnati. He was an assistant professor in the Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of South Carolina from 2008-12 and promoted to associate professor rank in 2012. He joined the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of Nebraska Omaha in 2012 and earned full professor rank in 2017.
Over the course of his short career, Ben became one of the nation’s leading scholars of institutional corrections. He was awarded the Young Scholar Award from the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences’ Juvenile Justice Section in 2009, the Distinguished New Scholar Award by the American Society of Criminology’s Division on Corrections and Sentencing in 2012, and the Outstanding Research Award by the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of Nebraska Omaha in 2012. He amassed over one million dollars in state and federal grants while producing two books, 60+ journal articles, numerous book chapters, project reports, and monographs. A great deal of his work involved partnerships with local and state corrections institutions in Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, and Ohio. Many of his publications and research projects also involved students who called him an outstanding mentor.
Ben’s scholarship contributions were exceptional in depth and rigor. Always at the forefront in his field, his accumulated knowledge on causes of prisoner misconduct and victimization, consequences of in-prison misconduct and the sanctioning of offenders, and sources of correctional officers’ behaviors and attitudes toward prisoners have influenced the trajectories of many criminal justice scholars.
To those who knew him well, Ben was funny, witty, passionate, and warm-hearted. In his spare time, he renovated his 100-year old home, planned family vacations, cooked great meals, exercised, and played card games. He enjoyed traveling to new places – preferably with water or mountains. Ben’s professional and personal life had great meaning and he will be deeply missed by all those who knew him.
Ben leaves behind his beloved wife Emily (Wright), whom he met and married while they were both doctoral students at the University of Cincinnati. He was a devoted husband and wonderful father to their son, John. Ben is survived by parents Kathy Jarolimek (Ken) in Bismarck, North Dakota and Stan Steiner (Joy) in Jackson, Wyoming. Brothers and sisters: Keith Jarolimek (Kim), Colorado Springs, Co; Kristy Owens (Eric), Lincoln, North Dakota; Angie O’Hara (James), Yuma, AZ; Matthew Jarolimek (Christy), Minneapolis, MN; Lea Steiner and Avi Steiner, Boise, ID. Ben also leaves behind two grandmothers: Angela Jarolimek, Fargo, ND and Jane Berryman, Guthrie, OK and many nieces, nephews, uncles, aunts and cousins. He also was preceded in death by his grandparents: Carl and Mary Radloff, John F. and Anna Marie Steiner, Matt Jarolimek, and Oscar Berryman.
A memorial service is being planned in March of 2019. In lieu of flowers, the family asks that donations be made to the American Society of Criminology’s Division on Corrections and Sentencing “Benjamin Steiner Excellence in Corrections Research Award.” A description of the award can be found here:
https://account.asc41.org/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageID=3352
Donations can be made online or by check: Make checks payable to the American Society of Criminology and include The Benjamin Steiner Award in the notes. Mail to: American Society of Criminology, 921 Chatham Lane, Ste. 108, Columbus, OH 43221
Online donations: https://account.asc41.org/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageID=3352
Scroll to the bottom to find: You can make a donation online using our donation form. Click on the donation form link, and be directed to a portal where log-in will be required. Non-ASC members must set up a temporary account then can log in and make a tax-deductible donation to Ben’s Award.
Memorials may be sent to the University of Nebraska Foundation to benefit the Dr. Benjamin Steiner Fellowship for Criminal Justice Professionals – 1010 Lincoln Mall, Suite 300, Lincoln, NE 68508
STEPHEN TIBBETTS
Feb 22, 2017.
Photo by Jasmin Limon/CSUSB
Dr. Stephen Tibbetts passed away unexpectedly on September 10, 2019, at age 49, of natural causes. He is survived by his loving wife, Kim, talented daughter, Rian, and caring parents, Steve and Jane.
Steve graduated with his Ph.D. in Criminology and Criminal Justice from the University of Maryland in 1997. He was an assistant professor at East Tennessee State University from 1996-2000, before joining the faculty at California State University, San Bernardino where he worked for 19 years. Then, in August 2019, Steve joined the faculty at Radford University as Chair of the Criminal Justice Department. During his career, he authored 10 textbooks and over 50 scholarly journal articles. In 2011, he won one of CSUSB’s highest accolades, the “Outstanding Professor Award.”
While there is no doubt Steve had an impressive contribution to the academic world, his impacts on a personal level are the real reason we celebrate his life and mourn his death. The following contributions highlight what Steve meant to us as a friend, colleague, and mentor.
***
Steve and I started graduate school at the University of Maryland College Park together, took every course together, shared an office, an amazing mentor (Ray Paternoster), ideas, life experiences, and so much more. We were inseparable, bonded by our love of criminology, football, sports, Marathon Deli, and too many other things to name here. Steve’s mind never turned-off. Studying for comps at a restaurant every Friday afternoon, we would talk theory, policy, theory, methods for hours on end. We came up with so many ideas talking about comps, and actually drafted a survey on the balcony of LeFrak Hall that turned up to be one of our first but best publications on rational choice and individual differences in Justice Quarterly.
STEPHEN TIBBETTS
June 19, 2011.
Photo by Corinne M. Jamieson/CSUSB
But the work was not all that mattered. It was our personal bond. Everyone knows what it is like to go through graduate school, but then there is the personal life as well. Relationships, children, pets, moving, travel, music, Tacos for Everyone (inside joke, ask me in person)—things that are what make us who we are as people. We shared and relied on one another for a lot, some good some bad, but that is what made our friendship one that I have always cherished. Just this past summer, Steve was in Dallas and wanted to have lunch. So, I took him to Twisted Root Burgers, a place in Deep Ellum that Guy Fieri once profiled on Divers, Drive-Ins, and Dives. Why? Because that is how Steve and I rolled. “Foo-Foo” was not in his vocabulary, unless it was the Foo Fighters, but I digress.
Steve left behind an awesome criminological legacy. But that pales in comparison to the people he left behind. His wife, Kim, who I met early on when they were dating, lost her husband. Their amazing, volleyball-star daughter Rian lost a father. His parents lost their son. And I lost a best friend. But I really didn’t lose. I gained 27 years of a friendship that made me a better person than I was before that.
~Alex R. Piquero
***
After many years in academia, we are grateful for having the colleague who we also consider a dear friend, someone special in our lives. Steve was one of those exceptional colleagues, a dear friend, to me. I will miss our conversations. Those who knew Steve, appreciate that those conversations could range from how much snow he was shoveling, thoughts on why SEC was so wonderful (I’m Big 10), to his favorite episodes of Law and Order. Steve always expressed such joy and pride when talking about the special loves in his life – his wife, Kim; his daughter, Rian, and his mom and dad, Jane and Steve.
Steve was one of those colleagues that I could go to when I needed to discuss a possible project, advice on how to handle a situation, or just to “vent.” He seemed to always have a way of making things seem better. He was known by many of us in the department to share odd or strange crime stories. For me, he would enjoy sharing some crazy cat news story. By the way, Steve did not really like cats so you can imagine the type of stories he would share.
Steve has made a significant, and lasting, impact in the field of criminology in so many ways. But he has impacted so many people, not just as a criminologist, but as Stephen Tibbetts. He was a wonderful husband, father, son, and dear friend. I will miss him.
~Pamela Schram
***
I first met Steve about 13 years ago when I was an undergraduate student at Cal State San Bernardino (CSUSB). Almost immediately I knew there was something special about him. He was confident, creative, and had a special way of blending academic rigor with fun. Steve used to take great joy in presenting the most absurd news stories he could find in class. He was quite the trendsetter, as he was undertaking this activity far before the “Florida man” trend/meme made its way into the mainstream. This is just one example of the countless ways that Steve would seamlessly inject his personality into his classes. Steve was magnetic. I ended up taking several of his classes during my undergraduate career and our more formal interactions eventually spilled over into discussions about research, movies, food, music, traveling, and various other topics.
When I eventually reached my senior year at CSUSB, Steve urged me to consider the grad program at CSUSB, and I ended up taking his advice. Soon after, I got my first real taste for research and was quickly enamored. Without question, this blossoming passion was also fostered by working more closely with Steve, who eventually chaired my master’s thesis. I remember heading to Steve’s office on numerous occasions to get a signature or ask a quick question, and the next thing you’d know two hours had passed and we would be breaking down the underlying philosophical principles expressed in The Big Lebowski, summarizing the best lunch spots in Huntington Beach, or outlining plans for future road trips. These talks, without any question, changed my life. During these interactions, Steve and I also talked about ideas, perspectives, and aspirations that ultimately shaped the next ten years of my life.
Steve was a mentor, an advocate, and a sage advisor. But above all else, he was a great husband, who loved and cared deeply about his wife, Kim. A doting father, who beamed with pride and marveled at the beautiful, intelligent woman his daughter, Rian, has become. And a caring and loyal friend who I am happy I was able to share some of the most important experiences of my life with. Losing my friend and mentor has been devastating, but I will be forever grateful for the time I was fortunate enough to share with Steve. I know my life will never be the same, and I’m far better off because of it.
~Joseph A. Schwartz
***
When I started as an assistant professor at CSUSB in 2007, Steve was assigned as my faculty mentor. My first impression was that Steve was the nicest, most down-to-earth academic I had ever met. Twelve years later and I still believe that to be true. Steve was jarringly – and refreshingly – honest; he told me what I needed to know, he never sugar-coated anything. Steve, at times, seemingly didn’t have much of a filter either, but he had a charm about him that just made it all work so well; he was just so damn personable! In that respect, he was the best faculty mentor I could ever ask for.
Over the years, these traits remained constant. I can’t even
STEPHEN TIBBETTS
begin to recall all of the times I went to Steve for advice, to chat about the past weekend’s Gator football game, to talk about Rian’s most recent volleyball tournament, or to simply complain and conspire on a plethora of work and life related situations.
Steve was always there for me. He was always my strongest supporter at work. He encouraged me and guided me on handling so many situations. One thing I admired most about Steve was his ability to get along with everyone. He had a unique ability to be on everyone’s side in work “discussions” at any given time regardless of how many sides there actually were. I learned a lot from Steve over the years and I am better for having known him. And I am now at a profound loss, as is far too often the case, because I never stopped to thank him for simply being himself and for how much he impacted my career and life until it was too late to tell him in person.
~Andrea Schoepfer
2018
Some of these individuals participated in the ASC Oral History Project. For more information, please go to the Oral History Project page.
ROLANDO V. DEL CARMEN
Dr. Rolando V. del Carmen, Distinguished Professor Emeritus, Regents’ Professor Emeritus, and long-time benefactor of the College of Criminal Justice at Sam Houston State University, died on October 31 in his Huntsville home after a lengthy battle with pancreatic cancer. He was 88.
“Although Professor del Carmen will be greatly missed within the university community, he leaves behind a lasting and significant legacy in the students and colleagues whose lives he touched so profoundly and positively,” said Dr. Phillip Lyons, dean of the College of Criminal Justice and director of the Criminal Justice Center. “We would not be who we are today, but for his presence over the decades; and we will not be the same without him. On behalf of the faculty, staff, and students I extend our most heartfelt condolences and sympathy to the del Carmen family.”
Dr. del Carmen, a beloved member of the Sam Houston State University faculty, has generously supported the College throughout his tenure and donated hundreds of thousands of dollars for scholarships. He has two scholarships in his name and recently contributed a gift annuity in honor of Dean Phillip Lyons.
“He loved Sam Houston State University. He devoted his whole life to this place. Any conversation with him concerned the future of the College,” said Dr. Solomon Zhao, a professor in the Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology.
In 2003, he created the Rolando, Josefa, and Jocelyn del Carmen Criminal Justice Endowment Scholarship, which provides a $1,000 scholarship to a Ph.D. student annually. In 2005, former students and friends launched the Rolando V. del Carmen Criminal Justice Endowed Scholarship. It, too, provides a $1,000 scholarship annually for a graduate student at the College of Criminal Justice.
In addition to these perpetual scholarship funds, Dr. del Carmen has provided intermittent scholarships for students in need. Just this semester, he contributed a $1,000 scholarship for an international undergraduate criminal justice major from Singapore, a member of the SHSU award-winning bowling team.
Over the years, when an international or out-of-state student needed financial assistance to receive in-state tuition, Dr. del Carmen would provide them with a $1,000 scholarship; almost all of these students he had never previously met.
When asked why he was so generous, he said that he would have never made it in the U.S. as an international student from the Philippines if he had not received scholarships along the way. “To me, it is an investment in the person and in the future of the College of Criminal Justice,” Dr. del Carmen said.
“I never met a kinder or more gentlemanly soul,” expressed Dr. Jim Dozier, Clinical Professor and Internship Coordinator in the College of Criminal Justice.
Dr. del Carmen joined the faculty as an assistant professor in 1974, was named Distinguished Professor in 1995, and named Regents’ Professor in 2007. He continued to be one of the leading experts in criminal justice law in the country even after his retirement in 2012, and is revered by students, alumni, and fellow faculty members. His expertise is recognized worldwide, and he has written prominent books and articles in the field, many of which have been translated into other languages, including Chinese, Japanese, and Korean.
One of his most enduring legacies is that he served as a mentor to many graduate students, helping them publish academic articles and advance legal scholarship in the academic discipline of criminal justice. Since 2006, Drs. del Carmen and Michael S. Vaughn have served as Co- Directors of the Institute for Legal Studies in Criminal Justice at Sam Houston, an entity designed principally to assist graduate students publish legally-oriented articles.
Dr. Vaughn, a former student of Dr. del Carmen’s, said that “Rolando was more than a mentor. He treated everyone respectfully. He always said that students will forget what they learned in your class, but they will never forget how you treated them.” As Dr. del Carmen was known for his kindness and self-effacing demeanor, Dr. Vaughn remarked that “Dr. del Carmen’s habit was to celebrate others’ success. Rolando would take a colleague or a graduate student to lunch when they published an article. He valued the life of the mind.”
At the same time, Dr. Vaughn emphasized that, “Dr. del Carmen was no shrinking violet. He taught the most difficult class in the doctoral program. Students dreaded his course, but by the end of the semester, they held a tremendous respect for him. He was an academic’s academic. A walking encyclopedia of criminal justice law, he had an incredibly inquisitive mind. He constantly read the literature, frequently producing ideas for new research projects.”
“He was a pillar in the Center and the College and a model colleague,” shared Dr. Bill King, Associate Dean for Research and Program Development in the College of Criminal Justice.
Dr. del Carmen’s generosity was not limited to Sam Houston State University. He also supported his alma mater, Silliman University in the Philippines, with student scholarships, faculty fellowships and grants to broaden and sustain quality education. His contributions recently culminated in the construction of the Rolando Villanueva del Carmen Honor Hall at Silliman University, providing free housing for the university’s top 28 students with financial need, and working to develop programming to help expand their views of life. The only thing he asked in return is that these graduates consider giving back to the University once they succeed in life.
Among his other contributions at Silliman are the Dr. Jovito R. Salonga Center for Law and Development, the Angelo King Center for Research and Environmental Management, the College of Business Administration, the Senior High School Programs, and scholarships for high performing students.
Dr. del Carmen also earned accolades in the academic discipline of criminal justice, and was one of only three scholars to be recognized with all three top awards from the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences, the national organization of criminal justice professors: the Founder’s Award (2005), the Bruce Smith Sr. Award (1997), and the Academy Fellow Award (1990). In addition to being designated a Distinguished Professor at Sam Houston State University in 1995 and a Regents’ Professor by the Texas State University System in 2007, Dr. del Carmen was also named a Piper Professor in 1998, a highly prestigious award, which recognizes the state’s top college and university faculty instructors.
“I’m really just giving back the blessings I have received throughout all these years at Sam Houston,” said Dr. del Carmen. “Like many others, I want to leave this place an even better place for generations of students to come.”
Dr. del Carmen received his Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Laws degrees at Silliman University. He was a Fulbright Scholar at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, where he earned a Master of Comparative Law. Accompanied by his wife, Josie, Rolando attended the University of California-Berkeley, where he received a Master of Laws degree. Their only child, Jocelyn, was born there. From Berkeley, the family went to the University of Illinois, in Urbana, where they stayed for three years while Rolando finished his Doctorate of the Science of Law degree. The del Carmen family then moved to the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh in 1969, where Rolando taught and Josie worked as secretary in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology. In 1974, they moved to Huntsville, Texas. Josie worked for 18 years in the Psychology and Philosophy Department and then in the Division of Student Life at Sam Houston.
“It’s hard to put into words what Dr. del Carmen has meant to our program and the broader field of academic criminal justice,” Dr. Vaughn opined. “Dr. del Carmen spent his professional life working diligently to fulfill the legislative mandate of the Criminal Justice Center. He has educated thousands of undergraduates who have had distinguished careers in criminal justice; he has provided in-service training to personnel who work at every level and in every field of the criminal justice system; he has helped professionalize local, state, and national criminal justice organizations within constitutional and legal mandates; he has produced extensive scholarship; and he has mentored dozens of doctoral students into careers within criminal justice academia.”
Dr. del Carmen was preceded in death in 2011 by his wife of 45 years, Josefa “Josie.” He is survived by his second wife, Erlyn; daughter Jocelyn (Chris) Tanabe, and grandchildren Josie and Linus of Palo Alto, CA. He is also survived by siblings Divina Himaya, Cirilo DelCarmen, Jr., Grace Nishidera, Ben del Carmen, and Gloria Dechawan; and extended family in the Philippines, United States, Canada, Australia, and Europe.
A service celebrating Dr. del Carmen’s life will be held on Monday, November 19, at 11:00 a.m. at the First United Methodist Church in Huntsville. Another memorial service will be held at a later time in the Philippines. He will be interred at the Texas State Cemetery in Austin on Wednesday, November 21, at 11:00 a. m.
In lieu of flowers, the family requests that in-memoriam donations may be made to the United Board for the support of Silliman University. Donations can be made online: https://donatenow.networkforgood.org/unitedboard; or checks, payable to “United Board for Christian Higher Education in Asia” (please indicate in memo line that this gift is in memory of Dr. Rolando del Carmen) can be mailed to either of two offices: The United Board for Christian Higher Education in Asia, 475 Riverside Drive, Suite 1221, New York, NY 10115; or, United Board for Christian Higher Education in Asia, 1/F, Chung Chi College Administration Building, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, New Territories, Hong Kong.
JEFFREY A. ROTH
The field of criminology recently lost Dr. Jeffrey A. Roth, who was a valued colleague, mentor, and friend to many in the ASC. Jeff was an economist who devoted his career to the study of crime and justice issues. Over several decades, he worked at the National Academies of Sciences, the Urban Institute, the University of Pennsylvania, the U.S. Sentencing Commission, and a number of other research organizations.
Jeff is perhaps best known for his leadership and work on landmark National Academies of Sciences reports on understanding and preventing violence (1993), taxpayer compliance (1989), and criminal careers and career criminals (1986). Jeff also led numerous program evaluation studies in the justice field, including prominent national evaluations of the federal Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) program and the 1994 federal assault weapons ban.
Jeff was a careful, meticulous, and creative scholar who took a comprehensive and balanced approach to his work. Practitioners, policymakers, and funders knew they could count on him to take on tough and controversial issues and deliver informative, thorough, and fair results. Jeff served his field and our society admirably, and his work continues to shape research and policy in crime and justice.
Just as significant were Jeff’s qualities as a person. Simply put, Jeff was one of the best people one could hope to know and emulate. He had a genuinely moving effect on others. Colleagues and friends have described him as someone who was exceptionally kind and gracious, welcoming, humble in his accomplishments, and positive in his outlook. He was a patient teacher and mentor who generously gave his younger colleagues opportunities to take prominent roles on challenging and high-profile studies. He was also steadfast and selfless in his devotion to his wife, Charlotte Kerr, as he cared for her during her struggle with a long illness. Personally and professionally, he was a role model to many. Knowing and working with Jeff made many of us better scholars and, more importantly, better people.
Written by Christopher Koper, with thanks to several of Jeff’s friends and colleagues who shared kind sentiments and remembrances (William Adams, Jeffrey Butts, Reagan Daly, Steven Edwards, Ted Gest, Charlotte Gill, Calvin Johnson, Cynthia Lum, John MacDonald, Lois Mock, Lisa Newmark, Laurie Robinson, Caterina and John Roman, William Sabol, Mary Shelley, Larry Sherman, Jeremy Travis, Christy Visher, David Weisburd, Charles Wellford, and Daniel Woods).
2017
Some of these individuals participated in the ASC Oral History Project. For more information, please go to the Oral History Project page.
ALAN A. BLOCK
Alan A. Block (Ph.D., UCLA) was a professor at the University of Alfred, the University of Delaware, and the Pennsylvania State University. He was an influential and pioneering organized crime scholar who authored or co-authored books such as: East Side-West Side, Poisoning for Profit; The Business of Crime, Masters of Paradise, All Is Clouded by Desire, and Space, Time & Organized Crime. He compiled a robust and distinguished record of scholarship and was the longtime editor of Crime, Law and Social Change. Professor Block created international programs in the Netherlands, Wales, and Denmark and mentored numerous graduate students du! ring his career. He passed away on January 27, 2017 after decade-long struggle with Alzheimer’s Disease. He is survived by his wife Constance, four daughters, and several grandchildren.
ROBERT J. BURSIK, JR.
Robert J. Bursik, Jr., Curators’ Distinguished Professor (emeritus) of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, passed away on July 19, 2017. Bob, as he was known by all, had retired from the university in August 2016. He received his B.A. (1973) in sociology from Rutgers University, and his M.A. (1975) and Ph.D. (1980) in sociology from the University of Chicago. Prior to his coming to UMSL in 1996, Bob was a research scientist at the Institute for Juvenile Research (IJR) in Chicago and professor and chair of the department of sociology at the University of Oklahoma. Bob served as Editor of Criminology from 1997 to 2003, and he was named Fellow of the ASC in 1998. He received the Herbert Bloch Award for service to the ASC in 2005, and served as President of the ASC in 2008.
Bob Bursik was an accomplished scholar and is widely recognized as one of the key persons responsible for the resurgence of community studies of crime in the field of criminology in the late 1980s. His book Neighborhoods and Crime: The Dimensions of Effective Community Control, co-authored with Harold G. Grasmick (1993), Lexington Books, identified many of the important elements necessary for a comprehensive understanding of how community organization, through its formal and informal networks, could work to control levels of crime and delinquency. His other areas of research interest included crime and immigration, changes in urban areas and crime over time, crime in rural America, and broader tests of core criminological hypotheses. His body of work has been cited more than 7,000 times. Rather than attempt to summarize his views on criminology and sociology, we encourage you to watch his interview for the ASC Oral History project at: https://www.asc41.org/videos/Oral_History/Robert_Bursik.html
Bob was known by colleagues and students as someone who was intellectually demanding, yet ready to help those who were struggling with theories, hypotheses and analysis. He disliked pomp and pretension and mocked them at every opportunity. As many know, one of his pet peeves was the failure to recognize the contributions of previous scholars, particularly the discipline’s foremothers and forefathers who struggled with many of the same issues of concern to criminologists today. But perhaps equally so, Bob was known as someone who valued those shunned and outcast by society. He knew many of the ‘invisible’ people of St. Louis, and it seemed as though everyone in town knew who Bob was, as he was often engaging in countless large and small acts of kindness to others.
We would be remiss if we did not mention Bob’s genuine appreciation for the more bizarre aspects of American culture. He had the largest and most diverse music library any of us has ever seen, and a “bad” movie collection that was spectacular. He often tortured the faculty and students in the department with odd foods, especially experimental Oreos. His obvious love of tattoos was infectious, and within his first few years at UMSL, the faculty could proudly boast they had the highest prevalence rate of body modifications. So many of us have “Bursik” stories, and we encourage those who do to share them at the memorial session for Bob at the 2017 meetings of the ASC.
Professor Bursik is survived by son Travis Bursik, and daughter-in-law, Cara Kendall, who reside in St. Louis. He was preceded in death in 2013 by his wife Jennifer Gurley Bursik, who served as managing editor of Criminology during Bob’s term as Editor. Memorial donations in memory of Bob can be made to Tenth Life Cat Rescue, P.O. Box 63187, St. Louis, MO, 63163.
Oral History of Criminology Project Interview
ANTHONY R. HARRIS
Anthony R. Harris died peacefully Dec. 4, 2017, in his home in Chesterfield at the age of 76 years old.
Anthony was born Aug. 23, 1941, in New York City. He was raised by his mother Alma Graef and his grandmother Fanny Graef, and attended Forest Hills High School and Queens College where he studied philosophy. During this time, he met his wife, Rita F. Harris, whom he married April 5, 1964. After two years at Peterhouse College, the oldest college at the University of Cambridge, Anthony returned to the United States to pursue a Ph.D. in sociology at Princeton.
He completed his doctoral dissertation in 1973 and began a lifelong study of criminology and statistics. After Princeton he joined the faculty of the University of Massachusetts. He had a productive career spanning 30 years before retiring as a Professor of Sociology in 2002. This included visiting fellowships at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Studies (NIAS) and in the Department of Psychology at Harvard University. During his tenure at the University of Massachusetts he mentored several doctoral students in the areas of race, gender and crime and criminal justice decision-making who went on to successful academic careers in sociology and criminology/criminal justice. Later in his career, Harris also served as the founding Director of the Criminal Justice Program where he was committed to helping educate a generation of professionals.
In addition to teaching, he maintained an active research program. Anthony’s important conceptualization of gender and deviance, published in American Sociological Review (1977) challenged criminological scholars to consider the ways in which gender and race typescripts influence behavior and societal responses to offenders. His systematic critique of dominant criminological theories for their failure to consider gender as the “starting point” for theorizing about crime was an influential voice centered in the feminist critique of criminological theory. Harris’s interest in the social-psychological impact of typescripts was seen as well in his analysis of criminal justice decision-making. He saw processing decisions as iterative, where decisions and information from one stage of the process affected decisions later-on. He was particularly interested in how, ceteris paribus, certain groups of offenders (types versus countertypes) might be treated leniently at some stages of the process (arrest) but harshly at other stages (sentencing). Like much of Anthony’s work, his understanding and theorizing about the justice system (as a process) and decision-makers (as rational but relying on social heuristics under conditions of uncertainty) foreshadowed contemporary criminal justice system research in the sentencing area. His innate curiosity and ability to think outside the box led him to perform novel research demonstrating the impact of medical advances on the lethality of criminal assault. This work was recognized by the New York Times Year in Ideas (2002), Popular Science, and by the Guggenheim Foundation.
In addition to his career, Anthony was a devoted husband and father who was proud of his family and kept everyone laughing with his puns and joyous humor. He is survived by wife Rita and three children: Samantha Harris of Medford Massachusetts, Theona Harris Arsenault and her husband, Daniel Arsenault, and their son Luke Arsenault of Beverly, and Jason Harris and his wife Regina LaRocque and their sons Noah and Benjamin Harris of Wellesley Massachusetts. He will be dearly missed by his family, former students, and closest friends—a group that includes the two of us.
Randall Stokes Professor Emeritus, Department of Sociology, University of Massachusetts.
Sally S. Simpson, Professor and Interim Chair, Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice, University of Maryland
TRAVIS W. HIRSCHI
Travis W. Hirschi, Regents’ Professor (emeritus) at the University of Arizona, passed away at his home in Tucson January 2, 2017. One of the leading criminologists of the past century, Travis fundamentally changed the way scholars throughout the world study and think about crime, deviance and conformity.
Born in southern Utah on April 15th 1935, Travis graduated from the University of Utah in 1957 with a B.S. in sociology and history and received a M.S. in sociology and educational psychology in 1958. In 1955 he and Anna Yergensen, also from southern Utah, were married. After college, they moved to Washington, D.C., while Travis served in the United States Army at Fort Meyer, Virginia.
After his military service, Travis enrolled in the Ph.D. program in sociology at the University of California, Berkeley. This was perhaps the most important and active period in the history of American sociology centered on delinquency theory. It was also the beginning of Travis’s life-long commitment to the idea that both theory and method were crucial in understanding delinquency and crime. At Berkeley, he had the opportunity to study with Erving Goffman, David Matza, Irving Piliavin, Hanan Selvin, and Charles Glock. At the same time, he also fashioned life-long colleagueship with fellow students such as Rodney Stark and John Lofland. Travis received the Ph.D. in 1968.
From the beginning of his graduate studies, Travis was interested in fundamental questions about deviance and conformity, how they were explained by major social theories and how modern empirical research should be used to uncover facts bearing on the theories. Seeking answers to these questions characterized his work throughout his long career.
Recognizing that questions of social responses to crime and violence were at the heart of major theories of society, he, more than most scholars of the day, sought to situate theories of delinquency in the larger landscape of theories of the social order. His deliberations about such matters transformed the way contemporary scholars think about crime and justice and elevated discussions of delinquency to consideration of ideas about human nature and the nature of society.
Remarkably, at the same time, Travis pursued the idea that the important purpose of methodology in the social sciences was to connect theory and data—and that good methods could be judged only to the extent that they allow facts to be explicated by systematic ideas. His first book, written in collaboration with Hanan Selvin, a Tour de Force of research on crime and delinquency, established Travis as a penetrating thinker about the connection between research and its theoretical meaning (Delinquency Research: An Appraisal of Analytic Methods, 1967). It is noteworthy that this book was written while Travis was a graduate student.
After graduate school, Travis joined the faculty in the Department of Sociology at the University of Washington (1967-71). It was there that he published his second book, Causes of Delinquency, (1969). The book, drawn from his dissertation work, established him as one of the most significant figures in criminology. Causes of Delinquency is a work like no other in the field of criminology with respect to its impact on thinking about crime and delinquency: It presented and tested a control theory of crime; it illustrated the power of explicit operationalization of criminological theories; it created contrasts among prominent theories in expectations for data; it helped legitimize survey methods of measuring crime and delinquency as well as key theoretical constructs; it brought the family and the school back into a central role in theory and research. And, it tied delinquency research to the most fundamental questions of social order, human nature, and classic theory.
From Washington, Travis moved back to California and to the University of California at Davis (1971-77) as Professor of Sociology, where he served as Chair of the department. He then moved to the School of Criminal Justice at the University at Albany (first in 1974-75 as a visiting professor; then 1977-81 as professor) where he enjoyed a close collaboration with Michael Hindelang and working with graduate students. His work with Hindelang resulted in fundamental studies of the causes and correlates of crime, including the book-length study of self-report methods for the study of delinquency (Measuring Delinquency, with Michael Hindelang and Joseph Weis, 1981). It is noteworthy that the project helped provide validation evidence for self-report methods but is cited just as often for its substantive contributions about the nature of delinquency. Also while at Albany, Travis and Michael Gottfredson began a decades-long collaboration, continuing a focus on the implications of facts about crime for theories of crime, an interest they both shared with Michael Hindelang. The paper they began at Albany on age and crime, and its derivations, might today be characterized as a “disruptive” event in criminology.
From Albany, Travis returned to the West, joining the University of Arizona in 1981 where he remained through retirement, from the university, in 1997. In 1990, he and Gottfredson (also then at Arizona) published A General Theory of Crime. This book continued the exploration of reconciliation between control theory and the facts about crime and delinquency, in contrast with other theories. The theory (often now referred to as self-control theory) is today a focus of considerable attention in research, theory, and public policy in criminology and criminal justice.
Throughout his career, Travis was highly honored for his contributions to criminology. His work is uniformly praised as “path breaking”, “provocative”, and “vitally important.” (His scholarship is occasionally described as “controversial”, provoking his amusement at how a work could be path breaking and provocative while avoiding controversy). He was elected President of the American Society of Criminology and was also the recipient of the society’s Edwin H. Sutherland Award, the ASC’s highest honor. His book with Selvin was awarded the C. Wright Mills Award and he was elected a member of the Sociological Research Association. The Western Society of Criminology gave him the Paul Tappan Award. In 2016, Travis was awarded the Stockholm Prize in Criminology, honoring his lifelong contributions to our field.
Travis was raised and lived most of his life in the western states and was drawn to the majesty of his surroundings. Camping, driving trips, trout fishing, and gardening were his life-long interests. His love of the southwest was revealed in his large yard planted carefully with native plants. Like many agriculturists, he complained incessantly about the weather, but his skills at creating productive vegetable gardens in the desert environment were unrivaled. Family and friends knew of his culinary skills, especially sourdough pancakes and homemade root beer. He read widely for pleasure, in literature, in science, and in philosophy. For a period he helped repopulate northwest Tucson with the desert tortoise, failing persistently in methods for their incarceration in his yard.
For his many friends, students and colleagues, Travis’s humor and intelligence combined to enhance every personal interaction. His lectures were punctuated with humor and he was drawn frequently to describe the ironies in both everyday occurrences and in professional writings. His students and colleagues uniformly describe him as generous, caring and a delight to be around. There can be little doubt that among his lasting contributions to criminology was his role as graduate teacher and mentor to many students, some of whom have taken their place as among the field’s most accomplished scholars. His closest friends and colleagues knew him to be both erudite and utterly without pretension.
No criminologist is as responsible as is Travis for describing the influential role of the family in the causation of delinquency and crime—from Causes of Delinquency through A General Theory of Crime. His exploration of the significance of the interactions between parents and children for the life-chances of children helped fill a void in the field. It should come as no surprise that attachment and commitment to his own family were the center of his own life. He is survived by his wife Anna (they celebrated their 61st wedding anniversary this fall!); and by their children Kendall, Nathan, and Justine (Van Nimwegen), their spouses Mary, Jan and Phil, and nine grandchildren Quinn, Owen, Candace, Layton, Faith, Sydney, Celeste, Travis and Jack.
Authored by: Michael Gottfredson and John Laub
JAMES S.E. OPOLOT
James S. E. Opolot, Ph.D., passed on in March 2017. At the time he joined the zone of collective immortality, he was a Professor and Graduate Faculty of the Administration of Justice in Barbara Jordan-Mickey Leland School of Public Affairs at Texas Southern University (TSU) in Houston, Texas.
Jim Opolot was the first African-born and the first African-American to receive a Ph.D. from Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, Illinois in 1976. In his doctoral program, the late Distinguished Professor Elmer H. Johnson was his mentor. Also he received BA and MS degrees at the same university in Applied Criminology and Administration Justice respectively. At the Administration of Justice program in Houston, Professor Opolot showed distinctive and commendable services over the years through his participation in numerous dissertation committees and advisor to the Administration of Justice Club.
James Opolot has been a member of both the American Society of Criminology (ASC) and the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences (ACJS) since 1978. In both international professional organizations, James served in many of their committees. He was among the five Professors: Bob McCormack (deceased), Gordon (deceased), Bill Wakefield, and Obi Ebbe, who founded the International Section of the ACJS. For over two decades, he was presenting papers at every annual meeting of both ASC and ACJS. Furthermore, James was the founding President of the African Criminology and Justice Association (ACJA).
Dr. Opolot made wonderful and memorable contributions to African criminology and justice systems. He published four books, and pivotal in all of them are African criminology and justice systems. Among his books are Criminal Justice and Nation-Building in Africa (University Press of America, 1976) and Police Administration in Africa: Toward Theory and Practice in English-Speaking Countries (University Press of America 2008). He published many articles on Africa and the United States in refereed journals as well as more than 28 book- chapters in different books. Opolot was consulted by UNICRI to write papers for the United Nations Office on Drug and Crime, Vienna, Austria. He carried out Executive Training for Security Directors at Sandals Resort in Jamaica.
On the personal side, Opolot was a team player and friendly. When I was admitted to the Southern Illinois University at Carbondale’s sociology doctoral program in 1977, every sociology graduate student talked good of him. When I finally met him in 1981, at ASC annual meeting, he and I became roommates for more than 10 subsequent ASC and ACJS meetings that followed. His contributions to ASC and ACJS knowledge of African Criminology and Justice are immortal.
RAYMOND PATERNOSTER
In Honor of my husband, Raymond Paternoster – 1952-2017
On March 5, 2017, the world lost one of the greatest fathers, husbands, sons, siblings, teachers, and scholars on the planet. Raymond Paternoster, who was born on February 29, 1952, was taken much too early from so many people who loved him. He died in the arms of his wife, Ronet Bachman, and son, John Bachman-Paternoster, after a nearly 3-month herculean battle against idiopathic pancreatitis.
Ray earned his BA at the University of Delaware in 1972 and a Ph.D. in criminology at Florida State University in 1978. He was a Distinguished Professor (although he would never tell you he held the “Distinguished” honor) in the Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of Maryland, College Park.
Ray wrote several books and over 200 articles and chapters during his career. He was an internationally-renowned scholar in the area of deterrence/rational choice theory and offender decision-making, and at the forefront of more rigorous empirical testing of theory in general. Beyond these academic achievements, he worked tirelessly to ensure that his scholarship was translated to policy. For example, his pursuit of social justice in the application of the death penalty was relentless. He was the principal investigator on a 2003 Maryland state-commissioned study of the role of race and geography in the application of the death penalty that empirically demonstrated the differential likelihood of receiving a death sentence for white and African American defendants and across jurisdictions. At the request of several organizations including the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, he performed countless statistical analyses and provided expert testimony in court cases across the U.S. on the effects of race and jurisdiction in capital cases. In addition to his influence on the legal and justice systems, he also worked extensively with the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency to help ground in the latest scientific research in their efforts to combat cheating in sports.
Importantly, Ray was just as devoted to teaching as he was to scholarship. He mentored dozens of Ph.D. students and junior colleagues, and delighted in teaching undergraduate courses in statistics. He was a one-of-a-kind professor who took both his scholarship and teaching extremely seriously, but never took himself too seriously. When named and distinguished professorships became an additional rung on the ladder for faculty to achieve in academia and another status symbol on email signatures, he added the moniker, “Emperor of Wyoming,” to his signature in playful protest. He will always remain the only Emperor of Wyoming.
Ray lived each second of his life to the fullest. He loved the Yankees, standup paddle boarding, traveling, backpacking, skiing and walking our dog, Mickey, in the woods. He was also a voracious reader and did the New York Times crossword puzzle every day. He recently learned to love RVing, despite his original perception that it was “camping for wimps.” His newest interest was in cooking, and he insisted that his family call him “Chef” when he was in the kitchen.
Above all, Ray believed the most important job in his life was being a father. He was not only Ronet’s husband and John’s father, he was their best friend. During the last day of Ray’s life, John told him that having the greatest dad in the world for 19 years was better than having a mediocre dad for 50 years. In addition to his wife and son, he left many other family members including three siblings whom he loved very much, Carole Gaughan, Anthony Paternoster, and Kim Paternoster. He was predeceased by his parents Anthony and Florence, as well as his brother John.
There will be celebration of Ray’s life in the summer of 2017. In lieu of flowers, donations in Ray’s honor can be made to the Delaware Food Bank, the National Center for Law and Economic Justice, or the American Civil Liberties Foundation.
Ronet Bachman
2016
Some of these individuals participated in the ASC Oral History Project. For more information, please go to the Oral History Project page.
CHESTER L. BRITT
Chester L. Britt, III passed away August 30, 2016 at Israel Family Hospice in Ames, Iowa following a severe anaphylactic reaction to a wasp sting. Born in Santa Monica, California on July 22, 1962, Chester (Chet) L. Britt III, earned his B.S. (University of Iowa, 1984), M.S. (Washington State University 1986), and Ph.D. (University of Arizona, 1990) in Sociology. He held faculty positions at the University of Illinois (1990-1995), Pennsylvania State University (1995-1999), Arizona State University (1999-2006), Northeastern University (2006-2015), and Iowa State University (2015-2016). He served as Chair at Arizona State University and Iowa State University, and as Associate Dean and then Dean at Northeastern University.
Chet was an accomplished scholar with a love of quantitative methods and scholarly interests that spanned from criminological theory and the demography of crime, to criminal careers and criminal justice decision making. As a student of Travis Hirschi, Chet firmly believed that control theory was the answer to most, if not all, questions relating to the etiology of crime. Chet’s books include Control Theories of Crime and Delinquency: Advances in Criminological Theory, Volume 12, edited by Chester L. Britt and Michael Gottfredson (2003) and Statistics in Criminal Justice, 4th ed. by David Weisburd and Chester L. Britt (2014). In addition to his books, Chet also served as Editor of Justice Quarterly from 2004-2007. His work appears across numerous peer-reviewed journal articles, book chapters, and book reviews.
There’s a reason so many students and colleagues feel so devastated by his loss. Chet was approachable, kind, and always went out of his way to help people see things a little more clearly, understand things a little more deeply, and… of course… apply the appropriate statistic. Chet was a selfless academic, bringing out the best in so many, rarely taking any credit.
Chet is survived by his wife, Kelly Champion; his children, Chester Lucas (Nicole) Britt, IV, Aly Hiller (né Britt; Morgan), Dana and René Gustafson; his grandson, Jackson Hiller; his parents, Chester and Lilia Britt, II; his sister, Karyn Johnny and his nephew, Sam Johnny.
Authored by: Natasha Frost and Jack McDevitt
MARIE L. GRIFFIN
At the far-too-young age of 49, Dr. Marie Griffin lost her hard-fought battle against cancer on August 15, 2016. A native of Pittsburgh, PA, Marie moved to Scottsdale, Arizona, with her family in 1979. After graduating from Chaparral High School, she attended Santa Clara University where she earned B.S. in political science in 1989. Marie went on to earn a Ph.D. in Justice Studies at Arizona State University in 1997, whereupon she was honored to join the faculty of ASU’s Administration of Justice Department. In 2006, she because an inaugural faculty member in ASU’s School of Criminology and Criminal Justice.
During her 19-year career on ASU’s faculty, Marie was well-known for her dedication to working closely with students to maximize their academic growth and development. Marie also became nationally recognized for the rigor and impact of her research in two areas of scholarly inquiry. The first was in corrections. She frequently studied the organizational climate in the prison work environment, prison gangs, prison and jail misconduct, and community corrections supervision. Her second area of expertise was in gender and crime. She authored more than 50 referred articles, book chapters, and technical reports. She was the principal or co-principal investigator on more than a dozen funded projects from local, state and national sources, and recently completed a research project funded by PEW Center on the States, examining the effects of earned time credit on successful probation outcomes in Arizona. Her work has appeared in such prestigious outlets as Justice Quarterly, Criminal Justice and Behavior, Criminology & Public Policy, The Prison Journal, Criminal Justice Policy Review, Crime & Delinquency, and the Journal of Criminal Justice.
Marie was a long-time servant-leader to our profession. She served as a member of the National Institute of Justice’s Justice Systems Research Scientific Review Panel (2012-2014); as Secretary/Treasurer of the ASC’s Division on Corrections and Sentencing (2006-2010); as an Executive Counselor on the Board of the WSC (2011-2014); as a member of numerous ASC and ACJS committees; on the editorial boards Criminal Justice & Behavior, Women and Criminal Justice; and Criminology, Criminal Justice, Law & Society; as a peer-reviewer for nearly two dozen scholarly journals; and on dozens of ASU board, committees, task forces, and community service initiatives.
Marie is survived by her loving husband, John Hepburn, and their 14-year-old twins, Jack and Megan, as well as her mother, two sisters, brother, two step-children, four young grandchildren; and her ASU family. Marie was the kind of person that everyone wanted in a colleague, friend, and neighbor. She was a selfless woman of great warmth, compassion, love, integrity, and an engaging sense of humor. She will be deeply missed.
ERIC MCCORD
Eric McCord (59) passed away peacefully on Saturday, October 15, 2016, in Louisville. He was born on May 28, 1957, and raised in Southern California. Eric leaves behind his wife Debra, three children, Jennifer, Andria, and Cody, two grandchildren, Aidan and Bella, his mother, Antonetta, and siblings, Patricia and Richard. Eric was a police officer in California with the City of Stanton for three years then with the City of Chino for 23 years. Eric worked various positions during his career such as K-9 officer, SWAT, Detective, just to name a few. He retired as a Patrol Sergeant. After retirement, Eric returned to college. He received his BA from Chapman University, master’s degree from California State University, San Bernardino and his Ph.D. in from Temple University – all in Criminal Justice. Dr. McCord joined the University of Louisville faculty in fall 2010 and recently was awarded promotion (associate professor) and tenure.
Dr. McCord’s research interests included spatial analysis of crime and crime mapping, CPTED and environmental crime prevention, problem-oriented and third party policing. He also had a special interest in the relationship between land use and crime. His research has appeared in Criminology, Journal of Research in Crime & Delinquency, Justice Quarterly, Crime & Delinquency, Crime Patterns and Analysis and the Australian & New Zealand Journal of Criminology. While in Louisville. Dr. McCord mentored several graduate students and co-authored numerous publications. He also provided training and consultation on crime prevention for LMPD, the Boy Scouts of America and 21st Century Parks and Parklands of Floyds Fork.
Eric is survived by his best friend and wife of 27 years, Debra, their children and two grandchildren. Our hearts go out to his colleagues and students in Criminal Justice, along with his wife, Debra, their children and two grandchildren.
NICOLE (NICKY) HAHN RAFTER
Nicky Rafter, a long-time professor of Criminal Justice and senior research fellow at Northeastern University and an internationally-revered scholar in the fields of social history and criminology, passed away, suddenly and unexpectedly, on February 29, 2016 at Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital in Boston.
Guided by a methodology of comparative social history, Nicky’s eclectic research and scholarship explored mechanisms of social control, representations of crime, eugenics, biological theories of crime, and the history of criminology. Nicky’s love of historical criminological research was born when her dissertation research on the punishment of “defective delinquents,” while a doctoral student at SUNY-Albany, brought her to the nearly-undiscovered world of state prison archives. A few years later she returned to those archives to analyze reports produced by prison matrons in the early to mid-1900s and authored the authoritative history of women’s imprisonment in Gender, Prisons and Prison History (1985) and Partial Justice: Women, Prisons and Social Control (1990). Nicky’s ground-breaking research on gender and punishment emerged alongside, was supported by, and helped cultivate the field of feminist criminology. Not surprisingly, Nicky was instrumental in the creation of the American Society of Criminology’s Division of Women and Crime and remained an active member throughout her life.
Nicky was never afraid to take on unpopular topics. Long before the recent resurgence of criminological interest in genetics and crime, Nicky was one of few criminologists to examine the origins of the eugenics and crime movement – and her decades-long interest in this area never waned. In White Trash: The Eugenic Family Studies 1877-1919 (1988), Creating Born Criminals (1997), and The Criminal Brain: Understanding Biological Theories of Crime. Nicky promoted a critical re-evaluation of biological theories of crime. A collaboration with social historian, Mary Gibson, led to their re-translation of the Cesare Lombroso’s Criminal Man and Criminal Woman. In the 1990s, Nicky’s interest shifted to the representation of crime in popular culture. In Shots in the Mirror: Crime Films and Society (1999) and Criminology Goes to the Movies (2011), co-authored with Michelle Brown, Nicky examined crime films through a criminological lens arguing that crime films form a discourse in their own right.
Never one to let her intellectual curiosity stagnate, in 2010, she was awarded a Fulbright to study and teach in Linz, Austria, childhood home of Adolf Hitler and the cultural center of the Third Reich. Her experiences in Linz moved her to seek a deeper understanding of genocide and served as the impetus for her most recent book The Crime of All Crimes, Toward a Criminology of Genocide which was published by NYU in March of 2016, nearly one month after her death. In his review of the book, John Braithwaite describes The Crime of all Crimes as “a landmark reframing in the criminology of genocide” writing that Nicky’s work “challenges existing claims about the nature of genocide, weaving together a complex new understanding of crime, war, and violence.” Nicky challenged every idea she confronted.
Nicky’s many achievements as a scholar were recognized by American Society of Criminology with her selection as a Fellow in 2000 and as the winner of the Sutherland Award in 2009, but one of her most enduring legacies is her mentoring of students and junior colleagues. Throughout her career she chaired numerous dissertations, provided mentorship and guidance to young scholars, and led efforts to ensure the profession recognized scholarship from marginalized and underrepresented groups. Most importantly, Nicky was an inspiration to many in the field of criminal justice. Her research was bold and she was even bolder. She was demanding, fierce, and loyal. Despite the importance of her scholarly work, those who knew her well will likely remember her inspiration as her most enduring legacy.
Nicky lived in Boston’s North End, where she was active in community affairs. She is survived by her husband Robert Hahn, her son Alex Hahn, her daughter Sara Hahn, and her daughter in-law Sunali Goonesekera. Geoff Ward and Amy Farrell have organized a special session in her honor for the 2016 ASC meetings in New Orleans and we hope you will join us for a celebration of her life and impact on the field. Donations in her honor can be made to Human Rights Watch at www.hrw.org.
Authored by: Amy Farrell and Natasha Frost
Oral History of Criminology Project Interview
MURRAY A. STRAUS
Murray Straus, an internationally influential former professor of sociology at the University of New Hampshire and founder of the field of family violence research, died May 13 at the age of 89.
Beginning in the 1970s, his surveys established that people were far more likely to be assaulted and injured by members of their own family than they were by strangers, fundamentally changing popular and academic conceptions about crime and crime prevention.
He devoted much of his later career to the study of spanking and corporal punishment, accumulating evidence that spanking was associated with increased subsequent aggression among children and reduced warmth between them and their parents, among other negative side effects.
He pioneered techniques for getting information about sensitive topics such as being the victim or perpetrator of family violence in national household and telephone surveys. His Conflict Tactics Scale, which he revised over the years, became the standard approach for gathering information about child and spouse abuse and one of the more widely used instruments in social science.
His findings led him to the conclusion that, although women suffered more serious consequences than men from domestic aggression, women perpetrated a considerable amount of violence in intimate relationships that also needed to be addressed in public policy if families were to be made safe.
Early in his career he specialized in rural sociology and the measurement of family interaction.
He became interested in family violence as a result of planning a meeting of the National Council of Family Relations in Chicago, Illinois, in 1968 in the wake of police brutality there at the Democratic Convention.
He decided that to engage with the issues of the day, they needed to assemble a panel on the connection between families and societal violence. He went on to show that people exposed to violence in their families of origin were considerably more likely to engage in violence as adults and to support public policies such as capital punishment and military intervention.
He was of the opinion that spanking, even when used in moderation, taught that hitting and violence were appropriate and even necessary responses when a person believed someone else’s misbehavior needed correction. He concluded, based on his research, that parents should be taught to never spank children. He strongly endorsed and provided much of the scientific evidence to back efforts to ban corporal punishment, a ban which has been adopted by more than four dozen countries.
Straus spent most of his career, from 1968 until his death, at UNH, much of it as director of the Family Research Laboratory, after previous positions at Washington State University, University of Wisconsin, Cornell and the University of Minnesota. He received his bachelor’s and doctoral training at the University of Wisconsin.
He was an energetic and prolific scholar, authoring 15 books and hundreds of scholarly articles. Among the most widely cited were “Behind Closed Doors” and “Beating the Devil Out of Them.”
He was also a devoted teacher who trained and mentored dozens of scholars, including many of the current luminaries in the field of family violence, as director for 30 years of a post-doctoral fellowship program funded by the National Institute of Mental Health.
He served as president of the Society for the Study of Social Problems, the National Council on Family Relations and the Eastern Sociological Society and was active in numerous other academic organizations.
He was the recipient of many awards, including from the American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children, the National Association of Social Workers and the American Sociological Association.
He was known as a warm and engaging person who enjoyed collaborating with colleagues and supervising students. He assembled two large international consortia, involving dozens of scholars in more than 30 countries to conduct cross-national comparative surveys on dating violence and parental disciplinary practices.
Straus was born in New York City on June 18, 1926, to Samuel and Kathleen (Miller) Straus.
He is survived by his wife, Dorothy Dunn Straus; his children by a previous marriage, Carol Straus and Dr. John Straus; his stepchildren David Dunn and wife Kathy, Lisa Dunn, Thomas Dunn and wife Linda; and many grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
A memorial to commemorate his life and work is planned for July 11 in conjunction with the International Conference on Family Violence and Child Victimization Research to be held at the Portsmouth Sheraton. All members of the community are welcome.
Contributions in his memory may be made to the Family Research Lab Projects Fund, with checks made out to UNH Foundation and referencing Murray Straus, and mailed to:
Family Research Lab Projects Fund
c/o UNH Foundation
9 Edgewood Road
Durham, NH 03824
Reference
UNH Today (May 23, 2016) “Passing: Professor Murray A. Straus, 1926-2016,” University of New Hampshire
2015
Some of these individuals participated in the ASC Oral History Project. For more information, please go to the Oral History Project page.
CHARLES CHASTAIN
Criminal justice has lost another of its founding greats. Charles Chastain was diagnosed with cancer the first week of June and died two days later. Charles served the Department of Criminal Justice at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock (UALR) from his arrival as an assistant professor to retirement, serving over 20 years as chair. Charles was one of the earliest adoptees of the LEAA effort to develop criminal justice degrees and provide an education for people in the criminal justice system. He was a vocal supporter of criminal justice studies as a liberal arts education that had the potential to transform people, both within and outside the justice system, though a broader understanding of the workings of crime, justice, and politics. He established the criminal justice bachelor of arts at UALR in 1972. Soon thereafter, he established the master of arts program in criminal justice. In both of these, he insisted on an arts designation because he felt criminal justice students should be exposed to the arts, languages, and philosophies of a liberal arts education. The number of people Charles touched and changed through interaction with him is immeasurable. He helped form the philosophies of several heads of the Arkansas Department of Correction, and many police chiefs, police officers, probation officers, and others. He touched the early academic lives of many people who are now lawyers and professors, including offering an adjunct teaching position to a young Bill Clinton. Charles was also a strong supporter of people in prison. He started a program to collect books from people to build libraries in prisons throughout Arkansas. He was one of the first people to become involved in the Inside-Out program in prisons because he wanted to show students that people in prison were much the same as them with some different life experiences and to show those in prison the potential for future success through education. Charles was also a believer in the academic associations, having been President of the Southwestern Association of Criminal Justice and a board member of the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences. For me, Charles believed in me when many graduate schools would not. He was a mentor, confident, and friend for over 25 years. I feel as if I have lost a father. I am sure all those Charles touched feel the same. We have lost one of the greats.
Authored by Jeff Walker
June 4, 2015
NILS CHRISTIE
NILS CHRISTIE
Professor Nils Christie, University of Oslo and Dr. H.c. University of Copenhagen, the Nestor of Scandinavian criminology, died as the result of a tram-bicycle accident in Oslo on May 27, 2015 at the age of 87 years. He was continuously active as a scientist and as an important voice in the public discourse on society`s reaction to crime and deviance with a focus on the problems that system responses create, and on the humanistic as well as empirical foundations for these reactions.
Christie had a long professional career as a researcher and writer, beginning with his sociological dissertation on juvenile offenders in 1959, and as a key person in Scandinavian criminology. He was a primary initiator of the Scandinavian Research Council for Criminology and its chairman from 1979 to 1982. Nils Christie was always very engaged in creating scientific milieus with older and younger colleagues in the Nordic countries. The Scandinavian research seminars became an important stimulus for young criminologists and a foundation for inter-Nordic contact and cooperation. Also seminars between researchers and criminalists in the judiciary and prosecution became important in bringing criminology into contact with the very agencies which were part of its objects of study. Both of these seminars were originally initiated by Nils Christie and still take place once a year in the framework of the Scandinavian Research Council for Criminology.
Christie’s list of publications is long and varied. He saw criminology and sociology as important bases for social and philosophical deliberations on the legitimacy of the exercise of societal power, and consistently raised basic issues of the state´s use of power and coercion. In one lecture he saw the role of criminologists as closer to that of poets than to that of statisticians (“Criminologist – Technician or Poet,” 1976).
Examples of this are Christie’s concern with school issues (If the School Did Not Exist, 1971) and with alternative styles of life (Beyond Loneliness and Institutions: Communes for Extraordinary People, 1989). Indeed, he stayed in The Vidar collective, one of these Institutions for extraordinary people, for extended periods of time. He also analyzed alternative youth movements (“on the hippie community of Christiania,” 1968) and societal reactions to drug use. He was particularly critical of official drug policy or “the war on drugs.” Christie and Kettil Bruun wrote the book The Good Enemy: Drug Policy and Its Beneficiaries (1985).
Christie’s criticism of official criminal policy not only addressed issues of punishment (e.g., in Limits to Pain, 1981 – on “the right level of punishment” and suffering for society) but also police abuses of power, and the situation of prison inmates. But more importantly he searched for alternatives to the present penal system through alternative conflict resolution. His article on “conflicts as property” (1977) opened up the idea of “giving conflicts back to the parties” and became instrumental as a basis for the emergence of Norwegian conflict councils as an alternative to both traditional prosecutorial and judicial policies, and to more severe sanctions.
On a macro-social level in the book Crime Control as Industry (1994), he warned against the creation of a Gulag-system of institutions as a mixture of the Soviet prison camp system and the American prison industry with the heavy influence of powerful prison contractors, and the economic interests of communities and prison staff in preserving and expanding the use of incarceration.
He continued this tradition in A Suitable Amount of Crime (2004). In this book Christie argued acts that can be constructed as criminal are virtually unlimited and, therefore, that there is potentially an endless supply of crime. He lamented the size of prison populations in those nations with large penal systems, and asked whether the international community has a moral obligation to shame these extremely punitive countries.
Nils Christie’s ideas had great influence upon the criminal policy discourse not only in Norway and Scandinavia, but in many other parts of the world which have benefited from translations of a number of his most important books as well as a large number of articles and lectures. He was awarded the Sellin-Glueck Award by the American Society of Criminology in 1978.
Christie placed great emphasis on writing in an unpretentious and generally intelligible manner. He saw this as a prerequisite for bringing important social discourse to a wide audience and not preserving it for a small number of specialists. This at times was seen as controversial by traditional criminologists and politicians, but at the same time places him as an important philosophical and societal light-tower in the often impermeable fog of loosely founded assumptions and allegations in policy-making.
In a situation where criminal policy and the treatment of deviance is influenced by inhumane and ill-founded demands for punishment as revenge, there is a need for a deeper consideration of social knowledge and humanism which is the bearing foundation of Christie´s work
Nils Christie is survived by his wife Hedda Giertsen (University of Oslo), his former wife Vigdis, and two daughters Lindis and Anja.
Authored by
Jørgen Jepsen (Aarhus, Denmark),
Anette Storgaard (University of Aarhus, Denmark and Chairperson, the Scandinavian Research Council for Criminology),
and Eric L. Jensen (University of Idaho)
GEORGE FRASER COLE
GLEN DAVID CURRY
A Warrior Finally at Peace
GLEN DAVID CURRY
It is our sad duty to inform the American Society of Criminology of the passing of Glen David Curry, Emeritus Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, on April 27, 2015. Although the official cause of death was heart failure, he also suffered from Hepatitis C and, just before his death, was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. He was 66 years old. He is survived by his wife of 26 years, Janet Bonham Curry, his daughter, Zoe Michaela Curry, a brother, Steven Curry, a sister, Sharron Curry, his first wife, Janette Curry, and a host of friends and colleagues.
If Dave’s life was a movie, most film critics probably would dismiss it as completely implausible. He was born into a second-generation coal-mining family in McDowell County, West Virginia. After the mines closed, his father transplanted the family into a series of housing projects and abandoned houses/trailers that could serve as free, temporary residences while he unsuccessfully looked for full-time work. In addition, when Dave was a teen, his mother suffered a nervous breakdown and was hospitalized in a state hospital for the indigent in Mississippi, where she received shock treatments. That’s a tough way to come up.
Because of the constant moves, Dave never finished the twelfth grade, but his test scores were so high that he was admitted to a community college and then the University of Southern Mississippi without a high school diploma, earning a B.S. in Sociology (with a minor in Mathematics) in 1969. Since he was supported at USM by an Army ROTC scholarship, he was obligated to serve a tour of duty. He was sent to Vietnam as an intelligence officer and eventually was promoted to captain. Upon his return, he enrolled at the University of Mississippi, where he was awarded an M.A. in Sociology in 1973. In addition, greatly disillusioned by what he had experienced in Southeast Asia, he served as the Mississippi state coordinator of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War. Upon completion of his degree, he enrolled in the doctoral program in Sociology at the University of Chicago in 1973 (when and where we first met him), graduating with his Ph.D. in 1976.
His odyssey becomes even stranger at this point. He accepted a tenure track position in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the University of South Alabama, achieving the rank of Associate Professor and serving regularly as an expert witness for the local NAACP- affiliated law firm and the Southern Poverty Law Center. He also intensified his work with the VVAW. These activities did not sit well with the Alabama political power brokers and they assigned a Special Agent from the Alabama Bureau of Investigation to go undercover with the VVAW in an effort to take Dave down. That agent convinced one of Dave’s associates that he needed cocaine to treat some headaches he was suffering due to a head wound he supposedly had received as a Marine in Vietnam. Unfortunately, in a case of extremely bad judgement, Dave helped facilitate the drug delivery. Although he was not involved in the actual transaction, he was arrested. As he once put it, in court the Special Agent “painted me as a regular supplier of cocaine for other veterans.” That was all it took: he was convicted on three counts, the time was to be served consecutively, and the sentences totaled 34 years.
While the appeals process progressed, Jim Coleman of the University of Chicago (bless his heart) successfully convinced the courts to release Dave into his custody. Nevertheless, once the appeals were exhausted, Dave was sent to prison, where he eventually served 14 months (the time was reduced because of new sentencing guidelines). In one of the great ironies of correctional history, despite the fact that he had a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago, he had not formally completed high school. Therefore, he was required to obtain a G.E.D. before he could be released. By the way, eventually there was a happy ending. In 1999, the Special Agent whose false testimony sent Dave to prison was convicted of first degree murder and sentenced to life without parole. Dave realized that this development might cast doubt on that agent’s veracity in his own trial and applied for a Presidential pardon. It was the last one granted by Bill Clinton (2000).
Upon his release, Dave accepted a position at West Virginia University (1989) and then joined the CCJ faculty at UMSL in 1994. At that point he already had garnered international acclaim for his work in military sociology and his studies of street gang activities, which later expanded into a focus on youth violence in general. Not only did he continue to be a prolific researcher but he was highly devoted to his teaching responsibilities and in 2004 received the Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Service. He also served on the national boards of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War and the Boys and Girls Clubs of America (winning its Advocacy Award in 2001). He retired in 2011 for health reasons and moved to Mobile, Alabama.
Overall, Professor Curry was an inspiration as a survivor, a scholar, a social activist, a gentleman, and a great friend/family member. His death has been a major loss for all of us who knew him. Jody Miller and Scott Decker have organized a special session in his honor for the 2015 meetings in Washington, D.C., and we hope you will join us for a celebration of his personal and professional lives. Memorial contributions may be made in Dave’s name to: Vietnam Veterans Against the War, www.vvaw.org or Vietnam Veterans Against the War, Inc., National Office, P.O. Box 355, Champaign, IL 61824-0355.
Bob Bursik
Jim Lynch
DON GIBBONS
DON C. GIBBONS
Don Gibbons, a renowned criminologist and important contributor to the criminological literature, died on April 14 in Portland, Oregon. Don was born in Newport, Washington on June 6, 1926. He served in the U.S. Navy from 1944 to 1946, and following his discharge, he attended the University of Washington; there he completed both his undergraduate and graduate studies and was awarded a Ph.D. in Sociology in 1956. While at the University, he met his future wife, Carmen Baker – in Don’s words, “the best thing that ever happened to me!” He and Carmen, married for 56 years until her death in 2008, had two children, Michael and Diane.
Following the completion of his Ph.D., Don accepted a one-year position as Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of British Columbia, with a joint appointment as Director of the Staff Training School at Oakalla Prison Farm. This latter appointment was indicative of what was to come, in that Don continued to use his criminological knowledge to serve the community. In the mid-1970s, Don and his colleague Gerald Blake were awarded a grant to develop program models for the federal juvenile diversion program. Don continued to assist a variety of criminal justice efforts in the community, serving as a Research Consultant to the Oregon Corrections Division and as a Consultant to the Multnomah County Youth Commission. Don served his profession with similar enthusiasm and commitment. He was the Northern Division Vice President of the Pacific Sociological Association in 1976-1977 and then the Association’s President in1982-1983. He was a long-time editor of the journal Crime and Delinquency and an Associate Editor of both the Pacific Sociological Review and the Western Sociological Review. The American Society of Criminology honored his outstanding contributions to criminological scholarship and the advancement of the discipline by making him an Honorary Fellow of the association.
In 1957 Don joined the Sociology faculty at San Francisco State College, where he eventually (1966-1968) served as the Department Chair. Then in 1969, he accepted a faculty appointment in the Department of Sociology at Portland State University, where he remained until his retirement in 1991. As at SFS, faculty respect for Don in the PSU Department also resulted in his election as Department Chair (1971-1974). But it was not only the Department of Sociology at PSU that benefitted from his expertise and work ethic. Part of the broadening of the University in the 1970s was the development of an Urban Studies unit (now the hugely successful School of Urban and Public Affairs) with its own Ph.D. program. Don was invited to take on a second faculty position, both developing and teaching in the Criminal Justice arm of the Ph.D. program. With the awarding to the program of a $500,000 Law Enforcement Administration Association (LEAA) grant, Don became the Director of the National Criminal Justice Educational Development Consortium, serving in this role from 1974-1976.
Don taught a variety of classes in Sociology, Criminology and Urban Studies and was highly thought of by his students. He encouraged students to develop their own interests and then did what he could to assist their projects. As one former student (now a professor) wrote in a commemoration, “Perhaps more than anything I will never forget the freedom Don gave me to explore radical criminology and to write my dissertation about the policing of labor radicalism—an area outside his expertise. By permitting me to ‘color outside the lines’ during my doctoral education at PSU, Don instilled in me the self-confidence to develop my own unique identity as a scholar.” His teaching expertise became well known, and throughout his professional career, he was invited to serve as a visiting professor at an impressive array of universities, including Stanford University, University of Oregon, San Diego State College, Arizona State University and University of Melbourne.
Yet, Don is perhaps best known for his research and prolific writing on criminology. During the course of his career, he authored five books and co-authored another three. His classic text, Society, Crime and Criminal Careers, now in its 8th edition, was first published in 1968 and is used in classrooms throughout the world. In Delinquent Behavior, first published in 1976, he again expertly used his author skills and considerable knowledge to offer students an overview of the study of juvenile delinquency. At Don’s invitation, Marvin D. Krohn became a co-author of the 4th and 5th editions of Delinquent Behavior. Don’s last book, Talking about Crime and Criminals: Problems and Issues in Theory Development in Criminology, published in 1993, reflects his long-term attention and commitment to the elaboration of criminological theory. His published journal articles comprise too many to list, but his topics were diverse and always timely.
Any remembrance would be incomplete if it failed to mention Don’s fondness for running. Here as in his scholarly endeavors, he went to the top—he qualified for and finished one of the six World Marathon Majors–the Boston Marathon. His worn-out blue and yellow Nike’s became part of the wall decoration in his office. There was also an artistic side to Don. His woodcarvings included waterfowl and masks, and his paintings often depicted ocean front scenes from his beloved refuge on the Washington coast. It was not unusual to receive original watercolors as Christmas cards from Don and Carmen.
Don is survived by his children, Diane Irwin (Craig) and Michael Gibbons, three grandchildren, Katie Cooper, Austin Gibbons, and Jonathan Irwin, and sister, Beverly Bergau.
Contributed by Kathryn Farr (Professor Emerita, Portland State University) and Annette Jolin (Professor Emerita, Portland State University)
RICHARD J. LUNDMAN
Richard J. Lundman, of Bethany Beach, Delaware, died on July 7, 2015. Rick was born on April 19, 1944, to the late Oscar Yngve and Mabel Josephine Lundman in Chicago, Illinois, where he spent his childhood. He attended Beloit College, graduating in 1966, and completed his Ph.D. in Sociology at the University of Minnesota in 1973 after receiving an M.A. in Sociology at the University of Illinois.
He was a professor at the University of Delaware from 1972 to 1975, before moving to Columbus to teach at The Ohio State University. Professor Lundman taught sociology at Ohio State for 40 years, retiring this May. He once explained that his passion for teaching came from a desire to honor his students’ commitment to learning. During his tenure, he taught more than 15,000 students and received many teaching awards, including The Ohio State University Distinguished Teaching Award.
Rick published books and papers on police and policing, white collar and organizational deviance, and juvenile delinquency. More than 200 of his former students, many of whom were inspired by his Police and Policing class, are employed by the Columbus Police Department.
He loved his family and friends, his students and colleagues, teaching and writing, and swimming in the ocean. He is survived by his children Robert Lundman (Elana) of Washington, DC, and Julie Lundman (Colin) of Cambridge, MA; his three grandchildren; his brother and sister-in-law Bob and Cathy Lundman and their children.
HANS JOACHIM SCHNEIDER
HANS JOACHIM SCHNEIDER
Prof. Dr. Dr. hc. Dipl.Psych. Hans Joachim Schneider passed away on the 18th of June 2015 in the age of 86 years in Muenster, Germany. He was life member of the American Society of Criminology. and regular attendant of its annual meetings. He was one of the most important bridges between the social science oriented American criminology and the more criminal law oriented continental European criminology. Close friend of Marvin E. Wolfgang, Schneider never neglected his scientific connections to the USA. He was awarded numerous internationally prestigious honors, among them a Dr. h.c. (University of Lodz (Poland)), the Hermann Mannheim Award of the “ICCC” Montreal and the Hans von Hentig Award of the “World Society of Victimology”. He was honored with a criminological (Schwind, H.-D., E. Kube and H.H. Kuehne eds.) 1998 and with a victimological Festschrift (Kirchhoff G.F. and P.C.Friday eds.) 2000. He has published about 20 books and more than five hundred articles in thirteen languages (German, Chinese, English, Hungarian, Japanese, Polish and Spanish. His textbook was translated into Russian and Chinese language. He is survived by his wife Hildegard, his daughter Ursula (judge in the highest German Federal court) and son Marvin Oliver (Professor Universitario Sao Paolo, Brazil).
RICHARD H. WARD
RICHARD H. WARD
Tribute to Richard H. Ward (September 2, 1939 – February 17, 2015)[1]
Richard H. Ward, International Criminologist, passed away in his sleep at age 75 at home in Bethany, Connecticut, on February 17, 2015. Borrowing a well-known Winston Churchill phrase, Dick Ward truly was a “riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.”[2] He was many things to many people. He held his students spellbound by his ability to explain complex criminological concepts in ways that all could comprehend and appreciate. Police administrators admired the many stands he took, unwilling to compromise his principles. Scholars respected his laser-like focus on action research. Those with little long-term exposure to the man saw him as a gruff, growling bear. At first blush some may have been intimidated by this façade, but those who stayed the course, colleagues, family, and friends, soon recognized that beneath the tough guy veneer that he cultivated beat the heart of a teddy bear whose compassion and concern for those who needed help knew no bounds.
Since his passing more than a dozen accolades have been rendered, most posed on the Internet, from institutions where he served, publishers, et al. A Remembrance was held at the University of New Haven February 21, 2015.[3] Over 300 were in attendance representing every element of the Criminal Justice System paying their respects to this extraordinary pioneer of our discipline. A Celebration of his life was held at the University of Illinois at Chicago March 28, 2015.[4] When from the dais the question was asked of the audience: “How many of you are former students of Dr. Ward?” half of the 400 present stood. Dick had left UI Chicago 15 years earlier, but he left an indelible impression on the lives and careers of thousands worldwide! His Internment was April 17, 2015, at the National Cemetery on the USMC Base, Quantico, Virginia. There a large contingent of his family, friends, former students, and faculty colleagues watched in solemn reverence as a USMC Color Guard in dress blues served as pall bearers and thereafter offered a 21-gun salute in tribute to their brother Marine; once a Marine, always a Marine.
The attention to detail that Dick learned in the Marine Corps he payed it forwarded. This proclivity drove most of his colleagues crazy. Upon leaving the Marine Corps in 1961, he joined the NYPD where he remained until 1970, leading as a gold shield Detective. As a police officer, he enrolled at John Jay College of Criminal Justice completing his bachelor’s degree in Criminal Justice in 1968 and there taught part time in Law Enforcement. Soon afterward Dick was selected to matriculate at the University of California, Berkeley in the famous School of Criminology where he received his Doctorate of Criminology in 1971. Dick returned to John Jay moving into administration and among other things established the Law Enforcement News and launching John Jay’s Ph.D. program. He served as Dean of Graduate Studies, Dean of Students and thereafter Vice President. He left New York in 1977, to take a position as Vice Chancellor for Administration at the University of Illinois at Chicago where he remained for 22 years; there he established the Office of International Criminal Justice and its bimonthly Criminal Justice International. What would later become the major automated source of terrorism incidents, he began a database in 1994. In 1999 he left Chicago and moved to Sam Houston State University as Dean and then Associate Vice President of Research. There he formalized the terrorism database; it became the Institute for the Study of Violent Groups (ISVG). In 2008 he left Texas to serve as Dean of the College of Criminal Justice and Forensic Sciences at the University of New Haven, bringing with him ISVG and establishing the Ph.D. Program which he directed. Four years later in 2012 he was elevated to Vice President for Special Programs and Sponsored Research, a post he held until he passed away.
Dick was interested in all phases of Criminology from the courts, probation, prisons but his first love was policing. Dick had many publications and books on Law Enforcement investigations, education, terrorism, and more. He was constantly generating new ideas for change. He received many awards and 1977 – 1978 served as President of ACJS.
He received the greatest joy in helping people in the field. He taught In China, Saudi Arabia Malaysia, Egypt, and Thailand and visited 45 other countries as well. He not only taught international students but also assisted them cut through red tape enabling many to come to America to further their education. One of his students is now the Chief of Police in Jamaica. Committed to bringing about positive change no task was too great for Dick. He would help all who sought his assistance and stayed in touch with most.
Our condolences and sympathy go out to his wife Dr. Michelle Ward and their daughter Sophia, as well as his other children, daughter Jeanne and son John, wife Juli and their children son Declan and daughter Keeley, as well as Dick’s sister, Joyce Hornback, and other family members. Our profession, Criminology and Criminal Justice, is better for his commitment and dedication. The personal lives of many of us have been forever enriched by his empathy. Dick Ward, you will never be forgotten.
Juiius Debro, D. Crim., Professor Emeritus, University of Washington
William L. Tafoya, Ph.D., Professor, University of New Haven
References
[1]Scholarships in his memory may have been established at other institutions; at UNH contributions may be sent to: The University of New Haven, C/o The Richard and Michelle Ward Endowed Scholarship, Office of Advancement, 300 Boston Post Road, West Haven, CT 06516
[2]Churchill, Winston (1939) ”The Russian Enigma,” BBC Broadcast October 1, London: The Churchill Society. http://www.churchill-society-london.org.uk/RusnEnig.html
[3]UNH (2015) “In Remembrance of Richard H. Ward,” West Haven, CT: University of New Haven. http://www.newhaven.edu/news-events/news-releases/2014-2015/863092/
[4]UIC (2015) “Celebrating a Life: Richard H. Ward,” Chicago: University of Illinois at Chicago.
2014
Some of these individuals participated in the ASC Oral History Project. For more information, please go to the Oral History Project page.
WILLIAM J. CHAMBLISS
William J. (Bill) Chambliss died on February 22, 2014. He was diagnosed with an aggressive form of cancer eight years ago. True to character, Bill continued to live life to the fullest and extended beyond all odds his time with us.
Bill was a leading force in the fields of criminology and the sociology of law, forging a powerful dialectical framework for the understanding of crime and law, and reinvigorating conflict theory in the process. He authored many of the most cited books and articles in criminology; taught, mentored, and was loved by generations of undergraduate and graduate students (myself among them); and, as an engaged scholar, was repeatedly called on by the media to comment on drug policies and other criminal justice issues. He was a scholar of immense stature, who continually gave to others his time, his intellect, and his incomparable spirit.
Bill never lost sight of the people behind his theories. If he wanted to understand burglars, he hung out with Harry King. If he wanted to demystify organized crime, he learned to hustle pool and play cards, frequented back alleys and boardrooms, and secured a chat with Meyer Lansky. Long before postmodernists preached the art of storytelling, Chambliss’s subjects came alive and were given voice on his pages. Gathering data from the archives of medieval England, the streets of Seattle, the villages of Nigeria, the poppy fields of Thailand, the sleek cityscapes of Scandinavia, and the ghettos in the heart of our nation’s capital, Bill routinely performed that most difficult task in sociology—engaging his “sociological imagination”—linking biography and history, the private lives of those he studied to the public issues they embodied.
Bill started his academic career as an undergraduate studying with Donald Cressey at UCLA. He later went to Indiana University for his PhD in sociology where he studied with Alfred Lindesmith and published “The Deterrent Influence of Punishment.” Bill’s first academic job was at the University of Washington where he wrote the pathbreaking “A Sociological Analysis of the Law of Vagrancy.” That piece quickly became a classic and established Bill as a founding father of both conflict criminology and the contemporary sociology of law.
At the same time, Bill was hanging out in Seattle’s pool halls, card rooms, and back alleys, determined to make sense of organized crime. He soon realized that this would require him to leave the back alleys, and go across town to corporate boardrooms and City Hall. Only Bill could have survived this fieldwork (and then, just barely, as I heard Bill’s stories about being threatened with beatings more than once). He not only survived—he published On the Take: From Petty Crooks to Presidents, a book that revolutionized our understanding not just of organized crime but of law enforcement and the state.
From Seattle, Bill went to UC Santa Barbara where he wrote seven books in as many years—including Law, Order, and Power and Crime and the Legal Process, which elaborated on his conflict theory of law and crime, and incorporated a critical race dimension long before it was fashionable. In those years too, he published Boxman: A Professional Thief’s Journey, giving us a first-hand account of the day-to-day life and methods of a professional thief. He also introduced us to “The Saints and the Roughnecks,” as they wreaked havoc on their neighborhoods and our conventional wisdoms. The “Saints and the Roughnecks” are among the 20th century’s best-known criminological characters, their names now code for unreliable stereotypes of conformity and delinquency.
At the University of Delaware in the late 1970s, Bill wrote yet another seminal piece entitled “On Lawmaking,” published in the British Journal of Law and Society. The dialectical theory of law he developed there, and later his theory of state-organized crime, put contradictions in the political economy at the center of analysis, and showed how law—and sometimes crimes by the state itself—are a response to those contradictions. The theory was paradigm-shifting and spawned dozens of dissertations, books and articles over the years.
Bill joined the Department of Sociology at George Washington University in 1986, where he co-directed the Institute on Crime, Justice, and Corrections. In DC, he researched law-enforcement practices in the racialized urban ghettoes, and the political dimensions of the war on crime, publishing his incisive Power, Politics, and Crime—a book Noam Chomsky called a “wake-up call” and Chesney-Lind praised as a “sweeping indictment” of our criminal justice policies.
Bill’s books and articles have been cited and reprinted widely, making their way not just onto our bookshelves but into student course packets and readers, year after year. Attesting to the profound influence Bill had on our thinking about crime and law, Bill received the Sutherland Award for Outstanding Contributions to Criminology from the American Society of Criminology; the Lifetime Achievement Award for Contributions in Criminal Justice from the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences; the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Criminology section of the American Sociological Association; the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Sociology of Law section of the American Sociological Association; the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Society for the Study of Social Problems section on Law & Society, and the American Society of Criminology’s Major Achievement Award. He was elected president of the American Society of Criminology in 1987-88, and president of the Society for the Study of Social Problems in 1992-93. In 2012, the Society for the Study of Social Problems recognized Bill’s profound influence by creating the William J. Chambliss Lifetime Achievement Award. Bill was an international scholar, with visiting professorships in Nigeria, Sweden, London, Oslo, Stockholm, Vienna, Cardiff, and Zambia. In 2009, he received an honorary Doctorate of Law from the University of Guelph, Canada. And, Bill’s reputation spread well beyond the academy. When still an associate professor, Bill was appointed to the President’s Commission on Violence (1968-69), and in 1993 he was consultant to the National Criminal Justice Commission.
His passion, integrity, engaged scholarship, theoretical insight, and clearly crafted prose inspired generations of students and scholars. Donald Cressey once called the young Bill Chambliss, “one of my ‘sociological children’—people who drifted into my UCLA undergraduate classes in the 1950s and got turned on to sociology.” Hundreds of us are now Bill’s “criminological children (and grandchildren),” turned on to criminology by his righteous anger, his engagement, and his theoretical vision.
Bill was not only a giant of criminology and the sociology of law. He was an outsized human being with a generous heart and a contagious love of life. We will miss Bill more than words can say.
Bill is survived by his wife Pernille, his children Jeffrey, Lauren, and James, his grandchildren, and the many friends, colleagues, and students whose lives he touched.
Kitty Calavita
Honoring the life of Bill Chambliss
Bill Chambliss, Professor of Sociology at the George Washington University since 1986, died on February 22, 2014.
A towering figure in sociology, Bill’s work transformed the scholarly worlds of social theory, the sociology of law, and criminology. Among his “associates” were leading crime figures and the victims of their actions. As his longtime friend and fellow sociologist Richard Applebaum stated, “Bill repeatedly went to the streets. He hung out with such notorious organized crime chiefs as Meyer Lansky as well as low‐level drug dealers and petty criminals in Seattle; poppy growers, heroin traffickers, and CIA chiefs in Thailand’s Golden Triangle; pirates of many stripes, whenever he could find them.”
In a career spanning more than 50 years, he produced almost two dozen books and countless articles, which were frequently reprinted over the decades. He was elected President of the American Society of Criminology in 1998, President of the Society for the Study of Social Problems in 1993, and received lifetime achievement awards from the American Sociological Association Sections on Criminology in 1985 and the Sociology of Law in 2009. The American Society of Criminology awarded him the society’s Major Achievement Award in 1995 and the Edwin H. Sutherland Award in 2001. In 2012, the Society for the Study of Social Problems created the William J. Chambliss Lifetime Achievement Award and Bill was the first recipient. Bill’s life was filled with scholarly achievement and joy, both of which he shared with all those around him.
Bill truly “spoke truth to power” before that phrase became a cliché and his influence will long live on. To celebrate Bill’s life and legacy, make a gift to support graduate students in sociology at the George Washington University. There are three easy ways to give:
Online at go.gwu.edu/billchambliss
Mail a check, payable to George Washington University and “Sociology in memory of Bill Chambliss” in the memo line, to 2100 M Street NW, Suite 310, Washington, DC 20052
Call 1‐800‐789‐2611
Oral History of Criminology Project Interview
ALBERT K. COHEN
Albert K. Cohen, the noted criminologist and sociologist whose work and life enlightened and inspired scholars and law enforcement practitioners around the world, passed away unexpectedly on November 25 in Chelsea, MA. Al was born in Boston on June 15, 1918. He attended Boston Public Schools and graduated from the Boston Public Latin School in 1935. He attended Harvard University beginning in 1935 and graduated in 1939 with high honors as a Sociology major. Al noted in his personal biographical sketch that at Harvard he had the good fortune to take courses offered by outstanding sociologists including Pitirim Sorokin, Talcott Parsons, and Robert Merton.
Despite his outstanding academic record, Al was denied admission to most of the graduate Sociology programs he applied to. One department explained they were not allowed to admit Jews. However just as Al was preparing himself for an alternate career as a journalist, he received an acceptance letter from the Sociology Department at Indiana University. The Chairperson there was Edwin H. Sutherland, the leading criminologist of his day whom Al described as another powerful influence on his intellectual development. Al received his M.A. from Indiana University in 1942 and worked for nine months at the Indiana Boys School, a state institution for juvenile delinquents. He then served as a lieutenant in the U.S. Army until June 1946, including one year in the Philippines where he met and “instantly” fell in love with his future wife Natividad Barrameda Manguerra (Nati), who worked at the Army’s Office of Information and Education. After being discharged from the Army in 1946, Al returned to Harvard as a Ph.D. candidate spending one year in residence before leaving A.B.D. for a teaching position at Indiana University in 1947. Nati joined Al in 1948 and they were married in December of that year. Al completed his thesis, Juvenile Delinquency and the Social Structure, and received his Ph.D. from Harvard in 1951 while continuing to teach at Indiana University. His most famous work, Delinquent Boys: The Culture of the Gang, considered an instant classic explanation of delinquency and gangs and a major breakthrough in criminological theory, was published in 1955 (and later republished internationally in many languages). In his research and theorizing on delinquency, Al ingeniously blended major aspects of Merton’s social structure – culture incongruity theory (anomie theory) of crime with Sutherland’s learning subcultural theory of crime to explain why so much delinquency occurred in groups (gangs), was committed by lower income kids, and included a lot of vandalism.
Al’s theory explains how the frustration of working class juveniles failing to achieve standards presented to them by a middle class dominated society and school system leads them to reject those standards and middle class authority figures and collectively create an alternative delinquent subculture. The delinquent gang subculture includes a number of values and norms in some ways opposite to those of middle class culture (like rejection of the importance of doing well in school, less respect for private property, and acceptance of violence as a way to achieve status). Thus many working class juveniles engage in vandalism and interpersonal violence (non-utilitarian forms of deviance not predicted by Merton’s theory) as a way to escape frustration, achieve status in the eyes of peers, and feel good about themselves. Al’s theory explains how social conditions experienced by a group of persons can lead them to create a collective solution to their mutual problem, a criminal subculture, which then becomes an additional cause of crime. Al later wrote Deviance and Control, a textbook on the Sociology of Deviance. He also authored many scholarly papers published in journals or as book chapters, most on delinquency, criminal organizations, and theories and concepts in criminology.
In 1965, Al moved from Indiana to accept the position of University Professor of Sociology at the University of Connecticut where he taught until he retired in 1988. Al was also a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Palo Alto and a Visiting Professor or Visiting Scholar at the University of California at Berkeley, the University of California at Santa Cruz, the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, Arizona State University, the Institute of Criminology (Cambridge, England), Trinity College (Dublin, Ireland), the University of Haifa, the University of the Philippines, and Kansai University in Osaka. Al also served as the President of the Society for the Study of Social Problems, the Vice-President of the American Society of Criminology, and Executive Counselor for the American Sociological Association. In 1993, Al was given the American Society of Criminology’s Sutherland Award.
Al and Nati often had a graduate student living in the downstairs section of their house in Storrs, Connecticut and their home was always a warm and welcoming gathering place for faculty members, graduate students and visiting scholars.
After retiring, Al and Nati moved for the sake of her health first to Arizona and then to San Diego. Nati passed away there in 2003. Al moved back to Storrs where his friends greatly enjoyed having dinners with him. Al was always in great physical shape. As a teenager in Boston he was adept at the art of running alongside a truck, hopping on to catch a ride, and jumping off as the truck slowed down anywhere near his destination. In Storrs he enjoyed walking many miles, and, despite the distress of friends and family, kept hitchhiking into his 90s. Sometimes policemen picked him up and drove him home only to discover that he was the author of the famous book on juvenile delinquency they had read in their criminal justice programs.
Amazingly, after his return to UCONN, Al assisted in an FBI surveillance investigation and federal prosecution. Al was informed by the FBI that a supposed legitimate financial planner he was working with was in reality suspected of stealing from him and other clients. Al consented to having his condominium bugged and the FBI gathered important evidence that, with Al’s testimony and that of others, led to the perpetrator’s conviction and imprisonment in the federal prison system. Ever the criminologist, Al expressed interest in interviewing the incarcerated con man who was accused of spending tens of thousands of dollars of his victims’ money on night clubs, multiple expensive vehicles, trips to Las Vegas and expensive gifts for exotic dancers.
Anyone who met Al soon realized he had a tremendous love of life, enormous compassion and an incredible wit and sense of humor. He kept everybody laughing at his jokes even while lying in a hospital bed. He loved to take pictures of flowers on his walks and enjoyed crafting all sorts of household items into pendants and other works of art. And he wrote many amusing poems. Al was enormously kind and helpful to everyone he knew. He was a strong supporter of the ACLU and contributed to many charities and to the universities where he studied and taught.
Al is survived by his loving niece Gerianne who took great care of her beloved Uncle Al after he could no longer live independently and by his nephews Richard Segal, Philip Segal and Marc Cohen, his niece Cindy Peterson, and Al and Nati’s niece Therese Eckel.
We all love you and miss you Al.
Authored by Al Cohen (University of Connecticut), Gerianne Cohen, Arnold Dashefsky (University of Connecticut), Jim DeFronzo (University of Connecticut) and Jungyun Gill (Stonehill College)
Oral History of Criminology Project Interview
AUSTIN TURK
Austin Turk had an extraordinary and lasting influence on the development of criminological theory and research. He was a brilliant scholar and a remarkable friend who lived an exciting and productive life before his passing on February 1 of this year.
Austin Turk began his occupational life as a police officer in Georgia, and a realism and toughness born of this experience showed through his work. Austin set out a distinctively rigorous Weberian vision of conflict criminology and insisted that it be tested using objective and scientific standards that remained hallmarks throughout his scholarly career.
The trajectory of Austin Turk’s influence on sociological and political criminology was anticipated early in his career with the publication of his classic book, CRIMINALITY AND LEGAL ORDER (Rand McNally, 1969). This work challenged the assumptions of prevailing consensus arguments without romanticizing crime or criminality. This book introduced and systematized the study of conflict and criminalization as testable interrelated phenomena. By citation count or virtually any other measure, this book quickly emerged and remains a landmark statement of a conflict theory of crime.
In following decades, Turk advanced the general field of conflict criminology he stimulated by applying its principles more specifically to the study of political criminality. He developed an early knowledge of crime and politics in South Africa as well as North America, and this was apparent throughout his career in the breadth of his theoretical and research contributions. For example, this was reflected in his important book on POLITICAL CRIMINALITY: The Defiance and Defense of Authority (Sage, 1982) and in his statement on “Political Crime” in Edgar Borgatta’s ENCYCLOPEDIA OF SOCIOLOGY. One of the major contributions of this body of work is the elaboration a general theoretical model of the social conditions that lead some political disputes to escalate into political violence and others to de-escalate before violence erupts.
Austin Turk was a criminologist for more than five decades and his work was always of the moment. He wrote recently on the “new terrorism” of religiously dedicated “holy warriors,” saying that “such warriors can be expected to show little reluctance to use weapons of mass destruction” and that the “the portent is more incidents, more deaths and injuries, and more terrorist challenges to established social orders.” He was the author of a recent and similarly prophetic review essay on the “Sociology of Terrorism” in the Annual Review of Sociology (2004). Just last year, he published a book Examining Political Violence: Studies of Terrorism, Counterterrorism and Internal War (2013), with David Lowe and Dilip K. Das.
Literally in the last days of his life, Austin concluded an essay with the telling observation that “the reality to which counterterrorism responds is the ancient and unavoidable struggle to decide whether human freedom and dignity or oppression and exploitation will prevail in our lives” (forthcoming, WILEY HANDBOOK ON DEVIANCE, Eric Goode, ed.). In a time when social scientists have been slow to address such topics, Austin Turk as usual was thinking and writing at the leading edge of what should be among our prevailing concerns.
Austin Turk served his students, colleagues, and profession in numerous ways. Members of the American Society of Criminology will recall his recognition as a Fellow and his service as their past President. A colleague at the University of California at Riverside, where Austin last taught, remembers him “not only as a scholar of note, but also as an exceptionally warm human being, a generous friend and a caring mentor, a bon vivant, and a gracious host.” That is the memory of Austin Turk that his admiring colleagues and friends will treasure: he was as fun and stimulating to be around as he was passionate and realistic about the failings of the world he struggled to understand and improve. He was a good and loyal friend.
Austin Turk’ partner and spouse, Dr. Ruth-Ellen Grimes, shared with him a lifelong interest in sociological criminology. She joined with others to lay Austin to rest in Vermont on a threatening day this last May. Many former students and colleagues paid tribute to Austin at a symposium held at the University of California-Riverside on June 5. Austin loved the annual ASC meetings. In a most appropriate tribute, there will be a thematic panel to honor his memory and contributions at the Annual Meeting in San Francisco this coming November.
A. Ron Gillis, Professor Emeritus, University of Toronto
John L. Hagan, Northwestern University
August 15, 2014
2013
Some of these individuals participated in the ASC Oral History Project. For more information, please go to the Oral History Project page.
STANLEY COHEN
Stanley Cohen, Emeritus Professor of Sociology in the London School of Economics, passed away in early January after a long battle with Parkinson’s disease. Stan was a transformative thinker with a unique ability to combine compelling scholarship with a passionate commitment to social justice. He was also an inspiring mentor, helpful colleague and valued friend to so many fortunate enough to have known him.
Stan was born in 1942 and grew up in South Africa. He studied sociology and social work at the University of Witwatersrand and later moved to London with his wife Ruth to work as a psychiatric social worker. In 1963, he entered the London School of Economics to pursue doctoral research on social responses to vandalism. His PhD dissertation provided the basis for his book Folk Devils and Moral Panics (1972). In this work, Stan proposed the term and concept “moral panic” to connote how overreactions to minor and/or extreme forms of deviance can make matters far worse. Moral panic is now a part of the English language and is routinely employed in criminology and sociology studies.
After a move to Durham University in 1967 and later to the University of Essex in 1972, Stan began collaboration with Laurie Taylor. They were founding members of the National Deviancy Conference in 1968, which challenged criminological orthodoxy. Their study of the conditions and effects of long-term imprisonment in H Wing in Durham Prison, Psychological Survival (1972), significantly heightened prison policy concerns in the Home Office. That book along with Prison Secrets (1976) which discussed the lack of clear-cut inmate rights in prison, set the stage for Stan’s celebrated “dispersal of control” thesis.
Drawing upon the legacy of Orwell as much as Foucault, Stan’s Visions of Social Control (1985) analyzed the ever-widening social control reach of the state into everyday life, employing such metaphors as net-widening, mesh-thinning, exclusion and inclusion. This classic book provided a comprehensive and sweeping analysis of the growth of Western systems of social control and how this historic growth shapes and informs their current and likely future patterns. Visions of Social Control demonstrated the value of studying social control and the role of ideology from a past, present and future perspective while refraining from reliance upon traditional ideological battles. As a result, the book transcended mere ideological or theoretical categorization. Rather, it was an exemplar of confronting theory with best available empirical evidence and allowing the resulting arguments/conclusions to stand as they emerged whether ambiguous or nuanced. This, indeed, was a hallmark of Stan’s work that was without unambiguous conclusions but replete with original, prescient and altogether thoughtful arguments that always push readers to think in new and different ways. Over the past quarter century since its publication, and especially since 9/11, many of his predictions of ever greater inclusionary and exclusionary controls have been all too fully borne out.
A later phase of Stan’s work was his book States of Denial: Knowing about Atrocities and Suffering (2001) which combined his rich expertise in criminology with his concern for human rights that was shaped by his growing up in the turmoil of apartheid South Africa and later witnessing firsthand the plight of the Palestinians while living in Israel. The book focused upon reactions to information about inhumanities and cruelties and how states and the powerful can employ “techniques of neutralization” to avoid embarrassing realities. States of Denial was chosen as Outstanding Publication of 2001 by the International Division of the American Society of Criminology and was awarded the 2002 British Academy Book Prize.
Stan’s many contributions to our understanding of crime, punishment, delinquency, mass media and human rights resulted in numerous awards and recognitions including in 1998 the Sellin-Glueck Award from the American Society of Criminology and his election as a fellow of the British Academy. Stan received Honorary Doctorates from the University of Essex in 2004 and Middlesex in 2008. In 2009 he received the Outstanding Achievement Award from the British Society of Criminology.
Throughout Stan’s career, he maintained a sense of skepticism, irony, fascination, and humor about social life. Moreover, and particularly noteworthy to the current debate over “public sociology” and “public criminology” regarding scholar versus activist/policy roles, Stan effectively embraced both. He recognized that committed scholarship involved a delicate balance even when scholars are clearly informed about a particular area or situation. Stan understood that it is not a matter of committed scholars becoming embroiled in public policy debates by supporting a particular policy. Rather, committed scholars need to identify and explain what policy choices and likely consequences are involved in particular decisions. As Stan exemplified throughout his career, objective scholarship cannot be trumped by mere advocacy or the “taking sides” for some particular policy choice but rather seeking a curious and simultaneous balance between detachment and passion.
We are confident that Stan’s work will continue to prove durable and that future generations will be able to employ and test their sense of reality against the standards he set.
Thomas Blomberg
David Downes
GERALD R. GARRETT
Emeritus Professor of Sociology Gerald R. Garrett, PhD (1940-2013) passed away unexpectedly in Hoosick Falls NY on January 14, 2013. Professor Garrett received his MA and Ph.D. degrees from Washington State University and his BA from Whitman College. His 1971 dissertation, Drinking Behavior of Homeless Women, anticipated his lifelong interest in disaffiliated populations. He worked initially in alcoholism research at Columbia University with sociologist Howard M. Bahr.
Dr. Garrett joined the Department of Sociology at the University of Massachusetts Boston in 1970 and played many important roles in the department and the larger University community until his retirement in 2002, after which he was named professor emeritus. He was a founder of the Department of Sociology’s Criminal Justice major, director of the University’s Alcohol and Substance Abuse Studies program, and acting chair for one year of the Department of Sociology. He taught key courses in the sociology and criminal justice curricula, including Criminology, Corrections and an internship in Alcohol and Drugs. His students rated his teaching as outstanding and he was a popular and beloved adviser to many.
Gerald R. Garrett was a nationally recognized expert in criminal justice, substance abuse studies, and homelessness. He was coauthor, with Richard Rettig and Manuel Torres of Manny: A Criminal Addict’s Story (Houghton Mifflin), with Howard Bahr, of Women Alone: The Disaffiliation of Urban Females, with Calvin J. Larson, of Crime, Justice, and Society (Rowman and Littlefield) and with Russell Schutt, of Responding to the Homeless: Policy and Practice (Plenum). He also published many articles and book chapters on these and related topics. He served as President of the Northeastern Association of Criminal Justice Sciences, President of the International Coalition for Addiction Studies Education, was a member of the Higher Education Center for Alcohol & Substance Abuse Prevention, was senior consultant for the Addiction Technology Transfer Center of New England (with the goal of infusing alcohol and substance abuse knowledge into college curricula), and more recently, served as an adviser to the Alcohol and Substance Abuse Counseling Program at Middlesex Community College. He helped build a strong legacy of applied sociology at UMass Boston.
Submitted by Russell K. Schutt
LOUIS A. MAYO
On Saturday, May 11, 2013, Dr. Louis A. Mayo passed away in his sleep after a long battle with cancer. Lou was known to many long-time employees at the U.S. Department of Justice’s National Institute of Justice as “NIJ Employee #1.” Lou’s history with the agency dates to its earliest days in 1968. Famously, Lou was the author and signatory of “Regulation No. NI-1,” the very first policy memo to be issued by the newly founded National Institute of Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice (NILECJ), which later became the NIJ. This was followed by a series of foundational policies, guidelines, and organizational plans authored by Lou that formed nothing less than the bedrock for what we now know as the National Institute of Justice. Lou was 84.
Dr. Lou Mayo served as a first Lieutenant in the U.S. Air Force during the Korean War as an electronics countermeasures expert and served three U.S. presidents as a Secret Service Agent on the White House detail. The day after President Kennedy was shot, Dr. Mayo received a call from the White House to immediately return to Washington to Washington to assist in the investigation. Upon leaving the Secret Service, Dr. Mayo joined the Office of Law Enforcement Assistance (OLEA) and subsequently co-founded the National Institute of Justice (then the NILECJ) where he was instrumental in developing and promoting Community Policing programs throughout the country. Dr. Mayo formed and operated PACE (Police Association for College Education – http://www.police-association.org) to encourage police departments to require BA degrees for their officers, and was founder and president of “Mayo Mayo and Associates” for over 30 years, promoting best practices in criminal justice and policing.
Lou was a thoughtful, active scholar. Some of his scholarship is archived in the National Criminal Justice Reference Service, including his paper, “Restrictive Policies for High-Speed Police Pursuits” (https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/Digitization/122025NCJRS.pdf ), and “Team Policing” (video, https://www.ncjrs.gov/app/Search/Abstracts.aspx?id=82867).
Lou’s son offered this remembrance:
“My favorite story is that Dad lobbied a judge to set a small bail and then paid the bail so the person he arrested didn’t have to spend Christmas eve in jail. I’m so very proud of my Dad. He was a great man and a wonderful father.”
An OJP colleague who knew Lou for many years remarked that “the IACP Conferences won’t even be the same without Lou there…who else, in the world of sole proprietors, believes in their work so much that they have a booth at IACP every year?”
Lou faithfully attended every recent NIJ Annual Conference, where he helped to host the informal NIJ Alumni event. He was also a regular attendee in recent years at NIJ holiday receptions held each year.
Lou is survived by his three children, Louis Allen Mayo III, Robert Lawrence Mayo, and Carolyn Jean Mayo Fritz, four grandchildren, Cara Mayo, Carleigh Mayo, Kelly Mayo, and Harrison Fritz, and his sister Eloise Mayo. . Friends may call on Friday, May 17 from 5-8pm at Adams-Green Funeral Home in Herndon, VA. A service celebrating Dr. Mayo’s life will be held at a later date. In lieu of flowers, the family requests that donations be made to the Louis A. Mayo Endowment for Community Policing, South Eastern Missouri University, Department of Criminal Justice and Sociology, One University Plaza, Cape Girardeau, MO 63701.
LAWRENCE MARK SALINGER
Dr. Larry M. Salinger, 55, of Bono, died Saturday, November 23, 2013 at St. Bernard¹s Medical Center in Jonesboro. Larry, an only child, was born January 7, 1958, in Boston, Massachusetts to Dr. Gerhard and Mrs. Ursel Salinger (nee Ehrlich), both originally of Berlin, Germany. He grew up in southern California, and was a 1976 graduate of Torrey Pines High School in San Diego, California. Larry earned a Bachelor of Arts in Social Ecology from the University of California at Irvine (1981), a Master of Arts in Forensic Studies from Indiana University at Bloomington (1983), and his doctorate in Sociology from Washington State University (1992). Dr. Salinger taught in the Department of Criminology, Sociology, and Geography at Arkansas State University from 1990 until his death, most recently serving as department chair. He was a dedicated professor and mentor to thousands of ASU students in his 23 years with the department. Dr. Salinger also taught at Adrian College in Adrian, Michigan from 1987 to 1990, and was a visiting professor at Eastern Washington University in Cheney, Washington from 2001 to 2002. He authored or co-authored ten books on social deviance, white-collar crime, and counterterrorism tactics, as well as numerous journal articles and government reports. Dr. Salinger was proud to contribute to his community, both on-campus and off. As well as serving on numerous university committees, Dr. Salinger was a founding member of the Executive Board of the Northeastern Arkansas Children¹s Advocacy Center. He was also proud to be a member of the American Society of Criminology, the American Association of University Professors, and the Strong-Turner Alumni Chapter at ASU. His commitment to his students and the university could only be matched by his strong sense of social justice and moral responsibility toward all of humanity.
In his leisure time, Larry enjoyed cooking, spending time working on his garden, listening to bluegrass music, and going to ASU football games. Larry is survived by one son, Mr. Jeremiah Salinger a current graduate student at Arkansas State University and formerly resident of Spokane, Washington; his life partner, Ms. Robin Pawson of Bono; the mother of his child, Mrs. Denise Routt of Spokane; and a host of other family and friends. He was preceded in death by his parents. Graveside service will be at 2:00pm Friday November 29, 2013 at Temple Israel Cemetery in Jonesboro with Cantor Dr. David Levenbach officiating. Emerson Funeral Home of Jonesboro is in charge of all arrangements.
A memorial service for family, friends, and all of Dr. Salinger¹s current and former students will be announced at a later date by his family. In lieu of flowers, the family requests that memorials be made to the Northeastern Arkansas Children¹s Advocacy Center in Jonesboro.
CAROL HIRSCHON WEISS
Carol Hirschon Weiss, considered the “founding mother” of program and policy evaluation, died on January 8, 2013, at the age of 86. At the time of her death, she was the Beatrice Whiting Professor Emeritus of Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, where she had taught since 1978.
Although Carol received her Ph.D. in Sociology in 1977 (from Columbia University) and did not publish in criminology journals, her influence on the field is unmistakable. Her 1972 book, Evaluation Research: Methods of Assessing Program Effectiveness, was one of the first books devoted to methods for assessing program implementation, process and outcomes. It became the guide to evaluation practice across many social program fields, including criminal justice. Most scholarly books are lucky to sell more than a few hundred copies; Carol’s book sold several hundred thousand copies and is still on the prime shelf of evaluators and scholars. Carol’s later evaluation text, Evaluation: Methods for Studying Programs and Policies, published in 1998, reflected the growth of scholarship and practice of evaluation as it was about three times the size of her first book, and it became another classic in the field.
Besides her considerable influence on the genesis and growth of evaluation practice and scholarship, Carol was also renowned for her work in the area of knowledge utilization, a forerunner to today’s focus on evidence-based policy. She recognized that the main goal of most research, ultimately, was to influence policy decisions, but her research over four decades indicated that it was rare to have direct instrumental effects on government choices. In fact, Carol once wrote, in her beautiful prose, that the effort put into finding such examples was “protracted and painful.” Instead, Carol wrote that the more common outcome of research was to affect the way people asked questions or thought about the issues, which she termed “conceptual use.” This impact often occurred over a long term through a mechanism she described as the “circuitry of enlightenment.”
My personal contact with Carol began in 1997. After I finished my doctorate, I was brooding over what to do next. I came across an advertisement for a post-doctoral fellowship at Harvard focused on evaluating programs for children. When I saw that the fellowship director was Carol Weiss, I rushed to put my application in, and was very fortunate to get selected. I was not disappointed. In the first cohort, there were just four post-docs, and we had Carol all to ourselves. I would give anything to go back to that little room in a Harvard Square loft, sitting with Carol and my three fellow post-docs. We shared many lunches in the Square together, and she loved holding court while we peppered her with questions on all things evaluative. It was Carol who inspired us to put together a volume of New Directions in Evaluation (published in 2000), focusing it on the fellowship theme she organized around her own version of how to understand why a program works, that she called “theory-based evaluation.”
During that fellowship, I shared the story of Drug Abuse Resistance Education (D.A.R.E.) with her. She became so enamored with the story of how research was used (or not used) in the D.A.R.E. program, that she pushed us to write a proposal together, and we eventually were funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to study it. We spent the next five years working together, and had so many great conversations about the role of research and evaluation in the policy decision process, a subject she never tired of talking about. Although we started with the premise that research on D.A.R.E. was being ignored, it turned out to be a much more complex and nuanced story.
I learned so many things from Carol. She taught me that one can be creative with language, even in writing for the social sciences. She used the English language to make her titles and articles so engaging and eye-catching. One of her last papers was entitled “The Fairy Godmother—and her Warts: Making the Dream of Evidence-Based Policy Come True.” Who could even think to use a phrase like this in the title of the leading evaluation journal in the world (the American Journal of Evaluation)? Carol would. Another was her famous paper on alternative approaches to experiments for assessing causality, which she entitled “What to do Until the Random Assigner Comes?” for a book published by Brookings Press in 2002. Some may disagree with her arguments, but that is interesting writing.
She also taught me how to be graceful in light of criticisms. She was unflappable and civil no matter what reviewers or other evaluation theorists said. While we worked together, I had come across a number of published criticisms of her work on several fronts. In one article, the author wrote that Carol was too pessimistic about the influence of research in policy; in another, a colleague wrote that she didn’t emphasize randomized experiments enough; and, in still another, she was listed as a theorist who failed to emphasize the unique roles of context and theory to understanding program impact. But while I would be stewing over them because I believed they were gross exaggerations of more nuanced arguments she had made, she would always laugh the criticisms off. In fact, I had the distinct sense that Carol enjoyed engaging in all of these debates. She had a deep appreciation for all approaches to evaluation and she was not evangelical about pushing any particular strategy to the exclusion of others. Carol was very rigorous and careful in her work, but she also had a view that we should “let 1,000 flowers bloom” so that we can learn from the various approaches. She was especially fond and respectful of evaluators on the front lines in the field who were trying to produce good studies in face of political pressures and resource constraints, particularly those working in developing nations or impoverished communities.
Carol and I shared the same birthday (November 7), and we enjoyed sending each other notes of well wishes on that day. We also exchanged holiday wishes this year, and in Carol’s style not to focus on her own problems, there was never even a hint in her communications that her health was not well. The field of evaluation will miss her greatly, and I will miss her, not only as an amazing writer and theorist, but also as a mentor and friend.
Anthony Petrosino
WestEd
apetros@wested.org
*I appreciate the comments of Natalie Lacerino-Paquet, Susan Mundry, Claire Morgan, Sarah Guckenburg and Janet Phlegar on this draft.
L. EDWARD WELLS
On Sunday, October 20, 2013 Dr. L. Edward Wells passed away following unsuccessful efforts to treat leukemia. Dr. Wells received his PhD in Sociology from the University of Wisconsin in 1976, after which he was a Postdoctoral Fellow at Stanford and then at Indiana University. He taught at Purdue University for seven years and in 1986 was hired at Illinois State University where he taught and conducted research until his passing. Although he retired in 2012 he continued to mentor students and conduct research.
Dr. Wells was known for his keen intellect, his compassion, and his dry sense of humor. His knowledge was wide-ranging. His research interests were broad and his personal interests even broader. There were few subjects about which he didn’t have some knowledge. His published research included self-concept, broken homes and delinquency, criminological theory, delinquency, gangs, homicide, police vehicle pursuits, community policing, rural crime, suburban policing, rural policing, crime and policing in American Indian communities, and methamphetamine production. Much of his work was empirical, including his publications on meta-analysis.
Ed was known for his kindness and his genuine humility. He had a love of numbers and of finding patterns, both of which served him well in his work involving both quantitative research and theory. He was always there to help students and other faculty. Ed was often the smartest person in the room but would never have accepted that description. His colleagues at ISU repeatedly pushed to have him recognized for his scholarly accomplishments, but he steadfastly refused to even have his materials submitted.
Dr. Wells was often described as the soul of the Department of Criminal Justice Sciences. His wisdom, fairness and kindness always steered the department to move in the right direction, to strive for excellence and to do right by each other and our students. His presence on the 4th floor of Schroeder Hall will be missed in ways words cannot describe.
Dr. Wells’ memorial service was held at Unitarian Universalist Church on Saturday November 9 at 2p.
In lieu of cards or flowers, the Wells’ family would appreciate contributions to the Department of Criminal Justice Sciences’ Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. Scholarship fund. This award is made to a junior or above who is an underrepresented group. The recipient must demonstrate outstanding academic achievement and embodies the teaching and spirit of Rev. King. One award per year is given.
Please make checks out to the ISU Foundation and on the memo line write CJS MLK Scholarship in memory of Dr. Ed Wells.
Mail to: ISU Foundation, Campus Box 8000, Normal, IL 61790-8000.
If you have any questions, please contact Dr. Jackie Schneider at jschneider@ilstu.edu or on 309-438-2002.
EDWIN W. ZEDLEWSKI
Edwin W. Zedlewski passed away on April 14, 2013. As a career public servant for more than 35 years, Dr. Edwin Zedlewski helped form, shape, and nurture our nation’s criminal justice research agenda. He helped form and hone the research tools to understand “what works,” he helped broker a more effective partnership between research, practice, and public policy, and he made real lasting contributions to the safety of our communities and neighborhoods across the country.
To his colleagues at NIJ, Ed was known as a persistently optimistic, unflappable colleague with a “steel trap” memory and a flair for hosting impromptu “ice cream socials.” To the field, he became a consistent beacon of empiricism, evidence, and rigor in measuring what works and what’s promising in fighting crime. He dedicated his career to the work and the mission of NIJ and OJP.
Ed was been an employee of the U.S. Department of Justice from September, 1975 to February 2011. His years of public service were dedicated to the advancement of public safety through research and evaluation at the National Institute of Justice, Office of Justice Programs. Ed held several key posts at NIJ including Science Advisor to the NIJ Director (1984-1992), Director of Corrections Research (1992-1996), Director of Program Development, 1998-1999), Assistant Director (1999-2000), Senior Science Advisor (2001-2008), and Director of NIJ’s International Research Center (2008-present). His early accomplishments helped to lay the foundation of the National Institute of Justice: developing and administering NIJ’s evaluation program under the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1988; serving as consultant to the President’s Commission on Organized Crime; conducting a study of DEA airport surveillance, a study later placed in evidence by the U.S. Solicitor General in Royer v. Florida; leading a three-year project integrating public- and private-sector investments into a general theory of crime prevention and deterrence; advising the Bureau of Justice Statistics on the design of the National Crime Survey; leading the development of the Corrections and Law Enforcement Family Support (CLEFS) program; and fostering partnerships with the Ford Foundation and Harvard University’s Innovations in Government program and the Goldstein Awards in policing to highlight and accelerate the pace of innovation in criminal justice. Among his more recent achievements were his leadership in establishing NIJ’s Breaking the Cycle demonstration program; the Re-Entry Partnerships initiative; his contributions to the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy subcommittee on Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences, including contributing significantly to the 2005 OSTP publication on Research on Terrorism; and his formation of a new partnership on research supporting crime policy with the National Governor’s Association.
One of Ed’s most significant later achievements was the development and implementation of a cutting-edge demonstration project to test the utility of DNA for high-volume non-violent crimes in five U.S. jurisdictions. This study contributed significantly to revolutionizing the way that police agencies use DNA to solve high-volume crimes like burglaries and car thefts. Ed’s innovative approach, linking social/behavioral science and program evaluation to the emerging technology of DNA analysis and trace evidence helped to usher in what we know recognize as a new era in crime-solving, forensics, and policing.
Ed was an accomplished researcher and writer and authored many research papers including “DNA Analysis for “Minor” Crimes: A Major Benefit for Law Enforcement,” (2006, with Mary B. Murphy); “Why Prisons Matter,” (1997); “Private Security and Controlling Crime,” (1990); “The Economics of Disincarceration,” (1984); “Space Flight, Street Crime, and Methodological Juxtaposition,” (1984); and “Performance Measurement in Public Agencies: The Law Enforcement Evolution,” (1979). Some of latest writing was as a contributing author to an edited volume on calculating costs of crime and the benefits of crime prevention initiatives.
Ed was a graduate of the Doctoral program in Economics at George Washington University, Washington, DC. Before joining the Department of Justice, he was a research analyst and consultant to the Chief of Naval Operations in the U.S. Navy.
He is survived by his wife Sheila, and their two sons, John and Charles.
Submitted by Thomas E. Feucht
2012
Some of these individuals participated in the ASC Oral History Project. For more information, please go to the Oral History Project page.
HUGO BEDAU
Hugo Bedau, Philosopher Who Opposed Death Penalty, Dies at 85
Hugo Bedau, a philosopher who preferred to wrestle with the knottiest of public policy issues rather than reason from the remove of academia most notably in confronting capital punishment, which he opposed as immoral, unjust and ineffective died on Monday in Norwood, Mass. He was 85.
The cause was complications of Parkinson’s disease, said his wife, Constance E. Putnam. Professor Bedau’s half-century career encompassed several cycles in the national debate over the death penalty: its decline and eventual rejection by the Supreme Court in 1972, its resurrection by the court later that decade, and its suspension in several states more recently. His most ambitious work, “The Death Penalty in America,” revised several times, has been a standard text since it was first published in 1964.
Professor Bedau (pronounced beh-DOUGH) took up the issue as well in “The Case Against the Death Penalty,” a pamphlet distributed widely for many years by the American Civil Liberties Union. Written with the help of Henry Schwarzschild, a former director of the group’s Capital Punishment Project, the publication brought together a number of arguments against the death penalty: that it failed to deter crime (using supporting data); that it was fraught with racial bias, wrongful convictions and excessive financial costs; and that it was ultimately an act of “barbarity.”
“The history of capital punishment in American society clearly shows the desire to mitigate the harshness of this penalty by narrowing its scope,” the pamphlet said in a section titled “Unfairness.” “Discretion, whether authorized by statutes or by their silence, has been the main vehicle to this end. But when discretion is used, as it always has been, to mark for death the poor, the friendless, the uneducated, the members of racial minorities and the despised, then discretion becomes injustice. Thoughtful citizens, who in contemplating capital punishment in the abstract might support it, must condemn it in actual practice.”
The essay, heavily footnoted, was less than 9,000 words long. Professor Bedau’s curriculum vitae was more than 13,000.
“We called him the dean of death penalty scholarship,” said Michael Radelet, a death penalty expert at the University of Colorado who began working with Professor Bedau in the 1980s. “Bedau was the first guy to put it all together and the first to make the general empirical argument against the death penalty that is, a little race, a little deterrent, a little innocence.”
Hugo Adam Bedau was born on Sept. 23, 1926, in Portland, Ore., to Hugo Adam Bedau and Laura Romeis Bedau. (His parents chose not to name him Hugo Jr.) Young Hugo grew up in the San Francisco area. His father, who did not go to college, had a small library in which Hugo often spent time. He briefly studied naval science at the University of Southern California through the Navy’s V-12 program for officers but was discharged in 1946, after the war ended and before he had graduated.
He received a bachelor’s degree from University of Redlands in Southern California and did his graduate work in philosophy at Boston University and Harvard. The title of his doctoral thesis at Harvard was “The Concept of Thinking.”
Professor Bedau lectured at several universities but spent most of his career in the Boston area as an anchor of the philosophy department at Tufts, beginning in 1966. Among the many awards he received was the Abolitionist Award, given in 1989 by the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty.
“He articulated the case against the death penalty as well as anyone ever has,” Paul G. Cassell, a law professor, former federal judge and noted proponent of the death penalty, said in an e-mail.
Professor Bedau’s previous marriage, to the former Jan Mastin, ended in divorce. Besides Ms. Putnam, whom he married in 1990, he is survived by four children from his first marriage: Mark, Paul and Guy Bedau and Lauren Bedau Evans; two sisters, Carol Bell and Renee Larsen; and five grandchildren. He lived in Concord, Mass.
Ms. Putnam, a medical historian, said Professor Bedau was teaching at Princeton in the 1950s when the New Jersey Legislature was weighing measures in support of the death penalty. Struck by how little public debate the issue seemed to generate, he began to research capital punishment and eventually became immersed.
“It was anger, disappointment and frustration over discovering that something this significant in the so-called life of a society was going through the Legislature with so little public discussion or debate,” Ms. Putnam said.
Professor Bedau eventually testified on the issue before state legislatures and Congress, spoke to countless library groups, and delivered a series of lectures in 1994 as the Romanell-Phi Beta Kappa professor of philosophy while at Tufts. The lectures were collected in a book, “Making Mortal Choices,” published by Oxford University Press in 1997.
“He wasn’t a front-line protester; that wasn’t his role,” Ms. Putnam said. “His contribution was clarity of thinking.”
by William Yardley
GILBERT GEIS
Gilbert Geis, Professor Emeritus at UC, Irvine, passed away on November 10, 2012, after battling complications from heart surgery. Gil was one of the most respected scholars and widely beloved colleagues in criminology. He served as ASC President in 1976, and received the Sutherland Award in 1985. For over a decade he served as President of the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners, the largest professional fraud prevention group in the world.
An incredibly prolific social scientist, Gil produced more than 500 articles and chapters, dozens of research monographs, and 26 books during a highly distinguished academic career. He was a brilliant writer, an elegant wordsmith, skills he had honed as a sports journalist. His work spanned eight decades, and is notable for its interdisciplinary quality, quantity, and remarkable breadth in a number of fields, including sociology, psychology, history, criminology, criminal justice, law, media studies, education, and policy studies. A partial list of topics includes education issues, race relations, Scandinavian studies, the death penalty, film censorship, prisons, prostitution, crime and crime victims, policing, community corrections, rehabilitation, organized crime, prisoner rights, evaluations, rape, homicide, victimless crimes, legal ethics, drugs, violence, social problems, good Samaritans, compensation, restitution, deterrence, witch trials, criminal justice policy, research methods, medical fraud, comparative criminology, and white-collar and corporate crime. It is this last area for which he became best known, and indeed, which he kept alive.
Born Jan. 10, 1925 in New York City, as a teenager Gil worked as an usher on Broadway and collected tickets at NY Yankee and Giant baseball games before becoming a radioman in the Navy during World War II. He attended college under the GI Bill, earning a bachelor’s degree at Colgate University in New York (where he ran track), a master’s at Brigham Young University and a Ph.D. at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He was a faculty member at the University of Oklahoma and California State University, Los Angeles, before joining the UCI faculty in 1971, where he played a significant role in establishing the School of Social Ecology and the Department of Criminology, Law and Society.
A member of the Lyndon Johnson’s President’s Commission on Law Enforcement & Administration of Justice, Gil was responsible for the white-collar crime section of the report. He was also a member of the National Council on Crime & Delinquency from 1973 to 1976.
Gil collaborated with scores of scholars and students throughout the world. His work on white-collar crime spawned a new generation of researchers who have broadened the scope of criminology. His major professional achievements and intellectual influences were saluted in a collection of original works (Contemporary Issues in Crime and Criminal Justice). The National White-Collar Crime Research Consortium named its distinguished scholar award in his honor.
Gilbert Geis was not only a giant in the field whose keen sense of justice and humanity was evident in everything he wrote, but an ideal mentor, colleague and dear friend to many. His legacy will guide scholars for many years to come.
Henry Pontell, Paul Jesilow, Joseph DiMento, and Arnold Binder, UC, Irvine
John Braithwaite, Australian National University
Robert Meier, University of Nebraska at Omaha
Mary Dodge, University of Denver
Sally Simpson, University of Maryland
Richard Wright, University of Missouri, St. Louis
David Shichor, California State University, San Bernardino
JOHN S. GOLDKAMP
John Goldkamp, age 64, Professor of Criminal Justice at Temple University, passed away on August 26, 2012, after a long and courageous battle with cancer.
After completing his doctoral work at SUNY-Albanyin 1977, John came to Temple in 1978 and chaired the department from 1979 to1983. He was instrumental both in attracting a strong faculty and creating a rigorous academic program, and served again as chair from 2004 to 2010.
His work on pretrial release, questioning the use of cash as the currency of liberty, influenced major bail reform. In the 1980s, his research in Philadelphia led to the implementation of pretrial release decision guidelines, which later were adopted by other municipalities around the country. John was also among the first to recognize the significance of drug courts. In the early 1990s, his evaluation of the nation’s first drug court in Miami, Florida, documented the effectiveness of the drug court treatment. Drug courts now function across the country. Broadly, his research focused on discretion in criminal justice and innovation in the courts. Throughout his career he published three books, more than 50 articles and nearly 100 research reports.He worked closely with a substantial number of master’s and doctoral students.
John’s contributions to the field have been recognized: the Pioneer Award from the National Association of Pretrial Services Agencies (1988); the Paul H. Chapman medal from the Foundation for the Improvement of Justice (2003); being named a Fellow of the AmericanAcademy of Experimental Criminology(2006); and this year’s recipient of the August Vollmer Award, to be presented posthumously at the ASC meeting (2012).
An avid swimmer, gardener, and Phillies’ fan, John will be remembered for his strong sense of humor, love of rock and roll trivia, all things French, and his deep and long-standing friendships. He is survived by his wife, Dr. Rely Vîlcică, two daughters, Aurora and Violet, and an extended family that loved him dearly.
Contributed by (alphabetically) M. Kay Harris, Phil Harris, Alan Harland, Jerry Ratcliffe, Ralph Taylor
ROSLYN (ROZ) MURASKIN
Dr. Roslyn (Roz) Muraskin, ACJS Secretary and professor of criminal justice, passed away on Saturday, April 21 after a two-year battle with ovarian cancer. She was 71 years old. Roz was an accomplished criminal justice scholar and a leading advocate for women’s rights in the workplace. Her scholarly research focused on women’s leadership development; gender, race and the criminal justice system; and women prisoners in correctional facilities. She authored or co-authored more than 15 scholarly works, including five books. A prominent advocate for women’s rights and a breast cancer survivor, Roz founded the Long Island Women’s Institute (LIWI) in 1991 to encourage women to become successful leaders and to break the proverbial “glass ceiling.” Her honors have included the Woman of the Year Award for Excellence from the Minorities and Women Section of the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences; the Fellow Award (twice) from the Northeastern Association of Criminal Justice Sciences; and recognition for her work in AIDS education from the Long Island Association for AIDS Care. She served on the board of the “Herstory” women writers’ workshop. Roz is survived by husband, Matthew Muraskin, an attorney; sons Seth and Craig; a daughter, Tracy Birkhahn; and six grandchildren, Lindsay, Nickia, Benjamin, Zachary, Sloane and Sydney. She is also survived by her mother, Alice Cashman, and brother, Richard Cashman. In lieu of flowers, the family requests donations to ovarian cancer research. A memorial service is being planned for September at LIU Post.
ROBBIN OGLE
Robbin Ogle, Associate Professor of Criminal Justice at the University of Nebraska Omaha (UNO) passed away unexpectedly on July 9, 2012 at the age of 51. Robbin was a well-respected researcher and colleague, a dedicated mentor, and most importantly a compassionate and caring person who will be missed greatly by her family, friends and colleagues.
Robbin joined the faculty at UNO in 1995 after receiving her Ph.D. in both Criminal Justice and Women’s Studies from Penn State University. She was a gifted teacher and a patient and tireless mentor dedicated to furthering the best interests of her students both inside and outside of the classroom. Robbin’s teaching and research focused primarily on correctional organizations and the intersection between gender and crime. She was instrumental in developing new perspectives on crime that bettered our understanding of gender and violence. She authored/co-authored numerous journal articles and book chapters, and in 2002, she published the book Self-Defense and Battered Women Who Kill: A New Framework, with her co-author Susan Jacobs.
Robbin was devoted to her family and actively involved in her community. She was especially drawn to causes which empowered girls and young women. She personally influenced the lives of many young women in the Omaha area through her involvement in youth softball. Robbin, or “Coach Robbie”, as she was affectionately referred to by her players, who herself had a very successful collegiate softball career, loved coaching and helping girls develop both as players and people.
Submitted by Eric Wodahl (University of Wyoming) and Michael Harrington (Northern Michigan University)
TONY PETERS
The one metaphor that consistently comes to mind when trying to grasp the enormous diversity of Tony Peters’ work in criminology is that of a ‘builder of bridges’.
First of all, bridges between disciplines and sub-disciplines His double major in sociology and criminology provided him with a clear understanding of the societal dimension within total institutions like prisons, and the young researcher already in the 1970s visited prisons in Paris, New York and California to learn from other countries. In the 1980s, he shifted his attention to victims and victimology, and ten years later to practices of restorative justice between perpetrators and victims. He was able to integrate and even shape these three fields in a very creative and pragmatic manner. During four decades he travelled the world to give lectures on issues of detention, victimhood and restorative justice, and inspired many audiences with his vision of crime and justice.
Secondly, Tony Peters also liked to build bridges between institutions. In Leuven in the 1990s, he served as one of the founding fathers of the Erasmus programme in criminology, the coordinator of the EU-funded student and staff exchange project between Europe and Canada on Victimisation, Mediation and Restorative Justice, and the first director of the English Master Programme in European Criminology at the Faculty of Law. In his last years he was also the creator of the Observatory of Academic Criminology Programmes, aimed at providing information about such courses to students and scholars from all over the world. Several generations of young students, researchers and professors have been given the opportunity through his work to broaden their horizons and develop a truly comparative perspective on crime, criminology and criminal justice.
Tony also strongly supported the development of criminological research and teaching in Europe and beyond. The Hungarian colleagues reminded us recently how he worked with them “since the middle of the seventies, i.e., long before the fundamental changes in Central and Eastern Europe” had even surfaced; as a result of this commitment, he was offered in 2010 the Honorary Membership of the Hungarian Society of Criminology. The same happened in his ’second home’ Spain, where during many years he worked closely together with colleagues from San Sebastian, Barcelona and other places, resulting in several honorary awards.
It should be clear that Tony viewed the practice of building bridges in a very integrated way: he was not only the inspiring architect who would design the constructions and accompany their implementation from afar, but also the careful ‘master of the wharf’ who would supervise the building activities on a regular basis; and he was never afraid to act as the diligent construction worker who would not rest until the last nail was put in the right position.
His impressive international career culminated in his 15-year long service to the International Society for Criminology. He became the President of its Scientific Commission in 1998 and the general President of the Society in 2006 until his untimely death in April of 2012. Not coincidentally, in the past days multiple messages with condolences and expressions of deep sympathy and high esteem have reached us from the four corners of the globe, including from many countries of the European Union as well as Serbia and Turkey, Canada and the United States, China and Japan, South Africa and Australia, and several other places.
Although a giant in criminology, Tony always remained a very modest person. Both in his academic and personal life his Leitmotiv was ‘respect and tolerance’ for all persons, ideas and practices, except the ones that are intolerant and disrespectful themselves; and being a wise man he was always able to make that distinction.
2011
Some of these individuals participated in the ASC Oral History Project. For more information, please go to the Oral History Project page.
WILLIAM EARL AMOS
William Earl Amos protected a president as a Secret Service agent and guarded war criminals as a military police officer – but his lifelong passion was in education. For 10 years, Dr. Amos served as coordinator of the criminal justice program at what is now the University of North Texas, where he had been a professor emeritus since he retired in 1991. Throughout his career, Dr. Amos taught at a host of other institutions, including Georgetown University, American University, and the University of Texas at Dallas.
Born in Charleston, Arkansas, Dr. Amos joined the Army immediately after graduating from high school. As an army military police officer at the end of World War II, he worked to keep order as American, Russian and British troops liberated the Nazi concentration camps. Much of his military service in the 1950s was at the prison in Nuremberg.
In 1956 Dr. Amos became a Secret Service agent and was assigned to protect then President Dwight Eisenhower. He returned to school at this time and earned a master’s degree and a doctorate from the University of Maryland. In 1969, Dr, Amos was appointed to the U.S. Parole Commission and served for a period of time as the chair of its youth corrections division.
Dr. Amos was an active member of ASC for many years, and served as president in 1977. He passed away on August 7, 2011.
Drawn from Joe Simnacher, Dallas News, 8/9/11
ALLEN BREED
The recent passing of Allen Breed at age 90 is a great loss for our nation and his family and friends. He was a creative and research-supportive leader of state and federal efforts to bring principle to criminal and juvenile justice.
Allen Breed went to work for the California Youth Authority (CYA) soon after his return from World War Two. He began as a youth counselor hoping to save money to enter Stanford Law School. He became so committed to youth work that his legal education was placed on hold. Allen moved up through the CYA organization and became its director. Under his leadership, CYA became renowned worldwide for its innovative research and treatment programs. Allen Breed pioneered the Probation Subsidy Act that became the model for the expansion of community corrections in many states. He greatly valued researchers as major partners in corrections and supported the earliest work on offender classification. Allen led the statewide to remove juvenile status offenders from secure confinement. Allen was a key advocate for the passage of the federal Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Act.
President Jimmy Carter asked Allen Breed to lead the National Institute of Corrections (NIC). Allen emphasized the use of research to improve corrections and sought to upgrade professional organizations in the field. At NIC, he placed early and focused attention on the vast disproportionate number of people of color in jails and prisons. Allen fought to keep young people out of adult facilities and he challenged corrections officials to be leaders, not just “practiced survivors”. While at NIC, Allen Breed was instrumental in the passage of the federal Civil Rights of Institutionalized Persons Act.
After leaving NIC, Allen took over the leadership of the National Council on Crime and Delinquency Board of Directors for a decade, and was central to saving that organization. He also began working on behalf of federal courts as a special master in cases involving prison and jail crowding, the provision of inmate medical care, and juvenile corrections systems in many states. He was highly effective in mediating conflicts between civil rights lawyers and corrections officials. For elected officials, the media and leaders in philanthropy, Allen Breed was the most authoritative and object source on best practices.
Submitted by Barry Krisberg & Frank Zimring, University of California, Berkeley
JOSINE JUNGER-TAS
The ‘grande dame’ of youth criminology in Europe is no more. Josine Junger-Tas passed away at age 81. True to her character, until the very end, she remained keenly interested in the world around her. Josine was a passionate, prolific and creative scholar who has inspired many criminologists, in Europe and beyond. Her contributions, too numerous to be summarized easily, have been recognized by the Sellin-Glueck award (1989), the DIC Distinguished International Scholar Award (2007), and the ESC European Criminology Award (2008).
During her long career, she studied a wide variety of topics, but she mostly focused on youth crime. She was a fervent and compassionate believer in prevention rather than punishment, and she often spoke out publicly against the repressive and hard line youth policies which emerged in the Netherlands over the last decade.
Josine was a true internationalist avant la lettre. Her work is published in Dutch, German, French, Belgian, British and American journals, reports and books. She co-authored several articles with her daughter Marianne Junger, also a Dutch criminologist. Josine was a member of the Scientific Council of the Council of Europe and served on numerous international expert committees. She worked for twenty years at the Research and Documentation Center (RDC) of the Dutch Ministry of Justice, honing her skills at “applied research with scientific integrity. “ After retiring from the RDC in 1994, she became a professor of youth criminology at the University of Lausanne where she received an honorary doctorate. Since her retirement, she has been a visiting professor at various universities, most recently at Utrecht University. In 2000 together with several European colleagues, she took the initiative to establish the European Society of Criminology. She organized the first ESC meeting in Lausanne, Switzerland and became the first ESC President in 2001.
Josine launched the First International Self-Report Delinquency Study (ISRD-1) in 1989, which was followed several years later by a much expanded ISRD-2 in which more than 30 countries collaborated. She had just finished her contribution to the book manuscript on the ISRD-2, when she fell ill. The Many Faces of Youth Crime: Comparing and Contrasting Theoretical Perspectives on Youth Crime is now in press (Springer). Sadly, she will not be around to participate in ISRD-3. Her leadership, her intellectual curiosity, her gentle spirit and her infectious laugh will be sorely missed.
Submitted by Ineke Haen Marshall, Northeastern University
VINCE O’LEARY
Vince O’Leary (1924-2011) died on April 22, 2011, from injuries suffered from a fall. He was 86 years old.
Vince was an iconic figure in correctional theory, policy, and practice. His distinguishing characteristic was that he was a natural leader who inspired confidence in the people around him. The first half of his career was spend as a correctional professional, where he was involved in some of the most import changes in the country during that time. In the second half of his career, he was one of the leaders in the development of criminal justice as a field in higher education. His seminal contributions to criminal justice policy and practice were recognized in 1981, with the August Vollmer Award of the American Society of Criminology.
Within corrections in the latter half of the 20th Century, there was no meaningful policy development on which he did not have influence. He was Assistant Director of the 1967 President’s Commission on Law Enforcement and the Administration of Justice, handling the area of corrections, and he later drafted portions of the 1968 report of the National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence. As an administrator for the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration, he oversaw the design of the prototype national criminal justice statistical reporting system. He was a lead consultant on corrections to the 1973 National Commission on Criminal Justice Standards and goals.
Vince’s role as a formative leader in the policy arena of corrections followed several years of leadership roles locally and nationally. He was chief probation and parole officer for the State of Washington, and was the first director of parole for the State of Texas, where he organized it’s first professional parole supervision system. Following these administrative assignments, he spent six years at the National Council on Crime and Delinquency, where he was at first director of the National Parole Institutes, and then later headed the Division of Research, Information, and Technology, supervising a staff of over 40 professionals. At each of these assignments, Vince demonstrated a deep commitment to education and development. He established training partnerships with the top universities in each state, and with NCCD oversaw a national program of professional training that reflected the most recent practice-relevant knowledge in the field. The importance of the NCCD training/research program cannot easily be overestimated. When this worked is combined with his role with the National Council of Juvenile Court Judges, it is reasonable to think that he personally trained 2,000 correctional managers and administrators in the ears before joining the faculty at SUNY-Albany.
Coming to SUNY as a founding faculty member in the new School of Criminal Justice was a natural career step, given Vince’s interest in high-quality education for professionals, especially top-management, in the field of criminal justice. His natural talent for leadership led to his eventual selection as dean of the School of Criminal Justice. In 1975-76, SUNY suffered a fiscal crisis that required university-wide reorganization and retrenchment. Vince chaired the committee that designed the reorganization. His deft handling of this volcanic challenge led to his appointment as president of the University in 1977, and he served in that role until 1990. While he was a professor, he wrote 2 books, 11 monographs, and 40 articles. The significance of his work is demonstrated by how often it has been reprinted: 10 of his writings have been reprinted a total of 21 times. He retired as University Professor in 1996.
I knew Vince as teacher and mentor. He was the most talented teacher I have ever met, with an inspiring ability to explain concepts and generate enthusiasm for critical thought about real problems affecting the justice system. Nothing satisfied him more than a good give-and-take about some thorny, pressing idea related to justice. His breath of knowledge and joy for stimulating exchange meant that he improved any conversation of which he became a part.
He was also the most generous mentor I have ever known, pouring over multiple drafts of my 800-page dissertation and editing them, line by line. On a handful of occasions, he spent personal capital to invest in my career, including convincing me to stay in school by offering me an extra-pay job, even after I had failed the first pro-seminar writing assignment in a class he taught.
When I tried to thank him for all of this after he hooded me in 1977, he said simply,” You cannot thank me. You can only pass it on.” Every student and colleague who has since benefitted from association with me in any way has him to thank.
Submitted by Todd Clear, Rutgers University
DALE K. SECHREST
Some people have a vibrancy that makes them appear to be larger than life. Undoubtedly this is why it has taken the faculty at California State University, San Bernardino (CSUSB) so long to come to terms with the loss of one of our distinguished members. Dale K. Sechrest (1939 – 2011), or as he preferred to be called “Uncle Dale”, passed away unexpectedly at Loma Linda Hospital on November 12th, 2011 from cancer-related complications.
Dale was born in Taft, CA on April 22, 1939. Enlisting in the Army in 1957, Dale monitored Soviet radio and missile activity from Turkey. Upon returning state-side, he used the G.I. Bill—obtaining a B.A. in Psychology (1964) and a M.S. in Sociology (1966) from San Jose University. Following a short stint as a Deputy Probation Officer with the Contra Costa County Probation Department in El Cerrito, CA, Dale worked through a sequence of applied research positions.
Officially, Dale spent a couple of years with the Joint Commission on Correctional Manpower and Training in Washington, DC. Several years later he found his way back to California to join the American Justice Institute in 1971. From 1973-1975 he served as a Project Director with the Center for Criminal Justice, at Harvard Law School. Dale’s tenure with applied research organizations culminated in a 10 year relationship with the American Correctional Association. And, somewhere in the middle of it all, Dale completed a D.Crim. from the University of California at Berkeley, 1974. Shortly thereafter the program was disbanded; no one is certain what to make of this coincidence.
Always on the go, Dale jumped into the academic world with a faculty position at Florida International University. A native Californian, Dale soon left the humidity and mosquitos, returning to his home state and settling in at CSUSB. Dale’s passion for correctional research never waned and during his 21 years at CSUSB. As director of the Center for Criminal Justice Research (CCJR-CSUSB), Dale mentored countless students and faculty on the art of applied research. Generous to a fault, Dale’s opportunities became your course release or M.A. thesis as he drew everyone in around him to help with the research. Dale was always “just trying to get organized”, and though he frequently lamented that he was “maligned and misunderstood”, he was beloved by all.
His legacy extends far beyond the countless publications and research reports he completed. Dale is survived by his ex-wife, Judy Sechrest; three children, Stephanie Conner, Alan Sechrest and David Sechrest; 6 grandchildren, two nephews, and 1 great grandchild; and, many colleagues. It is no exaggeration to say that Dale touched thousands of lives. Never at a loss for words, Dale’s wit and occasional limerick, continues to echo in our hearts. He is greatly missed.
Dale’s dedication to supporting the scholarly development of students and faculty will be honored with the Dale Sechrest Memorial Fund and a research lab named in his honor. For more information or to make a gift, please see https://development.csusb.edu/makeagift/.
Gisela Bichler, Ph.D.
Professor, Dept. of Criminal Justice
California State University, San Bernardino
2010
Some of these individuals participated in the ASC Oral History Project. For more information, please go to the Oral History Project page.
DONALD ANDREWS
http://www.legacy.com/can-ottawa/obituaries.asp?Page=LifeStory&PersonID=146251548
JEAN-PAUL BRODEUR
Jean-Paul Brodeur, Professor at the School of Criminology, Université de Montréal, and Director of the International Centre for Comparative Criminology, passed away on April 26, after a battle with cancer. Jean-Paul was a member of the American Society of Criminology since 1987. One of the rare francophone researchers to regularly participate in ASC meetings, Jean-Paul completed his Ph.D. in Philosophy in 1975 at the Université de Paris and was a professor of Philosophy at the Université du Québec à Montréal until 1978. Even as a philosopher, his fight was against the abuse of power, misery, violence, and torture. His transition to Criminology that same year was based on his belief that his work would be more relevant within this young(er) discipline that was in search of greater critical assessments at the time. Foucault’s publication of Surveiller et punir during this same period was the proof that Criminology was ready for ideas and research that carried a greater social consciousness and the final pathway that brought Jean-Paul to cross-over into what would turn into a three-decade career.
Jean-Paul would move on to become one of Criminology’s most authoritative experts in the fields of policing, security, sentencing, and social justice. He was a productive scholar in both English and French and a well-known public figure through his participation in various public commissions and regular radio appearances and newspaper editorials. Friends and colleagues will remember Jean-Paul for the passion that he brought to his work and for his love of ideas, poetry, music, theatre, cinema, and poker. Above all, Jean-Paul was a lover of life. Whether in friendship or conflict, Jean-Paul always had the respect of others. His work ethic was unmatched. Even during the past year, as the physical toll of his sickness became increasingly apparent, he pursued his teaching, research, and writing with the same drive that depicted him for so many years. Indeed, he wanted his life to end as he lived it: responsibly, productively, passionately. And that he did—Jean-Paul finished correcting the final proofs of his last book less than a week before he passed away. This book, The Policing Web (Oxford University Press, August 2010), is the product of close to a decade of work and the culmination of Jean-Paul’s determined pursuit to produce the most original and comprehensive treatise on the police. We lost a wise man at the Université de Montréal, yet we are all appreciative of the legacy that he left us and his relentless message to establish la pensée juste.
Submitted by Carlo Morselli
MARSHALL CLINARD
Marshall Barron Clinard died at St. Vincent’s Hospital in Santa Fe, NM on May 30, 2010, at age 98. He was born in Boston, MA on November 12, 1911, the son of Gladys Barron and Andrew Marshall Clinard.
Marshall was educated at Governor Dummer Academy, Stanford University (BA ’32, MA ’34), and the University of Chicago (PhD ’41, Sociology). Between 1941-1945 he worked as Chief Criminal Statistician for the US Census Bureau and in the enforcement department of the Office of Price Administration.
He taught at the University of Iowa, Vanderbilt University, and for 34 years at the University of Wisconsin/Madison.At the University of Wisconsin he received many teaching awards and was a popular professor who attracted many students. He had 17 PhD students. In 1957 he published Sociology of Deviant Behavior, a major text book now in its 14th edition and still widely used. He wrote 11 books and over 40 articles. He was widely recognized for his work on corporate crime; his book Corporate Crime was republished in 2005.
He married Ruth Blackburn in 1937 and they had three children, Marsha Ruth, Lawrence Marshall, and Stephen Andrew.
During his Wisconsin years he worked in Sweden for a year as a Fulbright Research Professor studying prisons; he spent 3 years working in India for the Ford Foundation in Urban Community Development; he taught a year at Makerere University in Uganda under a Rockefeller Foundation Grant; and he spent a year in Switzerland studying crime under a National Science Foundation Grant.
He received numerous awards and was an active member of his professional organizations. He was a member of the American Sociological Society and was the President of the Society of Social Problems, among others. He served on several United Nations Congresses. He was awarded an Honorary LL.D. from the University of Lausanne, the Donald Cressey Award, the Edwin H. Sutherland Award for Distinguished Contributions to Criminology from the American Society of Criminology, and the Gilbert Geis Lifetime Achievement Award.
After retiring in 1979, he and Ruth lived in Santa Fe for 10 years and then in Santa Barbara, CA. When Ruth died in 1999 Marshall returned to Santa Fe where he married and continued traveling, writing, and keeping engaged in the world. His zest for life, including a love of nature, the mountains, photography, hiking, family, and mankind contributed to his vigor right up to the moment of his
death. He was a member of the Unitarian-Universalist Society.
Marshall is survived by his second wife, Arlen Runzler Westbrook, whom he married January 15, 2002. She resides in Santa Fe and in Delmar, NY. He is also survived by two children, Marsha Clinard (spouse: Charlie Boast) and Stephen Clinard (spouse: Paula Giordano), by four grandchildren (Eric and Marshall Schacht and Amy and Andrew Clinard), and by five great-grandchildren (Madison, Kayley, Noelle, Wade, and Tanner). A son, Lawrence Clinard, preceded him in death.
Private services are planned. The family requests no flowers. Marshall had a special interest in and supported Doctors Without Borders, Stanford University, the University of Chicago, and the University of Wisconsin/Madison.
From the Santa Fe New Mexican, June 6, 2010
___________________
Memory Stronger Than Time: Remembering Marshall
There is spiritual truth in the line that Merle Haggard repeats in his song “My Favorite Memory.” The line with the haunting voice of the singer: “I guess everything does change except what you choose to recall.” In a sense, in the mind and soul of the beholder, a memory seemingly stops time, holding you in the moment of what once was. Certainly your vivid memory has a reality of its own. Time no longer is of the essence.
The man who served as an inspiration and guide for most of my adult life, Marshall Clinard, died this summer. He lived a long and adventurous life, to the age of ninety-eight. He spent last winter on Sanibel Island in a house he had recently purchased. Returning to the high altitude of Santa Fe with some difficulty, he lived through the spring months into the early days of summer. He had invited me to visit him on the island during the winter, but I had been detained by other matters. And certainly I feared the prospect of a last visit.
The year remembered is 1960, and the month is June. I was completing my graduate work at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, and I had just turned twenty-six. And I had accepted my first academic job, and my wife and I and our baby would be leaving during the summer. Jackhammers were breaking up cement foundations across the street from our second-floor apartment in the old university-owned house where I had been caretaker in exchange for the payment of rent. The early days of June were very hot and it rained easily.
I had accepted the teaching job in upstate New York, my first of a string of jobs that would serve me for a lifetime, out of the desire to leave graduate school and to make a living in the world. I was ready to live a life beyond studying what others knew, although I was grateful for this knowledge and the devotion of scholars who engaged in the life of the mind. I would never leave college, but I was ready to be a teacher and scholar and perhaps one who would think and write about something exciting and something new.
I was leaving Madison without the doctoral dissertation that would be necessary for a successful academic career. My graduate adviser was the social theorist Howard Becker, and he had agreed to serve as the director of my dissertation. At that time in graduate school, the director of the dissertation was the one person you worked with until the dissertation was defended before a committee. That summer I was working on the proposal for the dissertation, which was to be a sociological analysis of the study of religion by sociologists. But then Howard Becker died unexpectedly. A memorial service was held at the Unitarian church with the historian Merle Curti delivering an eloquent eulogy.
Marshall Clinard, at the same time, was returning to Madison after spending two years in India directing a Ford Foundation project in the slums of India. I had never met him, but I had studied his research and writings on urbanism and criminal behavior in the tradition of the early sociologists at the University of Chicago. With my departure from town within days, I arranged to meet with Clinard in his study in the university library. Graciously, and enthusiastically, he agreed to be the director of a dissertation that must be conceived anew. With that matter settled, we left town in our little aqua-colored Renault, with our baby in a crib in the back seat, stopping briefly to visit my mother and father on the farm. Fifty years later, maybe to the exact date of our departure, I sit here at the dining room table with memories I’ve carefully chosen to recall.
The dissertation was completed during my second year of teaching. We moved south to the University of Kentucky, and three years later I was offered a job at New York University and we moved to New York City. We made our way rapidly through the decade of the sixties, fully engaged in the movements of the times. Becoming a full professor within the decade of leaving Madison, I was ready to leave the city and begin something new, knowing not what but welcoming the uncertainty.
There would follow the various leaves of absence, the resignations from several universities, the birth of a second daughter, visiting professorships, lectures around the country, moves to Chapel Hill and Providence, and a move back to the Midwest to complete my teaching career at Northern Illinois University. Ten years ago, after forty years on the road, I returned to Madison. Meanwhile, Marshall and I were in constant contact. Marshall was, to use the metaphor offered by the fly fisherman from Montana, the river than ran through it all.
Was there ever a mentor of students who maintained such a continuing presence? Marshall was present in the lives of the students who became teachers and professors, following with interest and concern the twists and turns in their lives and academic careers. Wherever I turned, Marshall was nearby, sometimes in bewilderment, but always in support. Whenever one of his students published a new book, Marshall was certain to follow with a letter of acknowledgment and a critique of the book. Two weeks before he died, he sent me a full-page letter telling me what he found of interest in my recently published book A Lifetime Burning. Marshall is an intimate part of the life that burns in every moment.
For fifty years we visited often in one place or another for one reason or another: Madison, New York, Paris, Lexington, Chapel Hill, Providence, Santa Barbara, and Santa Fe. There were the summer months spent in Marshall’s house as he traveled around the world.
One winter, ten years ago, just as the new century was beginning, Marshall and I traveled together to Nepal. We walked the streets and byways of the slums of Pokhara, and we roomed at the base of Machhapuchhare, the sacred mountain of the Himalayas. Marshall and I parted company abruptly upon arriving in Kathmandu. I left because I needed treatment for the chronic leukemia that had progressed to a critical stage and I feared dying so far from home. I also would admit to Marshall, later, that I had been disturbed by the poverty in the slums of Pokhara. Marshall gave me the gift of acceptance.
Time to be with Marshall expired before we were prepared. There could never be an adequate farewell. I find some solace in the note Marshall affixed to a document he wrote three years before he died. In three typed pages he carefully addresses what he titles “The Twilight of My Life: An Appraisal.” I keep the document as another record of how a fortunate life has been lived. The hand-written note Marshall attached captures the complexity of our fifty years of being together. He wrote, “Personal—but I regard you as a younger brother, son, or close friend.”
My memory of Marshall is transcendent and has a reality of its own. A line from a country song could express the truth I need now: The memory of you is stronger than time.
Richard Quinney
June–September 2010
DEBRA ANN CURRAN
Debra Ann Curran (May 3, 1954 – April 2, 2010), an active member of the criminological community, passed away at the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville Florida. Debbie earned her BA from the University of South Florida, where she was active in local and state politics, was a member of the National Organization for Women, and was a fervent supporter of the Equal Rights Amendment. In 1980, she earned an MA in Sociology from Florida Atlantic University, where she concentrated on criminological studies with Charles Tittle. She conducted research in the following years for several DC based survey organizations and for the DC Superior Court and saw her research on the judicial treatment of female criminal offenders and on sentencing disparities in the Florida juvenile court published in Criminology and Social Forces. Over the years, Debbie’s relationship with Charles Tittle grew from the early one of student and teacher, and they wed in 1985. In 1988, they moved to Pullman, Washington, where Debbie was the Academic Advisor for the Department of Sociology at Washington State University. She also served from 1992-1997 as the Managing Editor of Criminology. She became the Undergraduate Coordinator for the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at North Carolina State University in 2001. She was responsible for many administrative duties, including scheduling classes, graduation, and her favorite, advising students, not only on academic issues but on many aspects of their lives. Debbie also informally mentored graduate students in Criminology. She took many of those students under her wing, providing professional socialization and introducing them to networks of sociologists and criminologists. She will be missed dearly by the many students whose careers and lives she enhanced, her colleagues who consider her to be among the dearest of friends, and her beloved husband, Charles.
Submitted by Stacy De Coster, North Carolina State University
SARAH HALL
Sarah Hall passed away on October 10, 2010. She was the heart and soul of ASC for 30 years, serving as the Executive Administrator from 1976 until her retirement in 2006. While ASC President’s and Board members came and went, Sarah was the constant who oversaw the growth and development of ASC into what it is today. The consummate professional, she worked with the highest level of devotion and dedication. Sarah was always just a cheerful phone call away, helping committee chairs and executive officers to understand and fulfill their duties, and the new members to find their way. For 30 years, Sarah Hall was ASC, and we all benefited immeasurably because of it. She was greatly loved and will be greatly missed.
Donations in Sarah’s name can be made to:
Kobacker House
3595 Olentangy River Road
Columbus, Ohio 43214
www.ohiohealth.com/body.cfm?id=4208
JOHN IRWIN
John Irwin, Professor Emeritus at San Francisco State University (SFSU), passed away January 3. After a conviction for armed robbery and serving a five-year sentence in California’s prison system, he received his Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of California, Berkeley in 1968.
Irwin taught Sociology and Criminology at SFSU for 27 years. In prison he discovered that convicts were mostly ordinary human beings. This insight, not entirely appreciated by many academics that study crime and criminals, guided all of his academic and political activities. His considerable research on prisons included six books: The Felon, Prisons in Turmoil, The Jail, and It’s About Time (with James Austin), The Warehouse Prison, and Lifer. He was also one of the contributing authors to the American Friends Service Committee’s influential report Struggle for Justice.
John contributed to many community programs over the years, including Project Rebound at SFSU, and as an organizer and leader of the Prisoners’ Union in California. He received the August Vollmer award from the American Society of Criminology, and served on the Board of Directors for the JFA Institute and the Sentencing Project.
John was one of the founding members of the Convict Criminology Group. He came to ASC to see the cons and to help the group grow and prosper. We found his wise counsel and sincere friendship to be invaluable. John was proud to be a “convict criminologist” and advocate for social justice. See Convict Criminology Memorial at http://www.convictcriminology.org/index.html.
Submitted by Stephen C. Richards, James Austin, Barbara Owen, Jeffrey Ian Ross
The Sentencing Project’s Memorial to John Irwin
STEPHEN M. ROSOFF
Stephen M. Rosoff (1945-2010), professor of criminology at the University of Houston – Clear Lake, passed away after a sudden heart attack on March 27th at the age of 64. He had undergone esophageal surgery in December followed by a number of additional operations, had shown incredible strength in battling through these maladies, and was recovering at a rehabilitation unit in Houston when his heart failed him. Steve was a brilliant scholar and an extremely popular instructor at UH who during the past 20 years created a highly successful criminology curriculum with a thriving master’s degree program that attracted a large number of Houston police officers.
Steve was born and raised in Boston. A lifelong baseball fanatic, he played in Little League, and few persons knew more about the sport, its players, and its statistics than Steve. He was a loyal Red Sox fan and attended one of the championship games at Fenway Park when his team recently won the World Series.
Steve was a gifted child and a voracious reader. He devoured everything from comic books to novels and history books. He graduated from English High School in Boston at the age of 15 and entered UMass Amherst where he studied drama. Given his young age, it proved to be a difficult experience and he dropped out after a year. He went to work in his family’s pickle business (―Rosoff’s Pickles‖), was employed as an actor and producer in theatre and film over the next decade and a half, and began to take psychology courses through Harvard extension. In his early thirties he matriculated at Harvard and graduated in three years number two in his class (he never forgave the professor who gave him an A-) with a major in psychology.
Steve arrived at UC, Irvine’s Program in Social Ecology in the early 1980s to begin his doctoral work in human development. He had been attracted by the advertised interdisciplinary environment and the ―strange name‖ of the degree. After his first year he worked as a research assistant on a federally-funded study of Medicaid fraud and shifted his scholarly interests to law and psychology, medical sociology, criminology, and white-collar crime. He completed a stellar master’s thesis on the social psychology of the sanctioning of high-status defendants (later published in Law & Human Behavior), and placed articles in medical journals on issues
related to miscreant physicians. Missing the east coast, he was accepted into Harvard’s Ph.D. program in psychology, where he spent his third year of graduate work. Not finding a mentor for his interests in the punishment of the well-to-do, he returned to Irvine to write his doctoral dissertation the following year. No one in the history of social ecology or criminology at Irvine has completed two advanced degrees this quickly; nor published a number of major articles while doing so.
Steve’s wit and wry sense of humor is shown in a short piece that he contributed to the Sage Handbook of Field Work. “Interviewing offenders of any hued collar is a tricky business,‖ he started out. ―If I were interviewing a convicted burglar I would probably call him Charlie (or whatever his first name is), while he might call me
―Doc.‖ There is a role reversal when the offender is an elite deviant. I respectfully called the Medicaid fraud subject Dr. So-and-So. And I might well be called Steve in return—or called nothing at all.‖ Then Steve added the punch line: ―No problem. When the interview ends, I’m still the one without a parole officer.‖
Steve accepted a job at Indiana University upon graduation, and UH – Clear Lake a few years later.
He taught enormously popular graduate courses at UH in social deviance, law and society, crime and the media, law and psychology, criminological theory, organized crime, juvenile delinquency, crime in the cinema, and white-collar and corporate crime. Steve was a brilliant, gifted, and hard-working instructor who still found time to publish articles and book chapters. He is the lead author of the classic white-collar crime text, Profit Without Honor: White-Collar Crime and the Looting of America (just released in the 5th edition) which is being translated into Japanese and Chinese and which Fortune Executive Editor Clifton Leaf used in writing the first cover story on white-collar crime in the magazine’s history (March 2002 ). Steve presented papers at conferences in Australia, Hungary, Thailand, and Italy, and was a regular participant at criminology conferences in the U.S. He was invited to discuss his work at a major conference on control fraud organized by economist James Galbraith at the University of Texas, Austin, and was a delegate and presenter at a U.N. Crime Congress. The FBI’s Behavioral Sciences Unit invited him to a 3-day closed conference on cyber crime at Quantico. Always ahead of the curve, Steve was the first major writer on cyber crime in criminology.
Besides his notable academic accomplishments, Steve Rosoff was a first-rate human being whose absolute unpretentiousness belied his enormous intellectual prowess. In addition to baseball, Steve was also a movie and media expert. His life was teaching. His immense kindness toward animals saw him rescue numerous dogs who became members of his family. He had a keen eye for injustice, an impeccable wit, and an almost non-stop sense of humor. As one colleague astutely observed, ―He was probably the funniest smart person I have ever known and the smartest funny person as well.‖ He was a dear friend, gifted teacher, and valued colleague to so many and will be greatly missed. His family requests that expressions of sympathy be made to: MSPCA-Angell, Attn.: Donations, c/o Newbridge on the Charles RSU, 350 Huntington Avenue, Boston, MA 02130.
Henry Pontell and Gilbert Geis, University of California, Irvine
Steven Egger, University of Houston-Clear Lake
GRESHAM M’CREADY SYKES
Gresham M’Cready Sykes passed away peacefully in his sleep on October 29, 2010 in Charlottesville, Virginia. He was born in 1922 in Plainfield, New Jersey. He joined the army in 1942 and was discharged in 1946 at the rank of Captain in the Corps of Engineers. That same year he married Carla Adelt who has been with him until he died.
“Grex” received his doctorate in sociology at Northwestern University in 1954. He would go on to write five books, several monographs, and nearly an article or book chapter a year for some thirty-five years. Within four years of receiving his doctorate, he would publish two of the works that would help to establish him as one of the 20th century’s most notable figures in sociological criminology.
The Society of Captives: A Study of a Maximum Security Prison was first published in 1958 during his tenure at Princeton University. Each chapter in this small volume became a classic in its own right. More than a half century later, criminologists and penologists are still familiar with Sykes’s arguments concerning “the corruption of authority,” “argot roles,” “crisis and equilibrium,” and most famously of all, “the pains of imprisonment.” The book was released again by Oxford University Press in 1971 and again in 2007 by Princeton University Press (its original publisher).
Grex co-authored “Techniques of Neutralization” with David Matza, published in 1957 by the American Sociological Review. It’s safe to say that there are few, if any, academics versed in American criminology who are not familiar with the arguments laid out in this seminal work. The article continues to be republished in anthologies for courses in criminology and in the sociology of deviance. There are likely hundreds of thousands of sociology and criminology students in the United States and beyond who over the decades had, at one time, memorized the five techniques of neutralization for an upcoming exam.
Unlike many of his notable contemporaries, Grex’s career was not confined to one or two academic institutions. He held posts at Princeton, Columbia, Northwestern, UCLA, Dartmouth, the University of Denver, and the University of Virginia. While at UVa, he received the Edwin H. Sutherland award in criminology in 1980. He retired after fourteen years at the University of Virginia as Professor Emeritus in 1988.
Following his retirement, Grex dedicated himself to his artwork. He spent tireless hours working in his studio in Charlottesville and had several gallery exhibitions.
Besides being a pioneer in sociological criminology and a successful artist, Grex was a loyal friend who had a terrific sense of humor and who felt passionately about the conditions of the disenfranchised. He will be dearly missed by his family, friends and colleagues.
Submitted by Robert Heiner, Plymouth State University. This obituary appeared originally in the December 2010 issue of Footnotes.
2009
Some of these individuals participated in the ASC Oral History Project. For more information, please go to the Oral History Project page.
THOMAS J. BERNARD
http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/centredaily/obituary.aspx?n=thomas-joseph-bernard&pid=130579429
ULLA VIVEKA BONDESON
Ulla Bondeson (July 10, 1937 – October 20, 2009) was one of the most internationally famous and renowned Scandinavian criminologists. Her career spanned a half century, beginning in 1959 when she was employed at a Swedish Correctional Training School for young females. Her experience in this institution inspired her first English-language publication on “Argot knowledge as an indicator of criminal socialization” (Bondeson, 1968). She was appointed as a Lecturer in Sociology in the University of Lund, Sweden, in 1964, and became a Professor there in 1976. She was then appointed Professor of Criminology at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, in 1980, and taught there until her retirement in 2007.
Ulla Bondeson’s most famous English-language publications were Prisoners in Prison Societies (Bondeson, 1989), Alternatives to Imprisonment (Bondeson, 1994), and Nordic Moral Climates (Bondeson, 2003). These books present important and sophisticated empirical research projects. For example, Prisoners in Prison Societies (based on Ulla’s doctoral dissertation) was a comparative study of 13 correctional institutions with a 10-year follow-up. Some of her most important writings (and her full vita) were collected together in Crime, Punishment and Justice (Bondeson, 2007), which is a brilliant legacy. Ulla was extremely concerned about the damaging effects of imprisonment.
Ulla Bondeson received many honors, including the Sellin-Glueck Award of the ASC in 1995. Most recently in 2006, she became a Knight of the Dannebrog (the Danish flag), which is an extremely prestigious award conferred by the Queen of Denmark. She held many important positions, including President of the Scandinavian Council on Criminology (1983-85), Vice-President of the Scientific Commission of the International Society of Criminology (1995-99) and of the International Society Of Criminology (2000-05), and she was a member of the Crime and Justice Steering Committee of the Campbell Collaboration (2000-07). She was a Visiting Professor at several American universities, including Harvard, Yale, the University of Minnesota, UCLA, and the University of California at Berkeley and Santa Barbara.
Her diplomacy in bringing Western criminology to other nations was both warm and honest. Her first visit to Seoul in 1996 to help organize the 12th World Congress of Criminology came at a time of heightened tensions between North and South Korea, with much sabre-rattling from the North. As she sat down in the conference room of the President of the Korean Institute of Criminology (KIC), she looked out the window towards a forested mountain in the north. When she mentioned the threat of invasion, her American colleague pointed to the window and said “look—Tanks!” Her laughter broke all the tension, whereupon the KIC President quoted a popular Korean T-shirt logo of the era: “No Fear!” That night over many toasts of Korean spirits, Ulla and the KIC President exchanged many salutations to “No Fear.”
In 2000-05, she took on the difficult task of recruiting more ISC members from Africa, which was then (as now) under-represented in international criminology meetings. In two trips to Africa, she organized many opportunities to meet with scholars in our field, and to encourage membership in ISC and attendance at the World Congresses in Rio and Philadelphia. Her work helped to stimulate far greater African engagement at the 14th World Congress than at the 12th.
In an era when it was very difficult and unusual for female scholars to obtain university professorships, let alone win high office in international learned societies, Ulla Bondeson was a remarkable and very distinguished pioneering criminologist. She was a highly intelligent, multilingual and very cultured person who also had a hearty laugh and a great sense of fun. Her hospitality in her summer house was legendary. With typical generosity, she left money to establish a fund for Nordic criminological research. Ulla will be greatly missed by all criminologists who had the pleasure and privilege of knowing her.
Submitted by David P. Farrington and Lawrence W. Sherman, Institute of Criminology, Cambridge University
References
Bondeson, U. V. (1968) Argot knowledge as an indicator of criminal socialization: A study of a training school for girls. Scandinavian Studies in Criminology, 2, 73-107.
Bondeson, U. V. (1989). Prisoners in Prison Societies. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction.
Bondeson, U. V. (1994) Alternatives to Imprisonment. Boulder, CO: Westview.
Bondeson, U. V. (2003) Nordic Moral Climates. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction.
Bondeson, U. V. (2007) Crime, Punishment and Justice. Copenhagen, Denmark: DJOF.
DEAN JOHN CHAMPION
Dr. Dean John Champion, popular TAMIU professor of criminal justice, passed away Feb. 23, 2009, after a brief struggle with leukemia. Originally from California, he joined TAMIU in 2000 and was a proud graduate of Brigham Young University, where he earned undergraduate and graduate degrees. His Ph.D. was earned at Purdue University. An internationally recognized scholar and prolific writer, Dr. Champion had written 40 texts and-or edited works, several published in Russian, Portuguese, Chinese and Spanish editions. A strong advocate of distance learning, he received TAMIU’s 2006 Distance Educator of the Year Award in 2006. His specialty interests included juvenile justice, criminal justice administration, corrections and statistics/methods. He was the College of Arts and Sciences Scholar of the Year 2006-2007.He is survived by his wife, Gerri K.; his son and daughter-in-law Dr. Sean (Canaan) Champion, M.D., Arkansas; stepdaughter Wendy L. Tuner, Ohio; and brother-in-law William (Sharon) Sprinkle, Virginia and three granddaughters and four great-grandchildren.The family suggests that those who wish to make a contribution in his name contribute to Laredo Food Bank or charity of choice.
Originally published in the Spring 2009 issue of prism, The Magazine of Texas A&M International University.
JAMES A. INCIARDI
James A. Inciardi (1939-2009), Co-Director of the Center for Drug and Alcohol Studies at the University of Delaware and Professor of Sociology and Criminal Justice died on Monday, November 23rd after a prolonged and courageous battle with multiple myeloma. Jim was born in Brooklyn on November 28, 1939 and spent his youth and young adulthood in New York City and its Boroughs. Wherever he lived and worked in later years, New York City remained central to his identity. He graduated from Fordham University and had an early and varied career as a jazz drummer and parole officer for the City of New York.
In the late 1960s he went to work for Carl Chambers at the New York State Narcotic Addiction Control Commission and entered graduate school at New York University.
When he completed his PhD in 1973 from NYU, Jim had already relocated to the University of Miami continuing to work with Chambers in the Division of Addiction Sciences in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Miami. He held several research and academic positions at the University of Miami in the early 1970s, including Director of the National Center for the Study of Acute Drug Reactions at the University of Miami School of Medicine. During this period, he worked with Chambers, Harvey Siegel, John Ball, and others on an important series of studies on narcotics addicts and the process of addiction. At this time he also began a series of studies examining the associations between drug use and criminal activity, and this work would form the core of his scholarly activity for much of his professional career. He relocated to the University of Delaware in 1976, and UD became his academic home for the remainder of his career, though he maintained a professional connection with the University of Miami as well. He was promoted to Professor at UD in 1979. For many years (1976-1991), he was the Director of Criminal Justice in the Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice at Delaware, and he became renowned as a teacher of criminal justice, leading to the publication of his popular textbook on Criminal Justice, now in its 9th Edition.
Beginning in 1976 Jim had a remarkable unbroken record of funding from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) including twenty-one awards for which he was Principal Investigator. More impressive than the number of grants was the breadth and depth of his scholarly activity and the impact his work had on the field and on policy and program development. His studies began with the criminal involvement of drug abusers and the ethnography of street addiction in various subpopulations, and later moved to studies of drug abuse treatment for criminal offenders. With the arrival of AIDS and its disproportionate concentration among drug using populations, his research focus shifted to the epidemiology of HIV infection and transmission, and later to the development and evaluation of effective HIV prevention and treatment programs for both street and criminal justice populations. In all of his studies of drug involvement, criminal justice and HIV, his work moved from careful observation, to hypothesis testing, and then to clinical trials of novel ways to address these problems. His work led to the creation of the KEY/CREST Therapeutic Community continuum of treatment for drug involved offenders in Delaware, which became a national and international model for criminal justice treatment. His later work on HIV interventions with high-risk populations led to programs that have been instituted in probation and community settings in the U.S., Brazil, and the Virgin Islands.
Besides his steady work with NIDA, he conducted important studies for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Center for Substance Abuse Treatment, and Denver Health and Hospital Authority. Up to the time of his death, he was actively working on studies of prescription drug abuse and diversion, case management for vulnerable women, and a new ethnography on ecstasy use in Brazil. His work was recognized by awards from the American Society of Criminology, the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences, and the Drug and Alcohol Section of the American Sociological Association. Jim was an active member of the College on Problems of Drug Dependence, and a former member of the Internal Advisory Committee, Executive Office of the President, Office of National Drug Control Policy. In 1994 he received the Outstanding Scholar Award from the University of Delaware and was awarded a Merit Grant from the National Institute on Drug Abuse, and in 1995 he was named a Fellow of the American Society of Criminology.
In 1991, Jim founded the Center for Drug and Alcohol Studies (CDAS) at the University of Delaware within the Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice in the College of Arts and Sciences. The mission he established for CDAS is the production, dissemination, and utilization of scientific knowledge in preventing and treating substance abuse and other health risk behaviors among hard-to-reach populations of youths and adults. Over the years the Center has grown in both size and in the scope of its studies. It now has major administrative research offices in Newark, DE and Coral Gables, FL and satellite research offices in Wilmington, DE, Miami, FL and Porto Alegre, Brazil. The Center has acted as a magnet for other state, national, and international studies related to substance abuse and health. The Center now comprises funded studies by many other investigators in Delaware and Florida as well as collaborative efforts with national and international scholars. CDAS has the largest portfolio of social science research at the University of Delaware. The Center supports a number of graduate students, faculty associates, and part time researchers as well as its full time staff. Jim remained a very active Co-Director of the Center till his death. In the last several years, he focused on directing the Coral Gables Research Office of CDAS, and on developing a research program to examine the rise in the abuse and diversion of prescription drugs.
During his long scholarly career of over 40 years, Jim published over 500 articles, chapters, books, and monographs in the areas of substance abuse, criminology, criminal justice, history, folklore, public policy, AIDS, medicine, and law. His scholarly publications included several seminal papers on the epidemiology of crack cocaine use, as well as the effectiveness of prison- based substance abuse treatment for drug-involved offenders. This body of scholarly work will be an enduring memorial to him. He was a revered colleague and engaged in extensive consulting work both nationally and internationally. Even more important than his professional work is the living memorial that remains among his professional friends and colleagues. He was a “translational scientist” long before the term came into vogue, interested in moving ideas into tested strategies and then disseminating the knowledge and practices for use in real-world settings. He knew how to collaborate, motivate research teams, and mentor young scholars and to always share credit for accomplishments. Generations of research scientists have been affected by his written work and generous inclusion in his professional work. He did not like bureaucracy or process but was a master at dealing with both. He could move effectively and communicate clearly with academic, professional, and government audiences. In the process he built a wealth of friends in university settings, departments of correction, and government agencies such as NIDA, SAMHSA, CDC, and ONDCP. They will miss him and strive to carry on his work.
Personally, Jim loved jazz, scuba diving, traveling and collecting art from Latin America. Although his battle with cancer curtailed many of these activities in recent years, he remained remarkably positive and upbeat, and never gave up hope in his fight. He is survived by his wife, collaborator and partner, Hilary Surratt, and by his three children, Craig, Brooks, and Kristin. He is also survived by his sister Anne Cifu, his daughters-in-law Joan and Lynne, and his grandchildren Allegra, Brooks, Anastasia, and Alessandra. A funeral mass was held at St. Augustine Catholic Church in Coral Gables on November 25th, 2009. A memorial service at the University of Delaware is being planned for February, 2010. Contributions can be made to the James A. Inciardi Memorial Award Fund, Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice, University of Delaware, Newark, DE 19716-2580. The Award will support outstanding students in the field of Criminology and Criminal Justice.
Submitted by Steven S. Martin, University of Delaware
CARL E. POPE
http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/jsonline/obituary.aspx?n=carl-e-pope&pid=130552603
CHARLES R. SNYDER
Charles R. Snyder (1924-2009), Emeritus Professor of Sociology at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, died peacefully at his home in Denver, Colorado, on September 15, 2009. Born December 28, 1924, in Haverford, Pennsylvania, Chuck served as an officer in the United States Navy during WWII. He received his BA, MA, and PhD (1954) in sociology at Yale University, where he studied under Selden D. Bacon. After lectureships at Yale’s Center of Alcohol Studies and the University of Chicago, Chuck joined the Sociology Department at SIU in 1960 as full professor. He served skillfully as chair of the department from 1964-75, and from 1981-85. Chuck was a consummate advisor and professor — and clever thesis committee politician — who helped shepherd scores of graduate students through the intellectual and bureaucratic thickets of the degree process. Generations of students benefited from his broad knowledge and capacity as a demanding stylist and critical interlocutor. Chuck was a leading authority on alcohol studies. Among his published monographs is his seminal book on culture and drinking patterns, Alcohol and the Jews (1958), which Arnold M. Rose, writing in the American Sociological Review, called “brilliant research” that makes a significant advance in scientific theory. He also edited (with David J. Pittman), Society, Culture and Drinking Patterns (1962), another classic in the sociocultural literature on drinking patterns. Among other editorial assignments, he served on the editorial board of the Quarterly Journal of Studies on Alcohol, 1957-83. As a colleague, teacher, mentor and friend, Chuck was widely appreciated for his incisive intellect, sharp wit and generosity. He had great compassion for the unfortunate, but remained stubbornly optimistic about improving the human condition. Chuck will be sorely missed by many.
Submitted by Robert P. Weiss, State University of New York at Plattsburgh
2008
Some of these individuals participated in the ASC Oral History Project. For more information, please go to the Oral History Project page.
ELIZABETH PIPER DESCHENES
Libby Deschenes (July 1, 1953 – April 20, 2008), a beloved wife, daughter, sister, professor, colleague, athlete, “Hash House” runner and wonderful friend passed away peacefully on April 20, 2008 following a two- year battle with ovarian cancer. She was born to Wilson and Peggy Piper on July 1, 1953 and died at the too-young age of 54. She is survived by her husband, Raymond Deschenes, of Orange, CA. While most criminologists and other professionals know her as Elizabeth Piper Deschenes, her many, many friends knew her as Libby.
After attending Colby College and earning a Ph.D in Sociology from the University of Pennsylvania, she moved to California, working for several prestigious research organizations. At URSA, UCLA and the Rand Corporation, Libby developed a rigorous research agenda, including program evaluations and studies of drug users, and violent offenders.
In 1994, she made the leap to an academic employment, beginning her 14 year career in the Department of Criminal Justice at California State University, Long Beach. Libby was a true champion of student research and worked tirelessly to mentor her students. She served several terms as Graduate Advisor and shaped the careers of many students who have become professionals themselves.
With her excellent research background, Libby brought increased recognition to her department through her teaching and mentoring skills, her active research and evaluation program, and her many publications and proposals. Her recent accomplishments include expanding the department’s graduate program, overseeing the Orange County Drug Court Program, and procuring a large grant for the evaluation of repeat offenders. She brought both a rigorous understanding of advanced statistics and a practical understanding of real world needs.
Libby also contributed greatly to the profession. Many criminologists knew Libby as the editor of Crime and Delinquency, a position she held from 2002 until her illness forced her to step down. She served the Western Society of Criminology in many capacities, including President from 2002-2003.
In addition to her stellar accomplishments in academics, she was a life-long swimmer, a successful sprint tri-athlete, trail runner and an active member of the Hash House Harrier running club. In 2001, she completed the Great Wall Half Marathon. A nationally ranked Masters swimmer in 2005, she was voted Irvine Novaquatics Swim Club’s Competitor of the Year. She continually amazed everyone by her commitment to fitness and her impressive athletic drive.
A beautiful memorial service was held on a warm Sunday morning; April 27, 2008 at the Japanese Garden on the campus of CSULB. Her family and many friends spoke in moving detail, celebrating her life, her friendships and her accomplishments. These comments have been archived at the website: http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/libbyd
It is important to remember that Libby was a lot of fun. She was a warm, generous friend and collaborator. Everyone who worked with her became her friend as well as her colleague. We were all lucky to know her.
A Memorial Scholarship in Libby’s name is being established through the Western Society of Criminology. This fund will provide support for students traveling to WSC meetings. Contributions should be sent to:
The Elizabeth Deschenes Memorial Fund
Sue Escobar, Secretary/Treasurer
Western Society of Criminology
Division of Criminal Justice
6000 J Street
Sacramento, CA 95819-6085.
Questions regarding the Fund may be sent to Barbara Owen at barbarao@csufresno.edu.
Submitted by:
Barbara Owen, California State University-Fresno
Jill Rosenbaum , California State University-Fullerton
WILLIAM P. HECK
The world lost an intelligent, caring, compassionate, non-judgmental, and very unique person when William Pipes Heck (known to many as Bill or Wild Bill) was killed in a motorcycle accident in Tulsa, Oklahoma on May 4, 2008. William “lived large” and was a proud veteran, passionate teacher, amazing sharp shooter, great guitar player, karate black belt and avid biker who enjoyed life more in one day than many people do in a lifetime.
William was born October 26, 1951 to Berlin and Elsie Pipes Heck of Calhoun, Louisiana. From the time he was young, he was always kind and caring, and would give away his clothes or any possessions if he thought someone needed them. His zest for living was evident in his activities over the years and he always treasured his many friends he acquired along the way. Through the years, he tried to maintain contact with his childhood friends as well as those from his years working in the Ouachita Parish Sheriff’s Office and in the Monroe Police Department, his buddies from his years in the U. S. Navy Seabees, from his Karate Clubs, and from his college years (B.A. and M.A. at Northeast Louisiana University in Monroe, LA and his PhD at Sam Houston University in Huntsville, TX). He was passionate about his work as a professor in the Criminal Justice Department at Northeastern State University in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, and truly enjoyed the students there. William especially derived pleasure from playing his guitar (and writing songs like “Classical Dog” and “Mr. Blue”). He and Edi, his wife and the love of his life, always looked forward to the time they spent target shooting and riding with their motorcycle group of veterans.
William was preceded in death by his parents, Berlin and Elsie Heck, niece, Kerry Heck, and nephew, Robert Shipp. He is survived by his wife Edi, with whom he shared a home in Park Hill, OK, sons Justin Heck and Garrett Heck, and the mother of his children, Janice Feazel Downey, of Stillwell, OK, siblings: Elizabeth & Don Yielding, Charles Heck, and Kay Shipp of Monroe, LA, Berlin & Pat Heck of Broken Bow, OK, and Mary Ida Kay of Georgetown, TX.
ELMER “HUE” JOHNSON
Carbondale, IL. – Elmer H. Johnson, 91, passed away at 7:52 a.m.Thursday,Aug. 28, 2008, in Carbondale.
He was born April 10, 1917, in Racine, Wis., to Elmer D. and Lucinda (Hinderholtz) Johnson.
He is survived by his wife of 65 years Carol (Holmes) Johnson; daughter and son-in-law, Joy J. and John E. Boyden; daughter, Jill C. Lewis; grandson, Alexander B. J. Lewis and wife, Heidi M. Lewis; granddaughter, Suzanne J.Boyden; and great- granddaughter, Amelia A. Lewis (Mia).
He was preceded in death by his parents; his sister, Marjorie C. Johnson and son-in-law, Richard B. Lewis.
He will be missed by his Carbondale families of the McGuires, the Schills and the Swindells.
He was a veteran of World War II and had served in the Army Air Corps from 1941 to 1946. He retired as a colonel after 28 years in the Air Force Reserve.
He earned his Ph.D. at the University of Wisconsin, Madison in 1950. His professional career started in Raleigh, N.C., at North Carolina State University in 1949. He was the assistant director of the North Carolina Prison System in charge of rehabilitation from 1958 to 1960.
He and his family moved to Carbondale in 1966 where he became the Assistant Director of the Center for the Study of Crime, Delinquency and Correction.
He has been a mentor for 40 years to Japanese graduate students at the Crime Study Center earning their MS degree from Southern Illinois University. He developed the international branch of the American Society of Criminology and was a member of numerous professional associations in both sociology and criminology.
He was a member of the board of WSIU from 1979 to 1986 and served as president in 1986. He was awarded Teacher of the Year at SIU in 1982 and honored as Distinguished Professor in 1984. He retired from SIU in 1987. In 1990 he was the oldest Fulbright Scholar in Tokyo.
His professional writing accomplishments include nine published books and 81 journal articles in sociology and criminology.
In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the Elmer and Carol Johnson Criminology and Criminal Justice Library Fund, Southern Illinois University Carbondale.
Published in The Southern Illinoisan on 8/29/2008.
EUGENE V. LUTTRELL, passed away on January 1, 2008. Please click here for his obituary which appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle on January 5, 2008.
STUART HUNTER PALMER
Stuart (“Stu”) Palmer (April 29, 1924 – August 26, 2008) was born in New York City where he resided until his service in the Army Air Corps during World War II where he was the Wing navigator for a squadron of B-17 bombers that flew in the European theater (1942-1945). Following World War II, Lieutenant Palmer completed his undergraduate degree at Yale University but was called back into the service (U.S. Air Force) during the Korean Conflict where he served in the Strategic Air Command facilities in Iceland from 1951-1953. He was subsequently discharged as a Captain in the U.S. Air Force. He continued his education at Yale earning his Ph.D. in Sociology in 1955. Stu spent his entire academic career at the University of New Hampshire (UNH) in Durham beginning as an instructor in 1955, assistant professor in 1957, associate professor in 1960 and as full-professor from 1964 to 1997. He retired as Emeritus Professor of Sociology in 1997. During his illustrious career he served three terms as Chair of the Department of Sociology creating the doctoral program in sociology in 1968. He later served as the Dean of the College of Liberal Arts from1982-1995. During his tenure, he enticed Murray Straus to bring his family violence research to UNH resulting in the internationally acclaimed Family Violence Institute. He was also the inspiration for the Justiceworks Institute and the Justice Studies academic program at UNH.
Stu was a contemporary of Robert K. Merton and Gresham Sykes and a friend and colleague of Thorsten Sellin. He was one of the first forensic criminologists to blend sociology, psychology, psychiatry, anthropology, law and government into a comprehensive perspective for the analysis of both normative and deviant behaviors. He was a student of the works of John Dollard, Neal E. Miller, Leonard W. Doob, O.H. Mower and Robert Sears, the Yale team that conceptualized Sigmund Freud’s anxiety classification into the “frustration/aggression theorem.” Palmer provided the empirical research testing this theorem with the study of murders and a control group based on ethnicity and socio-economic status resulting in a best selling book – The Psychology of Murder (1960). He was a tenacious researcher who widely used the Human Relations Area File in his cross-cultural analysis of homicide and suicide. His 12 books reflect his theoretic contributions to the social psychological and forensic analysis of human behavior. Stu served on numerous international, national and state agencies that dealt with crime, deviant behavior and crowd control and played a role in the Boston Strangler case in the 1960s. Those of us who were recipients of his tutelage as Stu’s graduate assistants received an invaluable apprenticeship in research and teaching techniques. Dr. Palmer was predeceased by his wife, Ann and their only child – Catherine.
Submitted by Laurence Armand French
MARGUERITE Q. WARREN
Dr. Marguerite (Rita) Warren, a pioneering figure in personality development and a renowned scholar in the field of criminology, passed away in her home outside of Charlottesville, Virginia on March 19, 2008. She was 88 years old. Rita Warren received her doctorate degree from the University of California, Berkeley. For 11 years (1972-1983), Rita, a clinical psychologist, was a popular professor at the School of Criminal Justice at the University at Albany. She taught courses in the School’s nature of crime and planned change sequences that dealt with psychological perspectives of crime and its treatment. In her courses and through various funded research opportunities for her students, Rita stressed the importance of constructive research partnerships with criminal justice agencies. Rita was the first, and for most of her career, the only female professor at the School and one of very few women at the University holding the rank of Full Professor. She instituted the School’s first course on Women and Crime.
Rita is best known for her work as the Research Director of the California Community Treatment Project (CTP), a large 12-year study of youth assigned to differential treatment and therapeutic protocols on the basis of personality and developmental attributes. Funded by the National Institute of Mental Health, CTP was one of the first large experiments to be conducted in an applied criminal justice setting. It became well-known nationally and internationally. The research influenced later research and practice on “responsivity,” and the notion of matching offender clients to interventions intended to optimize their chances of success. The CTP model was based on a typology known as the Theory of Interpersonal Maturity (I-Level) which was formulated by Rita and colleagues from the School of Psychology at Berkley and further developed by colleagues at CTP. I-level and the CTP research also informed later research on personality and crime causation, and is still used in the United States and many other countries.
At the national level, Rita Warren worked on President Johnson’s Commission on Law Enforcement and the Administration of Justice. She served for a number of years on the Crime and Delinquency Committee of the National Institute of Mental Health. Rita was an active member of the American Society of Criminology and served as an Executive Counselor and later Vice President of the Society. She was among the early organizers of the ASC Division of Women and Crime and credited her elected positions to support afforded by the Division. In more recent years, she and her esteemed CTP colleague, Ted Palmer, established an award in their names that is given through the Division of Corrections and Sentencing.
While at the University at Albany, Rita supervised the dissertations of 12 doctoral students, many of whom have gone one to have distinguished careers in their own right. Through graduate school and throughout their careers, Dr. Warren’s students considered her a beloved mentor, known for her sound academic guidance, her wisdom about life, and her festive social gatherings.
In 1983, Rita retired with her partner, Martin Warren, to a home they built at the Monroe Institute in Virginia. Her retirement was an active one in a community she cherished to the fullest. For many years, she played a central role in research activities at the Monroe Institute. Until shortly before her death, former students and colleagues continued their relationship with Rita through visits to her retirement home and correspondence. To those who knew her, Rita will be remembered as a wise mentor, a gifted teacher, a devoted and loving friend, a principled and genuine human being, a fellow traveler, a good listener, and a gracious host.
She is survived by three daughters Laurie Grant, Lesley Grant, and Lisa Warren as well as six grandchildren, and one great grandchild.
Pat Van Voorhis
Kathleen Heide
LAURA WINTERFIELD
Laura A. Winterfield (1947-2008), 61, a criminologist and senior research associate with the Urban Institute who had also worked at the National Institute of Justice and other policy research agencies, died December 28 of cancer at her home in Columbia, MD.
Winterfield was born in Miami, FL, and spent most of her childhood in Denver, CO. She studied with Delbert Elliott receiving her PhD in sociology in 1980 at the University of Colorado in Boulder, and she completed a post-doctoral program with Professor Alfred Blumstein at Carnegie Mellon University.
After serving as a consultant to correctional and judicial agencies in Colorado, Winterfield moved to New York City in 1984, where she began a career as a policy researcher at the Vera Institute of Justice and later at the New York City Criminal Justice Agency. In New York, her research helped to advance the city’s network of alternative-to-incarceration programs and her work on crime prediction instruments helped to make the courts’ processing of juvenile offenders more efficient and just. At the Vera Institute, Winterfield carried out one of the earliest studies of juvenile offenders to explore the extent to which they went on to adult criminal careers. She evaluated the attempts by New York City prosecutors to decrease times to disposition for defendants held in pretrial custody and the Department of Probation’s Drug Treatment Initiative. Some of her research was in collaboration with her husband, Douglas Young.
Winterfield came to Washington in April 1997 to work for the U.S. Department of Justice where she was Division Chief for Justice Systems Research at the National Institute of Justice (NIJ). During her years at NIJ, she oversaw an expanding portfolio of national research on drug treatment in correctional settings and community-based crime prevention, as well as the national evaluation of the Violent Offender and Truth in Sentencing legislation. She was part of the NIJ editorial team for Volume 3 of Criminal Justice 2000, “Policies, Processes, and Decisions of the Criminal Justice System,” and served on the editorial board of the NIJ Journal.
As Division Chief at NIJ, Winterfield managed a research staff with diverse portfolios on courts, corrections, and criminal behavior. Her work with colleagues in other NIJ research divisions was marked by a tireless commitment to ensuring the policy and practice relevance of research. Her talent for articulating transparent models to link programs to outcomes made her a valued and trusted colleague in many research ventures, especially those in the area of corrections and community supervision of offenders. She was a key contributor to the agency’s work on prisoner reentry and reentry program evaluation.
During her career, Winterfield fostered partnerships between researchers, practitioners, and policymakers and worked to improve the criminal justice system through systematic research and policy analysis.
Survivors include her husband of 19 years, Douglas Young, and two children, Risa Young and Joseph Young, and a sister, Lisa Skillington.
Submitted by:
Terrence Dunworth, The Urban Institute
Thomas E. Feucht, National Institute of Justice
Christy Visher, University of Delaware
2007
Some of these individuals participated in the ASC Oral History Project. For more information, please go to the Oral History Project page.
HAROLD K. BECKER, Professor, Department of Criminal Justice, California State University Long Beach
Dr. Becker a police officer with Los Angeles Police Department for four years and a member of the U. S. Coast Guard for eight years. He received his bachelor’s degree in economics from University of Southern California in 1959 and a D.Crim. from the University of California Berkeley in 1971. He taught full time at California State University Long Beach from 1963 to 2000, and one semester a year after that until he retired in 2005. He was an adjunct professor at the Center for Politics and Policy at The Claremont Graduate School from 1989 to 1996 where he taught and mentored a number of emerging Ph.D.s. One of his favorite courses was the graduate class in criminological theory where he used a Socratic method to encourage students to think about the implications of each paradigm.
Hal had eclectic interests in criminal justice. He was involved in numerous research projects on gang violence and juvenile crime prevention. He is best known for his studies of comparative policing, including three publications he authored or co-authored: Police Systems in Europe, Justice in Modern Sweden, and the Handbook of the World’s Police. In addition to publishing about police systems, he escorted a number of student study tours to Sweden and was one of the first to take students to China.
Dr. Becker was an active member of both the American Society of Criminology and the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences, as well as an active participant in the International Criminal Justice/Criminology section. He died on November 21, 2007, at his home in Huntington Beach of complications from cancer.
PAUL CASCARANO, Retired Federal Executive
Paul Cascarano, 76, a retired Federal official who served in the Department of Justice’s National Institute of Justice, died August 8, 2007 of a heart attack at Reston Hospital, VA.
Mr. Cascarano joined the National Institute of Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice, later named the National Institute of Justice, in 1968. He was named an assistant director of the agency in 1985, and was a charter member of the Senior Executive Service. Mr. Cascarano created the Institute’s training and dissemination programs to help criminal justice agencies apply research findings and promising approaches, such as the first police street crime units and the first rape crisis centers. He was responsible for initiating and supporting for many years NIJ funding for Crime and Justice An Annual Review of Research, edited by Michael Tonry and published by the University of Chicago Press. He developed regional training programs and national conferences that brought together professionals from a number of fields to address community problems. For example, in 1976, when he instituted training to improve methods for dealing with rape victims, it was often the first time that police detectives, emergency room doctors, prosecutors, and mayors’ representatives had been at the same table to work on the problem. Mr. Cascarano also oversaw development of technology programs, including standards for the testing and certification of police body armor, now worn by police throughout the country, He emphasized use of different approaches to communicating useful new information. In addition to publications that distilled research findings, he oversaw development of a series of videos, “Crime File,” which presented discussions among front-line professionals and scholars about important crime control issues. The programs, moderated by James Q. Wilson, were broadcast on public television stations. He also supervised the development and operation of the National Criminal Justice Reference Service, the first automated reference data base on all aspects of criminal justice.
He retired from the federal government in 1999. After his retirement, he was a volunteer with the Travelers’ Aid Society at Reagan National Airport. Mr. Cascarano was born in Brooklyn, New York, and received bachelor’s and master’s degrees from City College of New York. He served in the U.S. Army from 1952 to 1954. Before joining the National Institute of Justice, he was a systems analyst at Systems Development Corporation in Santa Monica, California. Survivors include his wife of 50 years, Ann, of Alexandria, two brothers, Anthony Cascarano of Alexandria, and Joseph Cascarano of Los Alamitos, California, as well as several nieces and nephews.
EUGENE HOWARD CZAJKOSKI, 78, died Friday, February 16, 2007, at the Margaret Dozier Hospice House. He is survived by his wife of 45 years, Rosalind. In lieu of flowers, the family requests that memorial contributions be made to the Eugene H. and Rosalind D. Czajkoski Scholarship Fund, College of Criminology and Criminal Justice, attention Dean Blomberg, 634 W. Call Street, Tallahassee, FL 32306.
Dr. Czajkoski was an Army Veteran of the Korean War. A native of New York, he earned his doctorate in public administration (Criminal justice) from New York University in 1964. He joined the Florida State University faculty in 1966, and continued to teach in the classroom as recently as Fall of 2006. He was the chair of the department of criminology before becoming the founding dean of the School of Criminology in 1974. He remained dean until 1986. In 1987, he was awarded dean emeritus and professor emeritus status.
In addition to his active involvement at FSU and major professional associations in his field, Dr. Czajkoski served as commissioner on the Florida Supreme Court Nominating Commission; consultant for National Institute of Justice; chairman of the Governor’s Council on Criminal Justice; and various other positions within the Governor’s office. He was instrumental in creating DISC Village, a drug treatment center, and was on its board of directors for 35 years.
Gene had a wonderful sense of humor and was a colorful, gregarious conversationalist. His virtues were many; he was reliable, fair, loyal, prudent, trustworthy, ethical, reasonable, kind, and a truly good and decent man, who lived by the Golden Rule. He was a good friend to many and a loving, devoted husband.
Other survivors include the Rapaglia and D’Arco families and many friends, colleagues, and students.
Originally published in the Tallahassee Democrat on 2/18/2007.
SIMON DINITZ
Sadly, criminology has lost another giant. Simon (Sy) Dinitz (1926-2007), Professor Emeritus of Sociology and Criminology at Ohio State University (OSU) died on March 3, 2007. We will remember him well as: a scholar committed to scientific research on problems that matter greatly to society; a dedicated teacher who cared deeply about his students, their lives, and their families; and a fine human being who was not too self-absorbed to recognize the needs of others.
A native of New York City, Sy received his Bachelor’s degree from Vanderbilt University (1947), and his Master’s (1949) and Ph.D. (1951) from the University of Wisconsin. In 1951, he joined the faculty in Sociology at OSU, retiring as Professor Emeritus in 1991. At OSU, Sy helped to establish a strong and lasting tradition in Criminology. He loved teaching in all kinds of settings, and so also served as visiting faculty in departments across the country and the world. Sy authored or co-authored 16 books and over 130 articles. He advised 40 Ph.D. recipients, and used his expertise to advise the State of Ohio, the nation, and world organizations (e.g., the United Nations) on criminal justice and correctional policies.
Sy collected an array of awards. We note just a sampling here. He was the first recipient of all three of the OSU’s top honors i.e., awards for: Distinguished Teaching (1970), Distinguished Research (1979), and Distinguished Service (1996). In 1981 Sy was honored as the first faculty member to deliver the OSU Commencement Address. He is a Past President and Fellow of ASC, a recipient of the Society’s Edwin H. Sutherland Award (1974), and a former editor of Criminology, then Criminologica.
Though a true scholar, Sy was first and foremost a family man. He was married for 46 years to his wife Mildred (Mim), and took great pride in the achievements of his children (Jeff, Thea, and Risa) and grandchildren.
Gifts in memory should be sent to The Mildred and Simon Dinitz Graduate Fellowship Fund, The Ohio State University, 2400 Olentangy River Rd., Columbus, OH 43210, or to your favorite charity.
Respectfully submitted on behalf of all those who had the privilege of working closely with Sy as students and colleagues,
C. Ronald Huff, University of California, Irvine
Ruth D. Peterson, Ohio State University
Frank Scarpitti, University of Delaware
C. RAY JEFFERY
On December 6, 2007, Dr. C. Ray Jeffery passed away after some years of ill health. Jeff, as he was affectionately known, was retired from the faculty of the College of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Florida State University, and was a past president of the American Society of Criminology. In his earlier years as a professor, he became widely known for his book on Crime Prevention through Environmental Design, which provided an innovative and unique perspective on environmental factors that contributed to crime and were infinitely malleable. This work led him to develop theories such as Defensible Space, Environmental Criminology, Rational Choice, and Situational Crime Prevention that extended opportunity theory into new territory. Jeff also paved the way for a reintegration of the social and biological sciences in the field of Criminology. Jeff was renowned for his writings and teachings on ways in which study of the brain could substantially enlighten our field; criminology had neglected its biological roots for many decades prior to his advocacy. In the face of contention and opposition from a few criminologists who feared that the “social” part of the equation would be lost, Jeff persisted in his movement toward a more rigorous, holistic, and empirically-based perspective on the causes of crime. He did not neglect any discipline that he felt could contribute to a comprehensive etiological understanding of criminal behavior; he recognized the role of the social and physical environment in brain development and function even before neurobiological studies focused on that interaction. The model that drove him was founded on a solid belief that a transdisciplinary view of behavior would lead to more effective and humane approaches to preventing and treating offender behavior. Jeff’s brilliant theorizing, countless followers (both senior colleagues and students), and numerous books and articles are testimony to the mark he has left on the field. Jeff stimulated the imagination of many criminologists over the years.
As a person, Jeff was modest and humble, even somewhat reserved. But when he spoke, he did so with conviction and unyielding passion. From the start, his life was never easy and, thus, a rough exterior and some impatience was all that some folk could see. But underneath, he was a kind, caring, compassionate man who always looked forward, seeking progress and comrades to share in that quest. I discovered my career path through what I saw in Jeff’s eyes and I have followed it all the while recognizing and appreciating his role in my own passion for the science. He is gone but his spirit will never be forgotten and his impact will be forever felt.
Written by Diana Fishbein, RTI International
Read below to read others’ thoughts on C. Ray Jeffery:
DENNI FISHBEIN (RTI International): Dr. C. Ray Jeffery was not only instrumental in my career but to my humanity. He reached me in ways that I did not think were possible in college. I discovered the beauty of well done science and the potential for it to inform practices that would ultimately improve the quality of life among people who are disadvantaged by their experiences, their genetics, and the dynamic impact of these factors on their ability to function in society. I felt stimulated and excited for the first time. I knew since I was 10 years old that I wanted to understand the underpinnings for individual differences in behavior, but it wasn’t until I encountered Jeff that I was able to find a way to tangibly act upon this interest. And, thus, it guided my career all these years, culminating in what I do currently – translational research. Interestingly, NIH coined this term many, many years after Jeff taught the very fundamental principles on which it is based. But his impact on me professionally is only part of the story. I felt touched by him as a person; someone who was tortured by a need to get through to people, to understand the essence of science and its potential to influence society for the better. I will miss him dearly. I will miss our dinners together, the wine we shared, the conversations (and arguments!), and the drive he instilled in me to push forward to upgrade the field with the ultimate goal of helping people.
SUSAN PEASE (Central Connecticut State University): From my point of view, the fact that Ray Jeffery could challenge students and colleagues to examine crime from a different perspective was a major contribution to the field. He was able to elicit strong reactions from supporters and detractors alike. Regardless of whether someone agreed with him, he was not a scholar to be ignored. How many of us can make that claim?
PAUL CROMWELL (Wichita State University): I received the better part of my doctoral education sitting with him and Fred Faust at Steak and Eggs each morning, having breakfast and listening to and participating what amounted to the best graduate seminar anywhere. Jeff was irascible, demanding, hard to please, and the best teacher I ever had. Criminology has lost a great man.
RON HUNTER (Western Carolina University, President ACJS): Ray Jeffery’s legacy is not just that he was a brilliant criminologist. He was a challenging but caring professor who motivated his students to seek additional knowledge. In addition, he was a mentor who offered critical analyses, as well as compassionate encouragement, to his protégés. Ray was also a loyal and trustworthy friend. He will be missed by our discipline. He is already missed by those of us who were fortunate enough to know him well.
PAUL BRANTINGHAM (Simon Frasier University): I note the reasons why both the field of Criminology and the criminologists who work within it benefited greatly from this man, Ray Jeffery. First, Jeff was a remarkably supportive colleague and very good friend who did much to shape my own thinking about the field. Second, Jeff was a protean thinker who continuously tested the scientific basis for criminological claims and who consistently argued that the field had to expand its scientific and scholarly horizons in order to properly understand and deal with crime and criminal behaviour. His work and thinking was always well ahead of that of other criminologists – a situation which saw him consistently mistreated despite the fact that his arguments became major turning points for the field. Along those lines, he argued that criminologists needed to take the law into account in thinking about crime at a time when Sellin’s “sociological definition” of crime dominated. This position got him attacked by Herman
Mannheim in the famous exchange of conclusions ending the second edition of Pioneers in Criminology. He also argued that criminologists needed to understand differential association and other learning theories of crime in terms of the formal propositions of operant conditioning and learning theory. Most credit went to others, for later articles. He further argued that people respond to their immediate environments so crime prevention must involve the redesign of physical, social, economic and political environments (at least). People who never actually read Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design attacked him for simple minded “locks and bolts” prescriptions. And he argued that criminologists needed to understand biochemistry and genetics and how they interacted with the physical and social environment to produce complete humans over time in order to fully understand criminal behaviour. A famous Norwegian criminologist rose during an awards banquet to declare – to resounding cheers – that he never wanted to hear the word “biology” spoken at a criminology conference again. That said, I would note that Jeff’s work changed criminology each time. He became President of the American Society of Criminology and he was given its treasured Sutherland Award for contributions to the discipline. I would also note that many people had trouble with Jeff’s somewhat gruff demeanour and “Idaho smile.” Never bothered me – my own family is from the Teton Valley and Jeff’s approach to discussion seemed “normal” to me. Underneath, Jeff was a real softy who went out of his way to accommodate students and colleagues.
ALLAN BARNES (University of Alaska Anchorage): Dr. Jeffery’s contribution to modern criminological thought has been his insistence that the discipline of criminology take an interdisciplinary view. “Jeff”, as he was affectionately known, was neither a fiery orator nor even a good lecturer. However, the power of his ideas and his dogged determination to push criminology into the modern age more than compensated for these. He was quiet man of honor, intellect and vision. A giant has passed before our eyes, and those that follow can see a little further and understand a little better: its all about preventing victims, not punishing the perpetrator. The turning point in my life came one day in the “bull pen” that served as offices of the
FSU graduate students. I was trying to decide on direction, dissertation topic, purpose (the usual graduate student dilemmas) and as Dr. Jeffery passed my little door, I asked him what he would do if he had it all to do over again. Without much hesitation he look me in the eye and said, “I would study the brain,” and walked on. I took his advice and grew to respect the direct, no nonsense approach he exemplified. Over the years we shared conference panels and more than a few beers He was a very humorous fellow under that no nonsense cloak he so often wore.
NANCY GROSSELFINGER: I will be forever grateful to Jeff for the dignity with which he treated me as a PhD candidate. After completing each chapter in my written work, Jeff would contact me to arrange a conference. Immediately upon arrival at his office he would suggest we leave for a beer or cup of coffee that would take us out of the physical, hierarchical setting of the office/school and put us more in a casual peer /mentoring environment. He would ask me probing questions in a neutral tone without threat or innuendo. After I had ‘explained’ myself he would say “Well, if you can now just put that onto paper you will be just fine, you seem to understand things clearly.” It was a gentle way of telling me I had to re-work the writing but he had confidence in me. Jeff was also willing to shield his students from the squabbles between faculty members. When I went to him for ‘advice’ and he offered to take me on as a PhD student he told me one of his conditions was that I allow him to choose the additional member from within the School so as to keep things within his control. Jeff became the central repository for all comments from the
Committee. When he presented them to me he did so in summary form, advising who the question was from, and giving me his opinion on whether it was a worthwhile comment, if I needed to address it at all, or if ‘he would handle it’. Jeff always treated his PhDs as if they were his off- spring. He loved us even if we were somewhat of a ‘disappointment’ to him in the lines of scholarship we pursued. But he managed to respect each of the rest of us and allowed us to be our genuine selves, always hoping he had made some positive impression upon us and that we would transmit that onward in our teaching and research. During my six years at the University of Malta his textbook was in our annual curriculum and proved to be an epiphany for many of our students. He relished the professional meetings we attended together and always looked forward to gathering us PhDs alone around the table for a good meal, happy banter and a beer. As a result of his mentorship and friendship, I have worked to incorporate these gifts from Jeff into my own life and teaching. The rewards to me personally have been so great that I actually grew to love teaching and hoped I was perhaps a better than average professor in ways that matter in peoples’ lives, bringing students to a greater love and commitment to a lifetime of learning. But as Jeff said more than once, “Thank you very much, that’s enough”.
FREDA ADLER (Rutgers University): My last communication with Jeff was in 1995. In class that year I used the video “Born Bad” while discussing biology and crime with my class. After seeing the demonstrators march in during the Aspen Institute meeting, I wrote to Jeff asking several questions. Here is his response:
“I found the conference to be both most exciting and challenging, and at the same time discouraging. To have geneticists, lawyers, philosophers, historians, criminologists, and sociologists in the same room discussing the impact of biology on criminal behavior was a most unique event in history and a most disappointing one. There was no common language of communication for the most part, since the social scientists did not follow the arguments of the geneticists, and the reverse. Many social scientists, and the protestors who disrupted the conference, had a basic belief that genes could not have any impact on free will and on freedom of choice. The specter of Nazism and concentration camps was always not too far away, along with the O.J. Simpson trial and the Rodney King trial and the role of racism in contemporary criminal justice. Out of all of this I hope the integration of biology, psychology, sociology, and criminology can begin. I should note that only one attendee had a Ph.D. in criminology, Diana Fishbein from Florida State University. This in itself is a commentary on the integration of biology and crime in the contemporary world.”
Oral History of Criminology Project Interview
INGER SAGATUN-EDWARDS passed away on April 2, 2007. You can find some articles on her at the following links:
http://www.mercurynews.com/search/ci_5589712?nclick_check=1
SUSETTE TALARICO
Athens, Ga. – The University of Georgia mourns the death of Susette Talarico, a UGA faculty member for three decades. Beloved by scores of students and colleagues, Talarico died May 23, 2007 following a 17-year bout with breast cancer.
“Susette was not only one of UGA’s best faculty but also one of the university’s finest citizens, and her good works benefited students and faculty colleagues alike,” said UGA President Michael F. Adams. “She had a strong international reputation in legal and judicial studies, and represented UGA well over the course of many years. She will be sorely missed.”
Born on May 10, 1946, in Danbury, Conn. to Ella and Nathaniel Talarico, Susette had two siblings, Robert Nathaniel Talarico (Barbara) and her twin sister Annette Talarico Adams (Kenny).
After graduating as the valedictorian of her high school class, she joined the Sisters of Mercy for six years, during which she earned her bachelor’s degree at Diocesan Sisters’ College (St. Joseph’s College). Upon reflection, she chose to leave the convent to pursue a joint master’s and doctoral program in political science at the University of Connecticut, which she completed in 1976.
Following a brief teaching stint at St. Michael’s College in Vermont, Talarico joined the political science faculty at the University of Georgia in 1977 where she pursued her passion for teaching until retiring in 2006.
Talarico was the Albert Berry Saye Professor of American Government and Constitutional Law, Emerita and a Josiah Meigs Distinguished Teaching Professorat UGA’s School of Public and International Affairs. A charter member of UGA’s Teaching Academy, Talarico was known for her innovative approach to teaching and mentoring and for her contributions to curriculum development at the university—serving as the driving force in the creation of the interdisciplinary undergraduate degree program in criminal justice.
Not only was she a two-time winner of the coveted Josiah Meigs Award, Talarico was named the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences General Sandy Beaver Teaching Professor for three years and a Danforth Teaching Fellow for six years. Most recently, the UGA chapter of Phi Kappa Phi presented Talarico with its Love of Learning Award. Upon her retirement, the department of political science’s teaching award was named in her honor. The award was endowed by Talarico’s former students and generated so many contributions that its funds are also used to support public lectures and research funds for students in criminal justice and political science.
In addition to her success in the classroom, Talarico was an accomplished scholar with over fifty published articles and books focused on the study of sentencing, criminal courts and civil litigation. She served as editor-in-chief of Justice System Journal for six years. Throughout her professional career, Talarico was devoted to advancing the socialization of women into the academy. As the only tenured female professor in the department of political science for years, she played a pivotal role in mentoring junior women in the field, often times helping them with the submission of their first papers for publications. In creating a coffee hour for the women of the School of Public and International Affairs, she informally brought together female graduate students to meet and interact with female faculty members.
In May, she was awarded the 2007 American Political Science Association’s Law and Courts’ Teaching and Mentoring Award, a well-deserved honor that reflected her devotion to students.
One former student put it this way, “I graduated from UGA more than 25 years ago, I live 1,700 miles from Athens, I have no political or professional clout to speak of, yet she still sends my family a holiday card every year with a personal note. What does a card have to do with Dr. Talarico’s success as a mentor and instructor? It illustrates her true genius as an educator; she cares for you as a student, but more importantly, she cares about your development as a person.”
Commenting on her teaching, Robert Grafstein, head of the department of political science said, “Soon after she came to Athens, her energy, devotion to her students, concern for her colleagues and general public spiritedness seemed irreplaceable. But her profound influence long ago transcended the university through the impact she had on her former students far and wide. On someone’s passing, we often say she will be missed. In Susette’s case, that doesn’t begin to describe it.”
“This remarkable woman touched the lives of countless students, colleagues and friends in ways that will never be forgotten,” said Thomas P. Lauth, dean of the School of Public and International Affairs.
While known as a brilliant scholar and a dedicated teacher, Talarico will also be remembered as a loving wife and mother, a devoted sister and daughter, and a magnificently caring friend.
On December 29, 1982, Talarico married the love of her life, Rodger Taylor Carroll and on March 15, 1984, they had a son, Robert David Carroll: a great joy for both of them.
Though her greatest love was reserved for her family and friends, Talarico also loved to sing and was known to devour books.
Talarico is survived by her mother, her two siblings, her husband and son, nineteen nieces and nephews, and fourteen great nieces and nephews.
Memorial gifts may be made to the Susette M. Talarico Fund, which supports students and faculty in criminal justice and political science. Contributions can be made to the Arch Foundation for the University of Georgia, specifying the Susette M. Talarico Fund, and mailed to the School of Public and International Affairs, 217 Candler Hall, University of Georgia, Athens, Ga. 30602.
Thursday, May 24, 2007
Writer/Contact: Joy R. Holloway, 706/410-5182, joyh@uga.edu
Quick Links
© 2006-2023 American Society of Criminology