ASC 2009

Another great year at ASC! I wasn't thrilled about ASC being in Philly but I had a wonderful time. This was my sixth ASC. Here's a couple of highlights:

Best session hands down was an "author meets critic" session for Mark Kleiman's new book "When Brute Force Fails". Mark presented the book and then Al Blumstein and Jeremy Travis were the discussants. I'm all about this book! This book has been getting a lot of press coverage, from the NY Times to the Economist to Governing Magazine. The basic thesis of the book is nothing earth-shattering. We've known for a while that the certainty and swiftness of punishment are more effective than the severity of punishment. I think the timing of Mark's book is ripe though, given the correctional crisis of mass incarceration and the economic situation. It's the application of the basic principles of deterrence theory that are new and innovative to Mark's book. I see this as providing an exciting and promising new experiment for parole and community corrections to try out. I've long thought that deterrence can be made to work, especially for certain offenders. There's just so much about this book that excites me that I could go on forever. It will be interesting to see how much attention this book receives by policymakers over the next year, especially given the attention it's already received by criminologists and the media.

I went to a good session on correctional forecasting methods. Some of the big names in this field were presenting at this session. I got some good practical tips for doing projections. It was interesting too to hear a more details about the California projections model.

I went to a panel discussion on "evidence-generating" research. Akiva Leiberman presented his whole idea of "evidence-generating" practice in contrast to "evidence-based" practice. Akiva first outlined this idea in an issue of The Criminologist. I've blogged about this idea before and it's a concept I've been pushing.

Nicole Rafter's Sutherland Address was excellent. She's not a vibrant presenter but the content of her address was what I was interested in. She's one of those rare historians in our discipline. My readers know that I'm all about the history of our discipline. So I was awaiting in anticipation to hear what Rafter had to say. As might be expected, she called for more attention to our history as a way of strengthening our discipline. I couldn't agree more. I look forward to reading her address in Criminology next year when it's published.

I was at a session in which Jim Austin gave his typical critique of why treatment programming won't work for reducing the nation's correctional population. I have to say that I agree with his analysis. I thought his presentation was good.

I went to a good session on theory, with Michael Gottfredson, Robert Sampson, and John Hagan presenting. The room was packed (must have been close to 200 people crammed in the room)!! I was excited to see that even in a year where the theme of the conference was policy, that theory continues to excite folks in our field. It excites me. It's also quite relevant to policy in my opinion. Anyways, Gottfredson gave his typical defense of control theory and answered some recent critiques of the theory. It was a wonderful presentation. Rob Sampson gave a talk in which he challenged the notion that experimental design studies are the "gold standard". I somewhat disagreed with his conclusions but he was interesting to hear nonetheless. And John Hagan as the discussant posed some interesting and challenging questions to each of the presenters on the panel, but unfortunately the panel was over before each presenter could respond. I was really hoping for time for questions from the audience too, especially to hear some challenging debate between Gottfredson and those who always get fired up about his control theory.

My panel on parole violators turned out quite well I thought. This was a panel that I had been wanting to put together for the past several years. We had a decent turnout and the other presentations on the panel were interesting. I think I organized a panel of what is arguably the most important research that's being done in the area of parole violators. Maybe there's a follow-up panel to come at a future ASC??

I went to an excellent panel on risk assessment methods. Avi Bhati presented his concept of risk suppression, which is a problem with risk assessment validation that I got nailed on in a risk assessment validation paper that I did for my first stats class when I started my Ph.D. Shawn Bushway is another to point out the whole idea of "risk suppression" as a threat to the validity of a risk assessment validation study (he was the one to point this out to me in my paper for my first stats class). Bushway was the panel organizer for this panel. Also on the panel was Richard Berk. Berk is of course a statistical genius. His "random forest" approach to risk assessment is, in my opinion, going to revolutionize the risk assessment business. He's currently working in several states (including Pennsylvania and Maryland) on developing a risk assessment instrument to predict violence based on his approach. I've been working with him on the Pennsylvania project. It's an exciting endeavor. This panel of presenters on risk assessment was made up of top-notch statistical experts. I always feel dumb when I hear them present.

I'm sure that there were other sessions and highlights of the conference that I'm missing. I just hit a few of the big ones. Again, another great ASC conference. I'm looking forward to San Francisco next year (if I can find a way financially to make it out there).