HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN SOCIETY OF CRIMINOLOGY
 Minutes
from the organizational meeting of the National Association of College
Police Training Officials (the entity that fifteen years later would be
re-named the American Society of Criminology), held December 30-31, 1941
at the home of August Vollmer in, Berkeley, California.
Freda Adler, "The ASC and Women: One Generation Without, One Generation
With," (The Criminologist, May/June 1997, pp. 1, 3-5)
Albert Morris, "The American Society of Criminology: A History, 1941 -
1974," (Criminology, August 1975, pp. 123-167)
Edward A. Petty, Historical Perspectives on the American Society of Criminology."
Unpublished history written in 1959.
Frank Scarpitti, "The Recent History of the American Society of Criminology,"
(The Criminologist, November 1985, pp. 1-3, 9)
List of Previous ASC Annual Meeting Program Chairs, Themes, Meeting Locations, Abstracts and Index of Participants
List of ASC Officers, By Office
List of ASC Presidents, By Year
Photo Archive
Earliest Known Version of the ASC Constitution - Circa March 1957
|
"The American
Society of Criminology: A History, 1941 - 1974"
(From Criminology, August 1975,
pp. 123-167)
by Albert Morris
(In 1973 Professor Albert Morris, (retired)
Boston University, was asked by the Executive Board to prepare a history
of The American Society of Criminology. Professor Morris, the
1970 President of the Society, compiled this document through personal
interviews and correspondence with a vast array of members, present and
past, as well as from the scattered records of the Society. This
work is representative of Professor Morris' long dedication to careful
scholarship and his interest in tracing the social history of a professional
movement. The American Society of Criminology would like to thank
Professor Morris for his dedication and diligence in completing this two-year
project)
THE FOUNDING
On the morning of December 30, 1941, seven
men involved in teaching college courses in Police Science and Administration
met with August Vollmer at his home on Euclid Avenue, Berkeley, California,
"for the purpose of furthering college police training and standardizing
police training curricula."(1) This meeting which began at 10:15
a.m. did not adjourn until one o'clock the next morning.
The group consolidated its obviously serious
and continuing intent by formally organizing under the title the National
Association of College Police Officials. Those present on this
occasion were:
1. August Vollmer, Formerly
Chief of Police, Berkeley, California, Retired Professor of Police
Administration, University of California;
2. Robert L. Drexel, Chief
Investigator, District Attorney's Office, San Jose, California;
3. Vivian A. Leonard, Professor
and Head, Department of Police Science and Administration, Washington State
College, Pullman,
Washingon;
4. Benjamin W. Pavone, Chairman,
Peace Officers Training Division, San Francisco Junior College San Francisco,
California;
5. Willard E. Schmidt, Director
of Police Training, Sacramento Junior College, Sacramento, California;
6. Orlando W. Wilson, Professor
of Police Administration and Director of the Bureau of Criminology, University
California, Berkeley;
7. William Wiltberger, Director,
Police School, San Jose State College, San Jose, California
8. Frank Lee, Formerly Director
of the National Police academy, China.
August Vollmer was elected to the honorary
post of President Emeritus and Orlando Winfield Wilson was elected President
of the new organization. Other officers were filled as follows:
1. Pavone
Secretary-Treasurer
2. Schmidt
First Vice-President
3. Leonard
Second Vice-President
4. Wiltberger
Third Vice President
5. Yee International
Vice President
V.A. Leonard was appointed chairman of
a committee to prepare a constitution and by-laws. It was voted that
a membership be restricted to persons actively engaged as officials of
college police training curricula. The purposes of the Association
were suggested as follows:
1. To associate officials engaged
in professional police training at the college level.
2. To standardize the various police
training curricula.
3. To standardize, insofar as possible,
the subject matter of similar courses in the various schools.
4. To keep abreast of recent developments
and to foster research.
5. To disseminate information.
6. To elevate standards of police
service.
7. To stimulate the formation of
police training schools in colleges throughout the nation.
After lengthy discussion a tripartite classification
of curricula was made in terms of those appropriate for junior college,
state college, and university levels. Committees were appointed to
prepare suggested curricula for each of these.
Prior to the meeting a questionnaire had
been sent out that consisted of a breakdown, into 25 classifications, of
the possible subject matter of police training courses. Each recipient
had been instructed to indicate his suggested allocation of an arbitrary
400 hours of instruction. The tabulated results of this inquiry became
the basis for extended discussion during the afternoon and evening sessions.
This, in turn, led into a discussion of course content and texts.
V.A. Leonard's request, that the Association
accept an invitation from the president of Washington State College to
hold its next meeting there, was acted on favorably with the date left
to future determination.(2) However, it appears that the Association
never did hold the proposed meeting in Washington.
Directly out of this beginning, evolving
through changes of membership, name, scope, and policy, has come the now
firmly established, interdisciplinary American Society of Criminology.
THE PRELIMINARIES
A meeting as well organized and as fruitful
as that of December 30, 1941 had not been an instant blossom. It
had required a period of unmarked germination. Vollmer apparently
had met often with present and former students and police colleagues to
discuss the problems and the rationale of professional police training
and administration. William Dienstein, later to become president
of the organization, recalls that he was one of
a group of graduate
students at the University of California at Berkeley who were taking courses
from August Vollmer during the period of
about 1932-39.
We got together in a rather unstructured group and called ourselves "V-men."
We even had a lapel pin; a many-pointed
star with a "V"
etched in the center.
In the course of
gatherings with Vollmer, the notion jelled to form an organization.
Our meetings were usually rather heated discussions
of police issues,
training, administration and of education, on the college level.(3)
Another of those who recalls frequent meetings
with Vollmer is William Wiltberger who had been one of the so-called "College
Cops" of the Berkeley Police Department when Vollmer was Chief of Police
there and who, in 1925, became Chief of Police in Evanston, Illinois.
In 1934, following the closing of a faltering police training program at
what was then San Jose State Teacher's College, Wiltberger developed there
a most creditable police school of which he was director. When his
assistant, William Schmidt, left in January 1940 to become director of
a police training program being established at Sacramento Junior College,
Wiltberger expressed to Schmidt his strong feeling that the college training
of police would surely expand and that the time had come to organize police
school administrators and teachers to deal with problems of curriculum
development and coordination.(4)
As Wiltberger recalls the events that followed,
he took the initiative in meeting this need by starting an organization
called the "National Association of College Police School Administrators"
of which he assumed the presidency and in which he asked Schmidt to join
him as vice-president and secretary. In this connection, Wiltberger
apparently saw an opportunity to organize and give specific purpose to
what had been
originally informal
get-togethers of old friends, formerly Berkeley "cops" and then heads of
college police schools who gathered for "bull
sessions" with our
old chief . . . During our discussions I saw a good chance to enlarge the
organization I had started of an association of
head of college
public schools. So I broached the subject, told of the organization
Schmidt and I had, and as I was leaving before long
for military service
in World War II, some one else should head up the organization. They
all bought the idea...
Vollmer thought we
should include outstanding professors in the social sciences and criminology.
I disagreed, maintaining
that only heads
of college police schools knew the problems based on police experience
or needs of policemen and the
academic experience
of administering a police school. They voted to back Vollmer's suggestion
and overruled me . . . As I
predicted, in the
early 1960s the college police professors formed an organization of their
own to work on practical problems
involving such police
schools.(5)
The minutes of the December 30 meeting,
however, record that a motion to restrict membership to persons engaged
as officials of college training curricula was passed, although in practice
it seems not to have been vigorously adhered to. As the organization
developed, something closer to Vollmer's position came to be accepted.
THE EMERGENCE
The organization, thus started, attracted
to membership officers of rank concerned with police training from the
major police forces of California and some neighboring states, as well
as those engaged in college teaching in the field. But if its focus
was on police training it was with the conviction that the professionalism
of police forces was its goal and that this required that police--and especially
police administrators become broadly informed in the entire area of criminology
and in the principles of such related areas as public administration, political
science, psychology, and sociology.
Vollmer's interest in developing a formal
organization, concerned with the extension and improvement of police training,
was an almost inevitable step in his own long-existing personal commitment
to that objective. Probably the most widely known and most innovative
police chief in American police history, August Vollmer (1876-1955) had
been Marshal of Berkeley (1905-1909) the first Police Chief of Berkeley
(1909-1932) and Professor of Police Administration at the University of
California at Berkeley (1932-1937), and was widely sought as a consultant
in police administration. He was physically an imposing person (6'4"
tall and weighing about 190 lbs.) who always seemed to be in top physical
condition. He was a broadly informed and creative man with a contagious
enthusiasm for making police work a profession with a highly trained core
of persons who had college degrees and who could teach at the college level.
As early as 1916, Vollmer, in collaboration with law professor Alexander
Marsden Kidd, developed a summer session program in criminology at the
Berkeley campus in which courses were given from 1916 to 1931, with the
exception of the 1927 session.
It was Vollmer and Kidd who in 1928 proposed
the establishment of a school of criminology, a proposal that led in 1931
to criminology course in the regular school year sessions at the University
of California at Berkeley, the development of a major in criminology in
1933, a Bureau of Criminology in the Department of Political Science in
1939, a Master's program in Criminology in 1947, and the establishment
of the nation's first and only formally designated university "School of
Criminology" in 1950.(6)
Those who founded the National Association
of College Police Training Officials (hereafter referred as NACPTO) brought
others with like interests into their Association and began to hold formal
meetings at intervals for discussions related to their concerns as well
as to plan the further development of their fledgling organization.
Unfortunately, the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and the
directly expanded involvement of the United States in the Pacific area
of World War II, drew some members and prospective members of the NACPTO
into military service and for a time limited the new Association's growth.
Soon after the end of the War, however,
a reorganization meeting was held. This so-called Third Annual Conference,
held at the Durant Hotel in Berkeley in 1946, formally recognized and ratified
the original goals of the Association but adopted a new and more suitably
descriptive name, amended the constitution and by-laws, and established
membership qualifications consistent with its objectives. These changes
were not perfunctorily arrived at. After considerable debate, a longer
list of proposed names for the organization had been reduced to five:
National Association of College Police Training Officials, Association
for Education in Criminology, Criminological Education Association, Association
for College and Police Training Officials and Society for the Advancement
of Criminology. It was this last title that was adopted. The
preamble to the 1946 Constitution of the newly named Society read as follows:
This organization
shall be known as the Society for the Advancement of Criminology.
The term CRIMINOLOGY as used hereinafter is
defined as
the study of the causes, treatment and prevention of crime, including,
but not restricted to:
1. Scientific crime detection, investigation and identification;
2.
Crime prevention, public safety and security;
3.
Law enforcement administration;
4.
Administration of criminal justice;
5.
Traffic administration;
6.
Probation;
7.
Juvenile delinquency control;
8.
Related aspects of penology.
Collectively, the titles voted on the specification
of eight areas that must be among those included within the general definition
of criminology seem to suggest the nature of some of the differences of
position and emphasis that were finally resolved to produce the Society's
official position at that time.
Both the stated purposes of the Society
and the requirements for membership clearly and specifically limited active
membership to "persons engaged by accepted universities and colleges to
instruct or supervise in professional and vocational training programs
in Criminology." Provision was made for an "associate" membership,
but this was limited somewhat ambiguously --to "persons engaged or instructing
in Criminology and not eligible for active membership" and the acceptance
of a person as an associate member had to be by unanimous vote of the Executive
Committee. An "honorary membership" might be conferred by unanimous
vote of the Executive Committee on "persons of outstanding professional
achievement in Criminology."
Again the interlocking of the SAC leadership
and the teaching faculty in criminology at U.C. Berkeley is suggested by
the fact that the first announcement Bulletin (University of California
Bulletin, 1950) of the New School of Criminology, established July 1, 1950,
with O. W. Wilson as Dean, states, "The scope of the school is established
in the broad terms adopted by the American Society for the Advancement
of Criminology."
Inevitably, the graduates of the criminology
programs at the University of California at Berkeley began to develop college
courses in that field and those in the state colleges in California and
at Berkeley no doubt had a special interest in developing sufficient uniformity
in curricula as to make student credit transfers feasible. Under
the circumstances, it is understandable that a concern with course content
and with the problems of curriculum standards became an area of primary
interest and discussion within the Society for the Advancement of Criminology.
THE CONSOLIDATION
By the time the new name and constitution
were adopted in 1946 the Society had over 40 dues-paying members.
There is always some difficulty in determining exact numbers because payments
may come in throughout a calendar year and some who pay dues one year may
not the next. Obviously, those who were interested in the Society's
programs and who attended its meetings exceeded the number of dues-paying
members.
The Society increasingly extended its efforts
to become established as a significant association for the encouragement
and support of original NACPTO had already published professional books,
as well as articles that appeared in various professional journals.
In 1944, V.A. Leonard became Editor of News and Notes for the Journal
of Criminal Law and Criminology, and he continued to serve in that
capacity for twelve years, through the issue of July-August, 1956.
Other NACPTO founders and some who came into membership during the 1940s
were frequent contributors to professional journals and to the published
proceedings of various professional societies. During the period
1941 through 1950 the Journal of Criminal Law, Criminology, and Police
Science alone carried at least forty of these. Their titles indicate
the special interest of the members of that time in police problems, administration,
and criminalistic. Nevertheless, there is also evidence of a desire
that practitoners in police work, especially in administration, have a
desire that practitioners in police work, especially in administration,
have breadth of understanding of related and supportive areas of knowledge.
By the 1950s the Society's correspondence
involved increasing discussion about the direction in which it was developing.
World War II had taken some of its members into military service and in
the process thrust upon them new and broadening associations and experiences.
After the War some new members who had not been part of the "V" men and
their close associates, and who were not graduates of the University of
California at Berkeley, also became active in the Society. These
members supported an increasing concern to attract into membership criminologists
from areas beyond California and contiguous states and to include academic
and administrative personnel with primary interests in aspects of criminology
other than police work.
In a letter dated May 15, 1953, Arthur
Brandstatter, head of the Police Administration Program at Michigan State
University and Central Region Vice-President of the SAC, wrote to President
William Dienstein,
I believe one way
in which the group could become more active and meaningful is to move the
site of its annual meeting from the West
Coast. I should
like to reiterate what I said at the Interim Meeting in Los Angeles, that
I don't believe any national organization can
continue to function
as a national group unless it changes its meeting place from the West Coast
and encourages others who are
interested in the
same problems from the various sections of the country to meet with them
in discussing these problems . . . If it is at all
possible, we suggest
that an effort be made to move the meeting of 1953 to Denver, Colorado.
If you are successful in doing this . . . we
shall make every
effort to have our entire staff attend this meeting. I am reasonably
certain that you would also attract other people from
the Midwest . .
.
Within the Society concern was also being
expressed that the membership was "top-heavy" with police. This,
in turn, was countered by those who were worried about the likelihood that
the Society might become too much oriented toward corrections. Certainly,
the formal actions of the Society during the 1950s were directed toward
a broadening of interests and to becoming attractive to those who had achieved
academic distinction as sociologists, psychologists, political scientists,
or lawyers specializing in criminology.
In June 1950 the Society became, officially,
an affiliate of the American Association for the Advancement of Science,
with the options of holding full-programs, regional sessions, or cosponsored
programs within Section K of the AAAS. It is the opinion of some
that the choice of the name, Society for the Advancement of Criminology,
had been consciously influenced by the expectation of affiliation with
the parallel named American Association for the Advancement of Science.
In December of that same year the International
Society of Criminology voted to accept the SAC as its American member and
the SAC was formally represented at the International Congresses in Europe
in 1951, 1954, and 1958 by Marcel Frym and John Kenney. Also, a direct
and planned effort was made to develop mutually supportive relations with
the International Association of Chiefs of Police, the American Academy
of Forensic Sciences, the American Correctional Association, and the National
Probation and Parole Association (now the National Council on Crime and
Delinquency). In 1952 the journal of Criminal Law, Criminology and
Police Sciences was designated an official publication for the Society's
news and articles. Later, in 1957, Police was similarly designated.
Accompanying this reaching out was an extension
of the geographical range and distribution of membership that was recognized
and formalized by the establishment of four regional divisions of
the SAC: East, South, Central, and West. Each division was headed
by an elected regional vice-president of the national Society. These
were to "serve as executive officers in their respective regions for the
purpose of carrying on the regional business of the organization."
In proportion, as there developed a wider
distribution of the Society's membership, the secretaries' reports, sporadic
newsletters, and attendance at the Society's meetings in California became
less satisfactory in maintaining cohesiveness. To offset this, the
Annual Conference of April 1953 made provision for a bulletin, of which
Vol. 1, No. 1 was issued with surprising promptness in May 1953 under the
editorship of Lowell Bradford. It was necessarily a modest bulletin
of two pages in which, in addition to current news items about the Society,
there appeared an invitation to members to participate actively in the
SAC through letters as a means of overcoming the obstacle of distance.
Vol. 1, No. 2, appeared in August 1953,
reporting the Society's affiliation with the AAAS, the designation of the Journal
of Criminal Law, Criminology and Police Standards as the Society's
official publishing outlet, and listing four books published by members
in 1952-1953. Number 3, dated December 1953, noted a meeting of the
Society in Boston within the ambit of the AAAS meetings there. The
theme of the Boston meeting, under the direction of the Eastern Vice-President,
Donal MacNamara, was "The Scientific Approach to Problems of Delinquency."
Bulletin No. 3 records 32 members in good standing (they had paid their
dues) and two honorary members, Vollmer and Kidd.
In all, seven bulletins of the SAC were
published. The last, No.7 of December 1954, suggests that the editorship
should no longer be the responsibility of the Secretary-Treasurer but should
be assigned to some other person specially designated to be the editor.
At the Berkeley meeting of the Society
in December 1955 it was decided that the members would be "better served
if periodic Special Bulletins were prepared describing research and special
projects underway." Pursuant to this action a First Special Bulletin,
without date, was sent out to members giving apparently in anticipation
the program for a New York meeting to be hold in December 1956.
THE TRANSITION
The years 1957-1958 were a good period
of significant change in the development of the Society. From the
report by Secretary William Dienstein, of an all day meeting of the Executive
Committee held at the University of Southern California on March 30, 1957
with President John Kenney presiding, come the following excerpts which
indicate the major matters under consideration:
1. Donal E. J. MacNamara
was appointed SAC representative to the AAAS.
2. C. Robert Gutherie was
named chairman of the Publications Committee.
3. It was recommended that
the Publications Committee strive for a goal of ten issues of an SAC
Newsletter each year; that
the Editor, in the initial Newsletter, urge members to submit articles
through him to the Journal of Criminal Law,
Criminology, and Police Science and to Police; and that the Editor
prepare for these two journals an SAC News
Section; and that he correspond with the editors of these journals
with this purpose in mind.
4. The Editor for the SAC
was requested to write to the institutions having criminology programs
to ask for a statement of the
objectives of such programs. President Kenney was to prepare a covering
letter to accompany this request and also a
statement of objectives for the program at USC.
5. Frank Boolsen was authorized
to bring the SAC "Directory of Colleges and Universities Offering
Criminology Programs"
up to date and to prepare sufficient copies thereof for distribution to
members and others. Boolsen was requested to
collect bulletins and information on all criminology programs and
statements of objectives.
6. It was approved that
G. Douglas Gourley continue his Committee on Content and Titles for Courses
with the purpose
of presenting a report at the 1957 Annual Meeting.
7. A communication was
read concerning the possibility of Florida State University publishing
an SAC journal. The
possibility was favored by the Committee and the President will investigate
further.
8. Following discussion
of media for the dissemination of SAC information it was decided that these
publications be
considered and communication with the editors be maintained:
a. Police
b. Journal of Criminal Law, Criminology and Police Science
c. American Journal of Corrections
d. Journal of Correctional Education
e. NPPA Journal
f. Federal Probation
g. Journal of Social Therapy
Marcel Frym was to communicate personally with the editors of the NPPA
Journal and the Journal of Social Therapy to
pave the way for the SAC Editor. Clyde Vedder was to communicate
personally with the editors of the correctional
journals for the same purpose.
9. Suggestions and
comments from the membership with reference to the name of the Society
and revision of the constitution
were discussed and acted upon, It was decided that the membership,
at the time of voting on the new constitution, should
vote also on which of the following names is preferred:
a. American Society of Criminology
b. American Criminological Association
c. American Criminological Society
10. It was voted that
the redrafted constitution attached hereto be approved and presented to
the membership for action
thereon.
The Membership Directory accompanying the
May-June 1957 Newsletter and Report of the Executive Committee meeting
lists 64 persons, all male, 18 of whom were primarily engaged in police
administration; of the rest, 18 were teaching college police and law enforcement
training programs, 11 were teaching college criminology courses, two were
law professors, four were engaged in correctional work, eight were in related
areas (e.g., clinician, fiscal investigator, textbook publisher), and the
occupations of there were not listed.
A "bakers half" of the 64 members (33)
lived in California but the others were distributed, in numbers of 1 to
4, throughout 14 states plus Puerto Rico and the Netherlands, namely, Michigan
(4), New Jersey (3), Washington (3), Florida (2), Indiana (2), Illinois
(2), Kentucky (2), New York (2), and Arizona, District of Columbia, Maryland,
Missouri, Nebraska, North Carolina, Texas, Puerto Rico, and the Netherlands,
one each.
At its next Annual Meeting held in November
1957 the Society adopted the revised constitution and a change of name
to the American Society of Criminology under which title it was formally
incorporated under the laws of the State of California on August 7, 1958.
The sporadically issued bulletins and newsletters
of the earlier Society for the Advancement of Criminology were now replaced
by an enlarged Newsletter of the American Society of Criminology of which
the first issue, Vol. 1 No. 2 (apparently so designated to follow the earlier,
undated Special Bulletin) appeared in May 1958. It was a six-page
issue with an improved format to which was appended a four-page paper by
Edward Petty entitled, "Historical Perspective on the American Society
of Criminology."
In the Newsletter, itself, a "President's
Message" by John Kenney, and reports from the Central and Southern vice-presidents
(Richard Myren and Vernon Fox) and from the Membership Committee were all
optimistic in tone. President Kenney, commenting on the incorporation
of the ASC, wrote: "This was a major hurdle in our quest for foundation
funds and should provide us with many additional benefits in the future,"
a statement that was followed by reference to the preparation of a proposal
for funds "to underwrite our proposed study of the status of teaching and
research in criminology." This matter had been under discussion at
the Society's meetings since its origin, and preparatory work toward it
had been done through the periodic revisions of a Directory first completed
by Frank Boolsen in 1950. The instant proposal included a follow-up
to the intended survey through a conference to be arranged to evaluate
the findings of the study and to give direction to criminological education
and research.
The report of the Membership Committee
in that Newsletter was one of substantial achievement. Dated October
1958, the report said, "We are pleased to inform you that the membership
drive for 1958 is approaching its peak. Since its inception early
in the year, we have nearly doubled our membership rolls." Included
in the same Newsletter were news items and commentary on penology and police
administration, a listing of new books by title and publisher, news and
notes on the activities of some individual members of the Society, and
a preliminary announcement of the Annual Conference to be held at the University
of Arizona in February 1959.
In spite of the auspicious start of the
ASC Newsletter, it did not flourish. At the February 1959 meeting
at the University of Arizona, Howard Leary, Deputy Commissioner of Police
of Philadelphia, was made Editor of the Newsletters, without dates (possibly
March and June 1959), consisting of note from the newly elected president,
Marcel Frym, emphasizing the international aspects of criminology and a
proposal to study the teaching of criminology, together with minutes of
meetings and copies of papers read at the Arizona meeting. Presaging
things to come, Marcel Frym, who had represented the Society as an American
delegate at three International Criminological Congresses, wrote in the
first of these two Newsletters, "The time has come for our young organization
to look abroad and to establish liaison with international criminological
circles . . . Crime is an international phenomenon." And in the second
of these two Newsletters Frym wrote, " I am working on our plans to call
and International Congress of Criminology for the Fall of 1961 here in
the United States and I have already obtained statements of enthusiastic
support from high government officials and other interested parties as
well as from the leaders of foreign scientific organizations in the field
of criminology."
A significant meeting of the newly incorporated
American Society of Criminology, as an affiliate of the American Society
of Criminology, as an affiliate of the American Association for the Advancement
of Science, was held at the Shoreham Hotel in Washington, D.C. in December
1958, in connection with the AAAS meetings. The theme of the conference
was "Controversial Areas in Criminology." This meeting coincided
with the golden anniversary of the publication of the Journal ofCriminal
Law, Criminology, and Police Science which Robert Gault had
been editing with conspicuous success. The Society recognized this
by presenting to Gault a plaque inscribed as follows:
JOURNAL OF CRIMINAL LAW, CRIMINOLOGY
AND POLICE SCIENCE
GOLDEN ANNIVERSARY
1901 - 1959
WE, the criminologists of America assembled
in the city of Washington, District of Columbia, on the occasion of the
125th Annual Meeting of the AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF
SCIENCE and the 15th Annual Conference of the AMERICAN SOCIETY OF CRIMINOLOGY,
note with professional pride and personal affection the GOLDEN ANNIVERSARY
of the JOURNAL OF CRIMINAL LAW, CRIMINOLOGY and POLICE SCIENCE and extend
to its long-time able editor, our honored pioneer in AMERICAN criminology,
DR. ROBERT H.
GAULT
This greeting, expression of gratitude,
and pledge of continuing support in the difficult and exacting task
which for these many years he has so uncomplainingly and so magnificently
shouldered.
PRESENTED AT THE CONFERENCE LUNCHEON BY THE HONORABLE
PATRICK MAC NAMARA UNITED STATES SENATOR FROM MICHIGAN
December 27, 1958
JOHN P. KENNEY
President
American Society of Criminology |
DONAL E. J. MAC NAMARA
Conference General Chairman |
There was a second recognition of the Journal,
and Gault's editorship of it, at the official Annual Meeting of the Society
held at the University of Arizona at Tucson in February. Gault was
not able to be present but sent President Kenney a letter to be read to
the gathering, and in it he said: "I wish I could tell you how deeply
I appreciate your attention to the Journal's 50th Anniversary and to its
services . . . It is wonderful on
your part to reenact the plaque ceremony
in the Tucson program."(7)
The happy decision to honor Robert Gault
apparently served to crystallize a widespread, though possibly latent,
feeling that it should be a continuing and regular function of the Society
to give formal and public recognition to outstanding scholars and practitioners
in criminology and criminal justice. Pursuant to this opinion the
Society, at its 1959 Annual Meeting in Tucson, established an award to
be given annually in recognition of "an outstanding report of research
in the field of criminology." The award quite understandably was
named for August Vollmer. This was the first of several named awards
to be established over a period of years.(8)
In view of the action of the Society in
1973 in urging, upon the regents of the University of California the continuance
of the School of Criminology at Berkeley, it is of interest that a motion
to the same effect was passed at the 1959 meeting in Arizona. These
actions reflect the continuance-albeit in some attenuated form-of the informal,
mutually supportive interrelationship between the Society and the University
of California's School of Criminology at Berkeley that grew out of the
origination of the Society's parent organizations and leadership in their
development by members of the faculty and former students of the Berkeley
School.(9)
By the very circumstances of the Society's
origin, its members, during its earliest years, lived in California and
contiguous Western states and all of its meetings were held in California.
Furthermore, its members, with the exception of a forensic psychiatrist
and one or two lawyers, were all involved in police administration and
training. Throughout the 1940s, O.W. Wilson was president of the
developing organization. In 1950 he was succeeded by forensic psychiatrist
Douglas Kelley, one of Wilson's colleagues at Berkeley. In turn,
Kelley was followed by other Californians: Frank Booslen and then
William Dienstein, both of the faculty of the California State College
at Fresno; Richard Simon, Deputy Chief of the Los Angeles Police Department;
Richard Hankey, who was in charge of the Law Enforcement Program at the
College of the Sequoia's; John Kenney of the University of Southern California;
and Marcel Frym, engaged in legal research with the Hacker Clinic in Los
Angeles.
Although concern had been expressed about
the need for extending the geographical range of membership in the Society,
it was not until the presidency of Marcel Frym, in 1959, that an Annual
Meeting was held as far away from the Pacific Coast as Chicago.
Meanwhile, in 1948, Donal Mac Namara, a
New Yorker whose studies in police administration had been done at Columbia
under Bruce Smith, too a post at the University of Southern California
and also joined the Society for the Advancement of Criminology. In
1950 he became its secretary.
MacNamara was among those actively seeking
to expand the work and membership for the Society, and when he returned
to NewYork in 1953 holding the position of vice-president of the Society
responsible for the Eastern Region, he organized many meetings of the Society
in such major centers as Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Washington, Cleveland,
and Chicago - as well as in some smaller cities - and encouraged qualified
persons with whom he had contact in the Eastern states to become members.
This eventually resulted in shifting the leadership of the Society eastward.
In 1960 Mac Namara himself became its president, a post in which he served
four years (1960-1963), during which time the Annual Meetings of the Society
were held successively in New York, Denver, Philadelphia, and Cleveland.
Among those whose interest MacNamara enlisted
were several academic sociologists having a primary interest in basic criminological
research and teaching at the university level. One of these, Walter
Reckless of Ohio State University, was elected to succeed MacNamara as
President of the Society for 1964 at the Annual Meeting of 1963 in Cleveland.
He was reelected for 1965 and 1966.
Marvin Wolfgang, of the University of Pennsylvania,
who succeeded Reckless in 1967, was also a sociologist, and he was followed
by a legal scholar, Gerhard O. W. Mueller of New York University; Bruno
Cormier, a forensic psychiatrist of McGill University, Alber Morris, sociologist,
of Boston University; another sociologist, Simon Dintz of Ohio State University;
Charles L. Newman of Pennslyvania State University, whose basic field is
Public Administration; John Ball of Temple University, a research sociologist;
Edward Sagarin, sociologist of the City University of New York; and Nicholas
Kittrie, a legal scholar on the faculty of American University.
Because the Annual Meeting, whose agenda
includes the election of officers and the transaction of other business
by the membership, inevitably entails extensive travel which some members
find it difficult or impossible to undertake, it has been the practice
of the Society to hold other meetings throughout the year in various sections
of the country, sometimes away from the usual major metropolitan centers
of population-Tallahassee, Indianapolis, Dallas, Tucson, Fresno-as well
as in New York, Boston, Washington, Philadelphia, and Chicago. Not
uncommonly, these have been jointly sponsored with such professional societies
as the American Association for the Advancement of Science, American
Orthopsychiatric Association, Association for the Psychiatric Treatment
of Offenders, New York Institute of Criminology, the International Association
of Penal Law, and others. Such interim meetings have helped to make
face-to-face participation in the Society's substantive concerns more common
than might otherwise have been possible.
With the exception of the Annual Meeting
of December 1965, which was held at the University of California in Berkeley,
and that of 1961 in Denver, all of the Annual Meetings since 1959 have
been held east of the Mississippi River. This includes two meetings
held in Canada (one at Montreal and the other at Toronto), as well as once
in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and one in Caracas, Venezuela, These last
are further substantial evidence of the Society's acceptance of the suggestion
of Marcel Frym, the Society's president in 1959, that "the time has come
for our . . . organization to look abroad and establish liaison with international
criminological circles." Indeed, since Frym participated in and emphasized
the importance of professional relationships on an international basis,
members of the Society have become increasingly involved in international
criminological meetings. Further, since the early 1970s the Society,
officially, has become actively concerned with the possibility and desirability
of joint sponsorship of conferences and other professional gatherings of
an international nature while still normally retaining its own Annual Meeting
and other national meetings within the boundaries of the United States
and Canada.(10)
The development of the Society in terms
of membership numbers had been a matter of continuing concern from the
beginning as with and professional organization. An increasing membership
of qualified persons enhances the prestige and improves the visibility
of a Society which in turn attracts additional qualified membership and
provides the human and financial resources to further the Society's interests.
Beginning with a dozen or so members in the early 1940s, the paid membership
increased more than tenfold before the end of the 1950s.
PROFESSIONAL MATURATION:
ESTABLISHMENT OF THE SOCIETY'S JOURNAL
In 1960, during the presidency of Dona
MacNamara, Charles L. Newman, then at the University of Louisville's Kent
School of Social Work, became secretary-treasurer of the Society.
Newman reports at that time,
A membership list
in excess of 800 members, only a handful whom had paid any organizational
dues for a number of years. My first
effort was to establish
who, indeed, was member of the Society and we moved in that direction
to the point where the 800 list was culled
down to somewhere
in the neighborhood of 150 or 200. We then started on rather
extensive membership drive.
In 1962, it appeared
to me that one of the ways to enhance both the desirability of becoming
member of the Society, as well as to
disseminate criminological
material, was to establish newsletter; and hence "Criminologica" was born.
I should point out
that during the years prior to my taking on the role of secretary most
of was done by Don MacNamara and Jacob
Chwast in New York.
Mac funded most of the expenses of the organization out of his own pocket.
When I took over I helped share in that
privilege.
I am happy to note that one demonstration of the Society's fiscal status
was the opportunity to buy $500 Certificate of Deposit
which was probably
the first mark of solvency of that organization, and that came around 1963
or 1964.
There had, of course, ben earlier newsletters
to which reference has already been made. Reestablished now as "CRIMINOLOGICA:
News-letter of the American Society of Criminology" (Vol. 1 No. 1), six
pages appeared in new 9 x 12 printed format in May 1963. Since
that time, with changes in title and format as in evolved, it has been
published continuously as the official organ of the Society. Edited
by Charles L. Newman, with Harry More, Jr., of Washington State University
and Dorothy Tompkins of the University of California, Berkeley, as contributing
editors beginning May 1966, "Criminologica" continued through 12 quarterly
issues. In the process it became substantial publication of
as many as 39 lager than letter size pages. An improvement in the
cover page with Vol. 3, No. 1 of May 1965, and the increase in number of
pages sufficient to permit more extended articles of substance, made "Criminologica"
creditable feature of the Society's professional effort.
In 1966 Newman moved to Pennsylvania State
University for fill the post of Director of the Center for Police and Corrections
Education (now Law Enforcement and Corrections Services) and the task of
publishing "Criminologica" shifted to Ohio State University where Simon
Dinitz assumed the responsibilities of editorship.
With Vol. 4, No. 1 of May 1966 the first
issue edited by Dinitz, "Criminologica", had been give distinctly new look.
It now appeared in smaller size, 9x6, but with more pages (64) and bound
in heavier yellow cover. Further, the subtitle "Newsletter of the
American Society of Criminology" had been dropped, and in its place appeared
the subtitle, "An Interdisciplinary Journal of Criminology." Jamie
Toro Calder of the University of Puerto Rico was listed for the first time
as Associate Editor for Latin America, and Christine Schultz as Editorial
Associate. Through the skill of Dianne Poulton, who became Editorial
Consultant, subsequent numbers of the Journal through Vol. 7, No. 4 of
February 1970 were livened in appearance by covers of two colors, different
for each issue, and arranged in vertical stripes of varying widths.
This cosmetic change was, happily, accompanied by content of increasingly
high level professional quality made possible by the larger number and
merit of papers being submitted for possible publication as the Society
continued to grow in stature and strength.
With the publication of "Criminologica,"
Vol. 6, No. 1 of February 1969, Simon Dinitz relinquished the editorship
to C. Ray Jeffery, Professor of Sociology at New York University.
In the last issue of which he was responsible Dinitz observed that,
"Criminologica" was
still newsletter . . . three years ago. At that time its potential
seemed quite limited and even its survival was much
in doubt; indeed
there was some feeling that "Criminologica" served no unique purpose or
special purpose, and on the contrary,
constituted
far too heavy drain on the meager resources of our organization.
Several of our members suggested that we might profitable
pool our efforts
with one or more of several quality struggling journals in the field.
Despite these sentiments, the Executive Committee
after considerable
discussion chose to support our Journal.
Three years later,
we are no longer faced with the prospect of the imminent demise of Criminologica."
Instead we are now beset by the
problems engendered
by rapid growth and expansion. "Criminologica" exceeded our most
optimistic expectations. As measured by the
number of articles
submitted, subject matter, quality and authorship, there is no doubt that
"Criminologica" has earned place, albeit still
minor, as
broadly interdisciplinary journal. Professional readership has increased
markedly and is nearly double what it was at the
outset. Increasingly
our articles have been cited elsewhere and several have been included in
collections of readings.
The quantitative
and qualitative growth is testimony to and reflection of the increasingly
strength of the American Society of Criminology
as an interdisciplinary
organization.
Under the editorship of C. Ray Jeffery
the editorial office was shifted to New York University where, by arrangement
with the University, "Criminologica" was there published for the Society
through the facilities of the University's Criminal Law, Education and
Research Center (CLEAR), New York University School of Law, of which Gerhard
O.W. Mueller, President of the American Society of Criminology in 1968,
was Director. At this time, Denis Szabo of the University of Montreal
was added to the staff as Associate Editor for Canada. Later in 1969,
when C. Ray Jeffery accepted post at Florida State University in
Tallahassee, the editorial office was moved there and arrangements were
made to have the Society's journal published by commercial publishing house.
This seemed to be an appropriate time to
reconsider the format of the Journal and as consequence Vol. 8 ,
No. 1, appeared in May 1970 in its present attractive style. An announcement
"From the Editor" in that issue, explained:
The American Society
of Criminology has entered into contract with Sage Publication for
the publication of Criminologica under its new
title of Criminology:
An Interdisciplinary Journal. Sage Publications is publisher
of professional Behavior social science journals,
including The American
Behavioral Scientist, Law and Society Review, Journal of Comparative Administration,
Education and Urban
Society, Urban Affairs
Quarterly, and Environment and Behavior.
The Society thus
has taken step to completely professionalize its journal at
time when crime, delinquency, law and order, and criminal
justice are topics
of foremost concern for professionals, for politicians, and for the public.
The journal will be expanded in size and
campaign to enlist
new subscriptions from libraries and individual subscribes will be undertaken.
The masthead carried for the first time
the notation, "The Official Publication of the American Society of Criminology"
and listed, in addition to the Editor and Contributing Editors, and Editorial
Board of five persons of which Gerhard O.W. Mueller of New York University
was chairman. The other four members were, ex officio, Alber Morris
of Boston University, president of the Society, Simon Dinitz of Ohio State
University, president elect, and Jamie Toro Calder and Denis Szabo,
formerly listed as associate editors for Latin American and Canada, respectively.
The editorial policy on the publication
, formally stated, emphasized its scope and the level of its concern in
these words:
The journal is interdisciplinary
in nature, devoted to crime and deviant behavior, as found in sociology,
psychology, psychiatry, law, and
social work, as
well as newer disciplines such as urban design, system analysis, and decision
theory as applied to crime and criminal
justice. The
major emphasis is on empirical research and scientific methodology, and
articles reporting on original research are given
priority.
Articles which review the literature or deal with theoretical issues stated
in the literature are also desired if they help to establish
an empirical base
for the study of issues dealt with and suggest the types of investigations
which might properly be carried out in the
future.
During Jeffery's editorship the journal
began to be abstracted in Sociological Abstracts.(11) With
Vol. 11, No.2, of August 1973, Charles L. Newman, who had originated "Criminologica"
as the newsletter of the Society just ten years before, became Editor-in-Chief
of the Society's journal, now grow into well accepted professional
quarterly, of which each volume consists of approximately 550 pages.
With Newman's return to the editorship of Criminology, the publications
office of the Society was established at Pennsylvania State University.
rough classification of the 73 major papers published in "Criminologica:
An Interdisciplinary Journal," Vol. 4 through 7, indicates that some 47
were theoretical or research papers (Prediction, Criminal Statistics, the
XYY Syndrome, Phenomenology of Crime, and so on), and 26 dealt more directly
and descriptively with specific programs and procedures (Police Review
Boards, Juvenile Court Project, Narcotics Project, Slug Rejection Devices,
In-Service Training). Since the shift to Criminology with Vol. 8,
No.1, the Society's Journal has published only articles that are primarily
theoretical or research presentations, although the "Across the Desk" notes
by Dorothy Tompkins and those on "Law Enforcement Education" by John More,
Jr., were continued through Vol. 11, No.1, and Vol. 10, No. 4, respectively.
With the accession of Charles L. Newman
to the editorship (Vol. 11, No. 2) four Associate Editors replaced the
former Editorial Board, and with Vol. 11, No.3, the posts of Contributing
Editors were dropped.
Under Newman's editorship significant
improvement was introduced into the procedure for evaluating articles submitted
for possible publication, by providing for their review by an impressive
array of assistant editors and referees under system of author-referee
anonymity. Partly induced by an increasing number of papers (243
during the last 12 months) this system, now commonly used by scholarly
journals, not only permits an editor to deal with the larger volume of
articles that come to the editorial desk by it tends to involve more scholars
in the work of the journal and the Society as well as to assure effective
and qualified assessment of submitted manuscripts. Further, contributors
whose manuscripts are returned are normally given some appraisal of their
work and suggestions looking toward possible suitable publication.
OTHER SOCIETY PUBLICATIONS
In addition to its official journal the
Society has also established its intent to publish series of volumes
of papers presented at the Society's Annual Meetings. This practice
was initiated by Herbert Bloch, vice-president of the Society, when
he published "Crime in America," (Philosophical Library, 1961) an
anthology of papers delivered at ASC meetings. It was continued by
Walter Reckless, when, as president of the Society, he obtained funds from
Irene Hirsch of Columbus, Ohio, to publish the papers presented at the
1964 meetings in Montreal under the title "Interdisciplinary Problems in
Criminology: Papers of the American Society of Criminology, 1964" (Ohio
State University, Columbus, Ohio, 1965) Co-edited with Charles L.
Newman.
The papers presented at the 1971 Annual
Meeting held in San Juan, Puerto Rico, edited by Gerhard O. W. Mueller
and Freda Adler, have been published under the title, "Politics, Crime,
and the International Scene: An Interamerican Focus" (North-South
Center, San Juan, 1972).
Four volumes published by Praeger of New
York are based upon papers presented at the Interamerican Congress of Criminology
held in Caracas, Venezuela, in November 1972. These are titled "Corrections:
Problems of Punishment and Rehabilitation," edited by Edward Sargarin and
Dona MacNamara; "Politics and Crime," edited by Sawyer Sylvester
and Edward Sagarin; "Images of Crime: Offenders and Victims," edited
by Terence Thronberry and Edward Sagarin; and "Crime Prevention and Social
Control," edited by Ronald Akers and Edward Sagarin.
Several papers on the nature and teaching
of criminology that did not fit well into the aforementioned Praeger series
were published separately under the general direction of Gerhard O.W. Mueller
by the Criminal Law Education and Research Center of New York University
Law School (CLEAR) under the title, "Education for Crime Prevention and
Control," edited by Robert J. McLean (Publications of the Criminal Law
Education and Research Center, Vol. 10, Charles C Thomas, 1974).
Another series of four volumes published
by Praeger includes selection from the numerous papers read at the
Society's 1973 Annual Meeting in New York City. These are:
"Police: Perspectives, Problems, Prospects," edited by Dona E.J. MacNamara
and Marc Riedel; "Crime and Delinquency: Dimensions of Deviance,"
edited by Marc Riedel and Terence P. Thornberry; "Treating the Offender:
Problems and Issues," edited by Marc Riedel and Pedro . Velez; and "Issues
in Criminal Justice: Planning and Evaluation," edited by Marc Riedel and
Duncan Chappell.
THE SOCIETY'S AWARDS
In order to recognize outstanding achievements
in Criminology and to extend awareness of them and to encourage them, the
Society has established awards to be presented from time to time at its
Annual Meetings, to persons selected by the Society for such honors.
The standing awards, in the names of individuals who have made major contributions
are:
1. The August Vollmer Award,
established in 1959, for an outstanding report or research in the field
of criminology.
2. The Edwin Sutherland
Award, established, in 1960, for major contribution to criminological
theory.(12)
3. The Herbert Bloch Award,
established in 1961, for outstanding services to the Society itself and
to the profession.(13)
4. The Sellin-Glueck Award,
established in 1974, to be given to persons outside the United States who
have gained international
recognition for their contributions in criminology.(14)
The recipients of these awards through
1974 have been:(15)
The August Vollmer Award:
1960 Marvin Wolfgang, University
of Pennsylvania, and Paul Bohannnon, Northwestern University
1961 Sheldon and Eleanor Glueck,
Havard University Law School
1962 James Bennett, Director,
U.S. Bureau of Prisons
1963 Austin MacCormick, Exec.
Director, The Osborne Association
1964 Hon. J. Adrien Robert,
Director, Montreal Police Dept., Chief, Quebec Provincial Police
1965 Not Given
1966 Judge George Edwards,
former Justice of the Supreme Court of Michigan, Police Commissioner
of Detroit, Justice of the U. S.
Circuit Court of Appeals
1967 Howard Leary, Police Commissioner
of New York
1968 Mryl Alexander, Director,
U.S. Bureau of Prisons
1969 Hon. Joeseph Tydings,
U.S. Senator, Maryland
1970 Milton Rector, Executive
Director of the National Council on Crime and Delinquency
1971 Not given
1972 Jerome Skolnick, University
of California, Berkeley
1973 E. Preston Sharpe, General
Secretary of the American Correctional Association
1974 Patrick Murphy, President
of the Police Foundation, and Sol Rubin, Counsel Emeritus, National Council
Crime and Delinquency
The Edwin Sutherland Award
1960 Thornsten Sellin, University
of Pennsylvania
1961 Orlando Wilson, Police
Superintendent of Chicago, Professor of Emeritus, University of California
1962 Negley Teeters, Temple
University
1963 Herbert Wechsler, Columbia
University Law School, and Walter Reckless, Ohio St. University
1964 Hon. J.C. McRuer, Chairman
of the Royal Commission on Civil Rights, former Chief Justice of Ontario
1965 Not Given
1966 George Vold, University
of Minnesota
1967 Donald R. Cressey, University
of California, Santa Barbara
1968 Denis Szabo, University
of Montreal
1969 Lloyd Ohlin, Harvard University
Law School
1970 Alfred Lindemsith, University
of Indiana
1971 Marshall Clinard, University
of Wisconsin
1972 Leslie Wilkins, State
University of New York at Albany
1973 Edwin Lemert, University
of California (award not conferred until 1974 because the recipient was
not able to attend the 1973 meeting)
1974 Simon Dintz, Ohio State
University
The Herbert Bloch Award
1966 Charles L Newman, Pennsylvania
State University
1967 Dona MacNamara, John Jay
College of Criminal Justice of the City University of New York
1968 Not given
1969 "
"
1970 "
"
1971 "
"
1972 Freda Adler, Temple University,
Philadelphia
1973 C. Ray Jefferey, Florida
Sate University, Tallahassee
The Sellin-Glueck Award
1974 Franco Ferracuti, Rome
On occasion, special awards in the form
of Presidential Citations have been made in the recognition of special
services and achievements.
The importance of encouraging interested
students to develop scholarly and professional competency in criminology
has been recognized by the Society in variety of ways. Beginning
with the 1968 meeting in Toronto the Society has, from time to time, arranged
special sessions for student papers at its annual conference. In
1971 the Society announced an annual "Student Research Papers Competition"
for which authors of the fourth and fifth place papers receive an appropriate
Certificate of Participation. The first-place paper is also considered
for presentation at the next Annual Meeting of the Society. To be
eligible for the competition, students must be enrolled in an academic
program in college or university at either the undergraduate or graduate
level. Entries must be research papers related to the broad area
of criminology and the administration of criminal justice. They are
judged by panel of Society members who are recognized scholars in
the field.
PROBLEMS AND ISSUES
All learned and professional associations
move through continuing series of problems and are involved in making
decisions about how to deal with them. May such problems are of
recurring and routine sort, differing only in minor details, once the original
appearance of situation has been satisfactorily dealt with. However,
the line between these and more fundamental and difficult problems and
decisions is not always sharply drawn. Further, by some process of
social mutation, under new circumstances what was once insignificant may
suddenly be recognized as having acquired new level of importance.
Undoubtedly the need to develop and maintain
supportive membership and an adequate financial base poses ever-present
and unavoidable challenges to all scholarly and professional organizations.
So, inevitably, throughout the history of the American Society of Criminology
its officers have stressed these needs and met them with a considerable
measure of success.
The life of the American Society of Criminology,
like that of any such association, is not adequately revealed by the bare
record of names and events-important, and even essential, as these are-but
by the decisions it has made with reference to policies, principles, and
purposes, and by the quality of effectiveness of its actions in support
of these. These mark the path of the Society's development and the
direction and quality of its growth.
Such decisions and actions are indeed difficult
to recapture authoritatively or to evaluate in terms of their relative
importance, and any attempt to do so must necessarily be selectively and
illustrative rather than systematic and definitive. Yet in the records
broad outline emerges that may add some perspective and sense of
direction to the Society's history and may be of aid to consideration of
the Society's future.
Questions as to the purposes and content
of police training programs and of the problems attendant upon student
recruitment for them were obviously matters of major concern to the small
group that founded the National Association of College Police Training
Officials and the others who soon thereafter became members of it.
Inevitably, college faculties in general and those who developed curricula
for police training in particular were confronted with questions of college
entrance and degree standards as related to the aptitudes, academic qualifications,
and vocational needs of students interested in police work as career.
Early meetings in Berkeley were given over
to frequent discussions of such matters, and the attendant problems continue
to be matters of concern today, especially to members of the Society involved
in law enforcement education programs subsidized by federal funds.
For example: having in mind that police effectiveness may be bought at
too great a cost, and given the limitations of career opportunities in
town and city police forces,(16) and considering the proportion of police
person-hours devoted to necessary community services only remotely related
to crime control, is professionalization of police organizations as law
enforcement agencies universally or even generally desirable or possible?
How should police work be organized and developed in terms of the political
or governmental levels and units to be served? What should be the
essential content of police training, who should give it, and how is it
to be effectively introduced into existing police forces?
By 1946 when the organization changed its
name to the Society for the Advancement of Criminology, there seems to
have emerged consensus that the problems of crime control were both
too broad and too complex to be examined solely in terms of police tasks
and immediate police skills. This consensus became reflected in the
acceptance into membership of those whose primary interests lay outside
of the police field, particularly in corrections- movement that led ultimately
to the interdisciplinary Society of today.
As this change in membership occurred,
accompanied by differences in tasks and interests between practitioners,
such as administrators and treatment personnel, on the one hand, and academic
teachers and research personnel on the other, the long-discussed question
of what should be taught as criminology continued to be matter of
increasingly serious discussion. During the early years, when the
Society was still largely vocationally and professionally oriented, its
concern with teaching had to do primarily with the best educational content
for professionals and to what extent the training of those interested in
police work should differ from, or coincide with, that devised for correctional
personnel.
In 1958, " Proposal to Study the Teaching
and Research of Criminology in the United States" was prepared by the newly
renamed "American Society of Criminology," with view to seeking
funds in its support. One of the six stated objectives in the proposal
was: "To develop means of integrating and coordinating varied academic
programs in police and corrections in terms of transfer credits, placement
of graduates , and mutual use of completed research."
More broadly, the objective of intended
study was to find and seek agreement on the proper content of academic
programs in criminology. The rationale for this and method
for achieving it are indicated by these excerpts from the proposal:
The development of
criminology programs in universities and colleges has been rapid. . . .
Each year finds new programs started and
older ones expanded.
Despite this progress general lack of (consensus) exists among persons
responsible for the development of
these programs.
. . . The American Society of Criminology took cognizance of this
and other problems confronting the fields of police
and corrections.
It now proposes conference of key people throughout the United States,
both academicians and practitioners from the
two fields to evaluate
and to give direction for the future to programs of education and research.
. . . Our Society believes that this study is
the one way to bridge
the regrettable and frustrating gap between police and corrections and
give some direction to programs in these
fields.
Some of the more fundamental questions
about the nature, desirability, and feasibility of professionalization
in these areas had not been formally raised as matters for general and
systematic examination. Nor had there been much more than superficial
and defensive concern directed against academic colleagues who raised questions
about the content and even the justification for discipline of criminology
and its place among other, firmly established, academic fields.
But during the late 1950s and early 1960s,
as membership numbers increased and as membership numbers increased and
as sociologists became increasingly prominent in the Society's activities,
differences in viewpoints, concepts, and emphasis began to arise and affect
the direction of the Society's development. Glimmerings of this appear
here and there in the Society's documents. The 1958 "Proposal to
Study Teaching and Research" previously referred to, for example, had as
one of its stated objectives "to discuss mutual problems of academic interest
such as the improvement of academic facilities," an objective that is still
matter of concern to liberal arts oriented academicians who are disturbed
by the appointment of police and correctional administrators to college
and university faculties without the traditional faculty qualifications
or teaching experience.
The preambles of the several revisions
of the Society's constitution also reflect gradual and changing emphasis
within the Society (see Table 1).
As the Society became in the 1960s both
increasingly interdisciplinary and, to some degree, international in its
membership and it affiliations, and more oriented toward the development
of criminological theory and research rather than toward the development
of teaching programs, the basic question of what criminology is all about
and the justification for giving it separate place among academic
disciplines began to be more directly confronted and examined.
containment of this sort of inquiry is consideration of the value and significance
of the term, "criminologist."
And editorial in "Criminologica" (Vol.1,
No.3, November 1963) by Charles L. Newman refers to journal article
by Marvin Wolfgang, then vice-president of the Society, in which he explores
the meaning of the terms "criminology" and "criminologist" and concludes
that transitory occupational affinity does not make one criminologist
but that one is criminologist if one is "engaged in the pursuit of
learning, using scientific approach to the study and analysis of
the phenomena of crime and criminal behavior within the framework of professional
training, occupational role, and fiduciary reward."
The editorial then concludes by raising
two questions:
Can criminology become
the meeting ground for adjunct professions concerned with the scientific
study of crime and
criminal behavior?
Can it allow the mantle of ‘criminologist' to be bestowed upon those persons
who seek affinity even though their
major professional
identity may life in the adjunct areas of law, medicine, social work, psychology,
psychiatry, and enforcement?
TABLE 1
Preambles of the Several Revisions of
the Society's Constitution
| 1946 |
1968 |
1970 |
1974 |
| Excerpted from the version of a draft
of a proposed constitution as amended and adopted at the Third Annual Conference,
1946:
The term, Criminology, as used hereinafter
is defined as the study of the causes, treatment and prevention of crime,
including, but not restricted to:
a) Scientific crime detection, and
investigation.
b) Crime prevention, public safety and
security.
c) Law Enforcement administration.
d) Administration of criminal justice.
e) Traffic administration.
f) Probation
g) Juvenile delinquency control.
h) Related aspects of penology.
|
From the Constitution adopted
in 198
The term, Criminology, as used hereinafter
is defined as all human knowledge concerning the etiology, control, treatment
and prevention of crime and delinquency, the detection of crime and enforcement
of criminal laws, the system of social defense and concerns.
|
From the Constitution adopted
in 1970:
The term, Criminology as used hereinafter
is defined as all professional, scholarly, and scientific knowledge concerning
the etiology, control treatment and prevention of crime and enforcement
of criminal laws, the system of social defense and corrections. |
From the Constitution adopted
in 1974:
The term, Criminology as used hereinafter
refers to all scholarly, scientific and professional knowledge concerning
the etiology, prevention, control and treatment of crime and delinquency,
including the measurement and detection of crime, legislation, and the
practice of criminal law, the law enforcement, judicial, and corrections
systems. |
This editorial brought prompt replies ,
differing in viewpoint, from respondents in academic and administrative
treatment areas. Three of these staff members in the Illinois Department
of Public Safety appeared in the next issue of "Criminologica" (Vol. 1,
No.4, February 1964). One of them, from Arthur Huffman, State Criminologist,
suggested that:
According to
Webster's Dictionary, criminology is "the scientific study of crime as
social phenomenon, of criminals and of
penal treatment."
. . . This definition is inadequate simply because it emphasizes
particular set of factors-the social-as being
primary to
the exclusion of others.
A criminologist may
more properly be defined as professionally trained person engaged
in the
scientific study
of crime and criminals; such as study allowing for the exogenous
factors-environmental, social and cultural-as
well as such endogamous
factors as temperament, character and intelligence, and including
third element, resistance . . .
Criminologists properly
may be engaged in the field of criminology and penology at the level of
diagnosis, classification, and intramural
and extramural treatment
at the level of rehabilitation and at the teaching, writing, and research
levels. Those engaged in criminaligistics
and criminal correction
at the level of detection, apprehension, conviction, etc., are technicians
skilled in technical details. While they
should be looked
upon as technical experts they do not appear to be qualified to be termed
criminologists.
Harold Frum, a sociologist, wrote, in part:
Since criminal
behavior is phase of social-psychological behavior and crime is an
integral part of the culture complex, the
discipline
of criminology would appear to be basically social and psychological
science focusing upon the phenomenon of
crime and
criminal behavior. As science it is concerned with the development
of body of verified knowledge . . . As
profession
it should develop standards of training and performance consistent with
those in older professions.
In the thinking of
this writer, psychiatrist is not criminologist simply because
he examines criminals. Neither is psychologist . . .
because his patients
are law breakers, nor sociologist because he is conducting
research project having to do with delinquency and
crime.
A practitioner in corrections is not criminologist merely because
he is dealing with criminals, but he may be regarded as
technician . . .
In summary . . .
the term "criminologist," if it is to have any professional and scientific
meaning, should be applied only to persons trained
in science
of criminal behavior who meet standards of professional competence and
whose major focus of occupational interest is the
phenomenon of crime.
In the next issue of "Criminologica" (Vol.
2, No. 1, May 1964) appeared letter from Barbara Kay, who concluded
her comment on the matter of definitions by saying:
Any study of criminal
behavior and the resultant crime problem by professional sociologists,
psychologists, social workers, lawyers,
psychiatrists, and
comparable others must be an application of knowledge from the disciplines
to which the professional is affiliated.
Certainly, today,
there is no such thing as "criminologist" nor discipline known
legitimately as "criminology."
In similar vein, Walter Drew, sociologist
with the Illinois Department of Public Safety (Criminologica," Vol.2, No.2,
August 1964), after discussing the lack of agreement about the terms "criminology"
said,
In the United States
research of an academic or clinical orientation has hardly focused directly
on crime at all. It has traditionally and
characteristically
emphasized the individual and criminal behavior . . . . It seems we might
refer to criminology only when qualifying terms
are used or when
we intend to refer to very broad area of inquiry and practice.
Better yet, the term should be avoided . . .
