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Campus News
School of Criminal Justice
Hosts First Albany Symposium on Crime and
Justice
The first Albany Symposium on Crime and Justice,
hosted by the School of Criminal Justice, brought
experts from around the world April 28-29 to
UAlbany's main campus.
President Kermit L. Hall and School of Criminal
Justice Dean Julie Horney welcomed invited
scholars, the criminal justice community, and
the public to the event. UAlbany's SCJ
is ranked No. 2 in the nation by U.S.
News & World
Report.
Titled "Developmental Criminology and Its Discontents: Offender Typologies
and Trajectories of Crime," the event dealt with key controversies that
have arisen around the issues of continuity and change in violent behavior over
the life course of individuals who commit crimes.
Among the featured scholars were three School
of Criminal Justice alumni: Robert Sampson,
John Laub, and Michael Gottfredson.
Sampson is the Henry Ford II Professor of
the Social Sciences at Harvard. Laub, a professor
of criminology and criminal justice at the
University of Maryland, recently served as
president of the American Society of Criminology.
Sampson and Laub are co-authors of two major books in the field: Crime
in the Making: Pathways and Turning Points
Through Life (1993), and Shared
Beginnings, Divergent Lives: Delinquent Boys
to Age 70 (2003), both with Harvard University
Press. Shared Beginnings won the 2004 Michael J. Hindelang distinguished
book award from the American Society of Criminology and the 2005 Outstanding
Book Award from the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences.
Gottfredson is professor of criminology,
law, and society, and of sociology, as well
as executive vice chancellor at UCal-Irvine.
His influential book, A
General Theory of Crime (1990), has stimulated a decade of research
and debate within the field of criminology.
In addition to Laub and Sampson, featured
presenters included Daniel Nagin, former UAlbany
Distinguished Professor Terence Thornberry,
and Richard Tremblay.
Nagin is Teresa and H. John Heinz III Professor
of Public Policy and Statistics at Carnegie
Mellon. His development of statistical methods
for analyzing longitudinal data has been critical in focusing the field
on trajectories of offending across the life course.
At the University of Colorado, Boulder, Thornberry
is director of the Research Program on Problem
Behavior at the Institute of Behavioral Science,
and a professor of sociology. He is principal investigator of the Rochester
Youth Development Study, an ongoing longitudinal study of delinquency
and antisocial behavior that now covers three generations.
Tremblay is professor of pediatrics, psychiatry,
and psychology at the University of Montreal.
For more than 20 years, he has conducted a
program of longitudinal and experimental studies
addressing the physical, cognitive, emotional,
and social development of children from conception
onward.
This core group of featured presenters gave
addresses about their ongoing research. Invited
discussants, also celebrated experts in their
fields, responded. The more than 100 symposium
attendees represented 15 states, the United
Kingdom and Canada, 22 different universities,
and six different criminal justice agencies. Over the two days
of the symposium, UAlbany graduate students
had numerous opportunities to interact with
top experts in criminology and justice.
At the first presentation, held at Empire
Commons, Sampson and Laub presented "A
Life Course View of Developmental Criminology," while Gottfredson
and University Professor of Social Science Emerita Lee Robins at Washington
University School of Medicine, responded.
The following day, Nagin and Tremblay discussed "The Developmental Origins
of Physical Aggression: Theories, Typologies, and Method," as Professor
of Education and Statistics Stephen Raudenbush of the University of Michigan
responded.
Later in the day, Thornberry gave an address
on "Explaining Multiple Patterns
of Offending across the Life Course." Janet Lauritsen, professor
and chair, Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University
of Missouri - St. Louis, and D. Wayne Osgood, professor of Crime, Law,
and Justice at Pennsylvania State University, responded.
The symposium ended with a roundtable discussion
moderated by Alfred Blumstein of Carnegie Mellon
University, where he is university professor
and J. Erik Jonsson Professor of Urban Systems
and Operations Research.
Symposium papers are to be published as a
special volume of The
Annals of the American Academy of Political
and Social Science.
The symposium was sponsored by the School
of Criminal Justice, the National Consortium
on Violence Research, and UAlbany's Office of the Vice
President for Research.
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