ASC 2008

I just got back from the American Society of Criminology's (ASC) Annual Meeting in St. Louis. This is my fifth year attending ASC. It was another exciting conference. I always look forward to this time of year. This is one of the most exciting and intellectually stimulating part of my year. I still remember the first year that I went to ASC. I was like a kid in the candy store as I stood in awe of all of the famous criminologists that I had read about in textbooks and now was seeing and hearing in person. I still get as excited as I was my first year there.

Several themes/sessions stuck out this year. The first session I attended was one on biosocial predictors of crime. I attended a session on this last year. Kevin Beaver and John Wright were the presenters. They have really been championing this topic among criminologists. I think it's important because biological factors have long been ignored within the discipline. I like what one of the presenters on this panel said (can't remember which one) when he said that "we are building a mythical knowledge base in criminology by ignoring biological factors". It's clear from their research that biological factors don't have a large impact when observed alone but do have a large impact when they interact with sociological factors.

I went to an "author meets critic" session on a new book by Rolf Loeber on the Pittsburgh Youth Study. I'm looking forward to reading this book. It appears that they spend some time in this book trying to sort out risk factors from protective factors. I think it is an interestng concept that protective factors don't have to necessarily be just the opposite of risk factors. I'll probably put this book on my Christmas list.

The "criminal career paradigm" is alive and well. I went to a session on that. Shawn Bushway gave a presentation on "late bloomers", which I remember John Laub saying in my 'Crime & The Life Course' class that this is an ignored group of offenders. There was also a presentation on youth and employment. Dan Nagin gave a very informative review of the literature on the relationship between imprisonment and crime.

Steve Belenko gave an interesting presentation on the relationship between drugs and crime, which I just caught the tail end of. Based in inmate records, he was able to recreate a blood-alcohol content (BAC) level at the time at which the offender's crime was created. Congrats too to Steve Belenko for becoming a fellow of the Academy of Experimental Criminology at ASC. I'm glad we're partnering with Steve on future AOD evaluations at the PA Dept. of Corrections; I think he's a top-notch researcher.

Speaking of the Academy of Experimental Criminology, David Weisburd gave the Joan McCord lecture in which he argued for the use of experimental designs in criminal justice evaluations. He suggested that many researchers try to make the case that quasi-experimental designs are "good enough" but laid out several reasons why this is not the case. Very interesting.

I went to two sessions on the "origins of American criminology". Apparently Frank Cullen is putting some sort of book on the subject. Several presenters during these sessions described the personal and professional lives and development of several important American criminologists across different theoretical traditions. You know I'm a big fan of the history of our field so I really enjoyed these sessions.

Speaking of the history of criminology, I thought Bob Bursik gave an excellent presidential address this year in which he talked about resurrecting the "dead sea scrolls" of important yet forgotten older criminological works. He criticized the field for being selectively biased towards the work of more recent and "popular" criminologists. He also criticized the idea of having the number of publications being a measure of success for academics in the field. Give me a research with just four important publications, he says, and I'll take that person any day over one who pumps several out each year. The way I'd interpret it is that he was calling for criminologists to temper their egos and remember the Biblical words that "there is nothing new under the sun". He talked about several examples of forgotten criminologists such as Solomon Kobrin, Herbert Bloch (for whom he says actually anticipated most of the ideas of Sampson and Laub interestingly enough), and Ruth Shonle Cavan. I can't wait to read his speech when it appears in the issue of Criminology.

Again, another successful year of ASC. It was intellectually stimulating, exciting, tiring, and fun all at the same time. I have many more thoughts and there were several other interesting sessions and topics that I heard but time permits me from going on tonight. I may write more on my thoughts on this year's ASC in another blog. I'm looking forward to ASC 2009 in Philadelphia!