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This paper outlines the career of Maurice F. Parmelee, sociologist, government official, nudist, and author of thirteen books, including the first American criminology text (1918). The contents of the latter are examined and contrasts with contemporary textbooks are noted. Parmelee's career is an anomoly, for although he published abundantly, he faded into sociological obscurity. Some conjecture is offered about scholarly career paths generally, drawn out of the Parmelee case. Finally, the paper argues that historical accounts of the development of American criminology are incomplete, for they fail to mention a number of early figures, including Parmelee. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on one of the most pressing problems in present-day society, legal deviation, a term which is used here to include both delinquency and criminality. A considerable amount of research has been devoted to the causes of legal deviation, and several conclusions have been rather firmly established. Yet there is much to be done. By pointing to one possible approach in this paper, the author hopes to contribute to the solution of two problems in the study of delinquency and crime: first, the assessment of the relative effects of different causal factors, and second, the use of research findings for predictive purposes, e.g. to predict the effect on legal deviation of a specific welfare program. It is not claimed that this approach is in any sense the best one or even that it is a good one, but it is claimed that it is a feasible approach and that it may serve as a starting point for further efforts to achieve better explanations of legal deviation. The discussion in this paper is limited to first-time deviants. The inclusion of repeaters would only complicate the expressions, which seems unnecessary in a first exposition of a model. But the model could easily be amended to take repeaters into account.

This paper has tried to make as explicit as possible the many problems involved in creating typologies in criminology. Initially the paper presented some logical and methodological requirements for typologies in general and some illustrations of how existing typologies in criminology fail to meet particular requirements. Following this, five typologies of criminality were assessed in detail. The minimal scheme of the criminal, the victim, and the act, presented at the end of the paper, is an effort to find a universal framework for analyzing criminality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is not unusual, in fact, it is commonplace, that in the development of a body of knowledge a particular mode of thought, while responsible for the discovery and ordering of important facts, is at the same time responsible for the obstruction of equally important truths. This appears especially to be the case in the sociological study of criminal behavior. There has been the overwhelming conception of criminal behavior (and deviant behavior in general) as behavior that is produced by a variety of impersonal, deterministic forces rather than by voluntaristic, purposive action. The former perspective found in much of criminology today results from a particular conception of man and society. The object of this paper is to explore the possibility of an alternative conception of man and society for criminology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a discussion related to Jack P. Gibbs' work on analytical typologies in criminology. Gibbs treated as problematic an issue that has been closed for students in the field for sometime. The research was competent, its limitations clearly spelled out for the reader, and the results carefully tied to theory. Certainly, none of the others have attracted as much attention. Expectedly, the best scholarship was to be found among the papers on social theory. Unfortunately, most of these were agonizing efforts over where sociology has been and ineffectual attempts to redirect activity in a more promising direction. One has to constantly remind oneself that sociology began with three interests in mind, a distinctive subject matter, social reform, and the application of the scientific method to social behavior; that one is perilously close to forsaking the first two in mindless deference to the last in that important questions go unasked because one cannot attack them scientifically; that the questions one asks are becoming more and more scientific but more and more trivial, and, in so doing, one is, if not becoming psychologists, following psychology down the path to intellectual oblivion.

This article suggests an approach to criminological theory which may be helpful in bringing some order into the field, and which will also reveal certain aspects of the relationships between extant theories. The purpose of the paper is thus constructive. There will be no detailed evaluation of the different viewpoints referred to, although some critical comments will be made. It will be evident also from the discussion that the social-psychological approach to criminality will be regarded as being the most reasonable. One of the fundamental methodological assumptions of a social-psychological theory of systematic criminality is that the criminal is a normal human being. He may in fact have all the physical characters enumerated by Lombroso, Hooton, and Sheldon, yet the hypothesis to be tested is that he is a normal person. The criminal, in the pattern of his body, mind, and personality; in the recognition of right and wrong; and in his behavior, however outrageous it may be, possesses the same general motivations that affect the conduct, and constitute the quality, of normal and lawful individuals. The hypothesis that the criminal is a normal individual requires no specification al this point as to what a normal human being is, physically and mentally, and in terms of personality.

This paper reports an attempt to formulate a working hypothesis aimed at synthesizing the empirical knowledge of crime causation. As ground work for the theory, the logic of crime causation is first examined and restated. The sociopsychological theory outlined here is designed as a framework, within which to organize and relate the observed data of criminology, and also to indicate the gaps for further investigation. The implications of the theory for criminology and crime control are then briefly set forth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents an excerpt from the speech by George B. Vold, delivered before the 1950 annual meeting of the Midwest Sociological Society. The middle of the century is a natural crossroads as we reckon time. The traveler coming to a crossroads needs to look around and choose his direction of further travel. This is the way, also, with universities on their recurring anniversaries. Neither the traveler nor the institution dare assume uncritically that he will get to his destination merely by continuing to go on as before he came to the intersection. It is this thought, rather than that of imminent crisis, that lies back of the analysis that will be attempted in this paper. There is need for criminology to take stock of its present position and to consider the direction in which it needs to move in the future. Criminology has shared the same confusions and uncertainties in trying to find explanations for crime that have beset all related fields in the so-called behavior sciences. In this it shares the common fate of all applied fields and tends to become a me too science, applying the concepts of other fields ready made to the perplexing problems of accounting for criminal behavior.

The article reports that plans for the Eleventh Congress of the International Penal and Penitentiary Commission to be held in Berlin in the summer of 1935 are being completed. The Commission will meet to arrange the final program for the 1935 meeting, which promises to be one of exceptional interest and importance to students of criminology. The practice followed at these meetings is to lay out an agenda a year in advance of the meeting, to invite competent people from all of the adhering nations to prepare papers discussing the subjects assigned to them. These papers are submitted to so-called rapporteurs, who digest the contents and summarize them, for the benefit of those attending the Congress. These digests are translated into the several languages and are discussed during the week of the Congress at section meetings and form the basis for resolutions to be adopted at the general sessions of the Congress, thus crystalizing the consensus of opinion of the representatives of the various countries on topics of major importance.

The focal point of the activities of the American Prison Association is the annual congress, which took place last year in Biloxi, Mississippi, on October 21-26 and was attended by the author. The program is made up of contributions not only of the American Prison Association, but of a whole group of affiliated organizations, such as the National Probation and Parole Association, Medical Correctional Association, National Conference of Juvenile Agencies, Correctional Service Associates, etc. Thus it represents the major yearly event in the correctional field of the U.S. The participation of the American Sociological Society through its representative was duly recognized. A detailed analysis of the sessions of the congress is not intended in this purposely brief report. However, few major items should perhaps be brought out. sociological criminology, which has made outstanding contributions in the past to the development of the correctional attitude and practices in crime and delinquency control in the U.S. should continue to do so in the future.

The article provides a view of the process of transformation of criminology into radical deviancy theory, which gives rise to a series of theoretical and practical possibilities, and that these possibilities relate to new forms of academic and political practice. Purposes for doing radical deviancy theory have now developed to the point where the radical deviancy theorist can no longer remain content with demystifying traditional correctionally oriented criminology. Materialist criminology must set about the task of seeking to explain the continuance, the innovation or the abolition of legal and social norms in terms of the interests they support, the functions they serve to particular material arrangements of production in propertied societies; it must also realize that the legal norms in question are inextricably connected with the developing contradictions in such societies. The mystification of social conflict in legal expressions is not a new phenomenon, and it was Karl Marx, defending himself against a charge of conspiracy in the Cologne Trials of 1849 in a speech which won over the jury, who advanced the arguments that should win over radicals to the understanding of law, and the creation of a materialist criminology. Society is not based on law, that is a legal fiction, rather law must be based on society. It must be the expression of society's common interests and needs, as they arise from the various material methods of production, against the arbitrariness of the single individual. Any attempted assertion of the eternal validity of laws clashes with present needs, it prevents commerce and industry, and paves the way for social crises that break out with political revolutions and propagates social crimes.

Following the publication of Taylor, Walton and Young's New Criminology (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1972 and New York: Harper Torch Books, 1974), the Quarterly asked Anthony Platt, Richard Quinney and Paul Rock to write reviewessays which were subsequently published in the Quarterly in the Autumn 1973 issue. These reviews elicited the following response by Stephen Mugford. It was circulated to the authors of the New Criminology. who declined to comment, choosing to formulate a general response to the many review comments the book has generated. Mugford's comment was also sent to the original reviewers, and Paul Rock's reply follows. The editor would like to encourage such free interchange, and will attempt to facilitate comment by circulating manuscripts and soliciting commentary. (Perhaps a format similar to that employed by Current Anthropology will emerge). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents information related to sociology. It states that National Institute of Mental Health has announced that pre-doctoral, postdoctoral and special faculty, fellowships are available to support mental health research training in the medical, biological, psychological and social sciences leading to an understanding of normal and abnormal human behavior. Application for review in the fall of 1961 should be submitted before August 1, 1961. The institute also announced the availability of grants to social science departments in support of research training relevant to mental health. These training grants are awarded only to university departments to administer funds and select trainees. It also states that University of Cambridge in Cambridge, England, has established a postgraduate course in criminology leading to a diploma from the Institute of Criminology under the direction of criminologist L. Radzinowicz. The new program will begin in October 1961. It will offer both academic courses and practical work in criminology and penology.

The purpose of this article is to give an account of the development of research in crime as it functions in the Soviet Union. Criminological research in the Soviet Union covers only a brief span of history. Not until next fall will the October Revolution celebrate its twentieth anniversary. Yet in this short period there have been established and are now functioning several research institutes, scores of specialists are giving their full time to the study of crime and the criminal. The scientific publications in the field of criminology compare most favorably with those of other countries. In order to understand, at least in part, the problems and progress of criminological research in the Soviet Union they must be seen as clearly as possible in the frame of reference of the new social order and particularly in terms of communistic ideology, of the rapid changes in the crime situation and of the revolutionary innovations in the treatment of criminals. In presenting then this necessary orientation, first consideration must be given to the new conception of crime and the criminal.

Criminological research in Germany has not been confined solely to crimino-biological investigations. Social and environmental studies of crime and criminals have also been undertaken. But the tendency among the German students is to study particular offenses or particular classes of criminals. An outstanding series of studies under the editorship of professor Franz Exner of the University of Munich indicates the type of study referred to. The series, in which about twenty-five special monographs have already appeared, is devoted to psychological and statistical studies undertaken by lawyers. Exner feels that the legally trained student, as well as the physician and psychiatrist, should become familiar with and contribute toward the development of the fields of criminology. The titles reveal the special kinds of studies included in the series: "War and Criminality," "Forgery and Fraud During the World War," "Recidivistic Swindlers," and "Perjurers."

This article discusses the principal subjects of U.S. criminological research and considers whether any significant changes have occurred in the post-war period in its character and direction. The eight main topics of U.S. Criminology have been, with some considerable overlapping between several of them, the following: the role of culture conflict, with special reference to the criminality of foreign immigrants and their children and of Negroes; the ecology of crime and the study of the delinquency area, with particular emphasis on the sociological factors in juvenile delinquency; professional and white-collar crime; sexual crimes; psychological and psychiatric factors in juvenile delinquency; follow-up and prediction studies; the methodology of criminological research; in the field of Penology: prison reform. In U.S. Criminology, theoretical interest has become largely concentrated on sociological and methodological issues rather than on those legal and philosophical aspects dominating the European scene. In a way, this may simply reflect the difference between the legal mind of the European and the sociological training of the American criminologist. Whatever the reasons, the impression remains that, instead of a unified discipline, there are at present in existence several national, or perhaps regional. Criminologies for different parts of the civilized world.

This article sketches briefly a picture of the major current programs which have developed under the aegis of the Russell Sage Foundation. These impressions are based on a review of grant applications and annual reports on file with the Russell Sage Foundation, on the author's own experiences working at Berkeley and at Denver and on visits by his New York University colleagues to the Sage-sponsored centers at Wisconsin and Northwestern. The decision of the Russell Sage Foundation in 1959 to support formal centers of interdisciplinary cooperation between law and social science with the expenditure of over a million dollars by 1963, has substantially formed the institutional structure of the law and social science movement. The latter-day followers of the legal realist tradition in the law schools, for example and large numbers of sociologists working in the specialty of criminology, were very much aware of the "opposite" disciplines. The Sage program, however, has been responsible for transforming much of this interest into familiarity and knowledge.

The 87th year of the American Correctional Association showed the continuation of the trends which were pointed out in the reports of this representative for the past three years. Since the membership of the Association, its year-round activities and its annual congresses represent more than those of other organizations the Nation's thinking and acting with reference to the crime problem, developments within the Association have special significance. Perhaps one of the most important of these developments is the continued trend for the Association to grow away from being a predominantly institutional treatment organization, toward an all-encompassing correctional association whose purpose is the entire field of correctional activities, pre-mural, intra-mural and post-mural, as it were. As pointed out in an earlier report, this was symbolically expressed by the change in the Association's name from Prison Association to Correctional Association. This broadening of the scope of interests and activities is reflected in the composition of the Association's membership and the activities of the affiliated organizations and relationships with other independent organizations in criminology.

The American Sociological Association's Section on Criminology was created at the time of the annual meeting in 1960, but aside from the adoption of By-Laws and the election of officers and a Council, no specific actions appear to have been taken. In accord with these By-Laws the chairman later designated the length of the staggered terms of the Council members, in order to make possible the orderly election of two members of the Council in 1962. The Council has been unable to meet during the year and the business of the Section has been conducted by correspondence. This dealt chiefly with the appointment of a committee on nominations and some discussion of the relationship of the Section to the Association and the future program beyond the arrangements of meetings at the lime of the annual conference of the Association.