DIC 2002 Annual Report

Submitted by Rosemary Barberet (Chair)

According to the DIC Constitution the Division has the following purpose:

1. to foster research and exchange of information concerning criminology in an international perspective;
2. to encourage effective teaching and practice of criminological principles and to develop curricula for courses in international criminology;
3. to identify criteria and standards for evaluating criminal justice systems;
4. to provide a forum for personal interaction and exchange of ideas among persons involved in international criminology; and,
5. to promote conference sessions pertaining to international criminology.

1. Membership

DIC Membership at the time of our business meeting in Chicago totalled 360 which is an increase from the year before. Two membership recruitment events took place this year. At the ASC Annual Meeting in Chicago, all DIC sponsored sessions were papered with a flyer encouraging presenters and attendees at those sessions to become DIC members. Additionally, Bonnie Fisher coordinated a membership mailing to all ASC members (a sheet which she designed that was enclosed with the annual ASC membership renewal mailing). DIC Chair Barberet has been appointed to the overall ASC Membership Committee chaired by Roger Jarjoura, and will be undertaking joint activities with that committee.

A membership survey was circulated with the Summer newsletter in order to ascertain the skills and interests of DIC members. DIC Executive Councillor Cindy Smith offers the following special report:

Survey Provides insight into skills and interests of DIC membership

for the United Nations Congress in Bangkok

By Cindy Smith with the assistance of Dana Valdivia

Data collected last fall may be used in preparation for the up-coming United Nations Congress in Bangkok. As a result of acquiring ECOSOC status last summer, a membership survey for the Division of International Criminology was distributed to over 300 members. Unfortunately, only 27 members completed the survey representing nine countries; USA (16), Netherlands (3), UK (3), Canada (2), Japan (1), Nigeria (1), and Switzerland (1). Therefore, the following information should be considered summary and not representative of the group.

The most important findings in the survey were the responses to the question regarding why each member joined the DIC. The two main categorical responses were to do the following:

1. Contact with others with similar interests (networking)
2. Gain broader knowledge

These are two very important results for the DIC to explore and facilitate to promote growth and strengthen international ties.

The survey had two intents:

1. To learn more about each member regarding their areas of interests and language(s)
2. To become familiar with the current state of teaching and research in the area of international and comparative criminology

The following results were discussed at the Division of Criminology business meeting at the ASC annual meeting in Chicago.

Language abilities

Twenty-four have proficiency in a foreign language and 14 of these members have translated into their foreign language. Eight of the members have published in a foreign language.

Teaching and research interest

Ten of 27 members responding are currently or recently teaching an international criminology/criminal justice course and have been teaching for an average of 10 years (4-25 years range). Courses are offered at the undergraduate (8) level and the graduate (4) level. Of the 12 classes, only two are required. Only three classes require foreign language readings.

Fourteen members currently (plus four in the past) are conducting or supervising cross-national research on differing topics. The types of research the members used were investigated.

1. Finances

Finances were reported by DIC Treasurer Bonnie Fisher at the DIC Business Meeting in Chicago as follows:

DIC BUDGET

INCOME AND EXPENSE FIGURES FOR 2001 THROUGH TO DATE

2001 Year Income

Beginning balance $11.10
Total dues paid 2,400.00
Luncheon paid by attendees 1,891.00
Sale of member mailing labels 50.00

TOTAL INCOME

4,352.10

2001 Year Expenses

Printing 1,250.02
Luncheon cost 2,619.36
Postage 257.00
Supplies 116.33
Election postage 20.00
Web site expense 200.00

TOTAL EXPENSES 4,449.56

2001 Balance -97.46

2002 Year Income

Total dues paid $2,620.00

Paid Luncheons 52.00

TOTAL EXPENSES

2,672.00

2002 Year Expenses

Postage 54.68

Balance $2,519.86

The DIC current balance (as of 31/3/03) is $3,223.

- Activities

- Newsletter. There were four issues of the newsletter in 2002 (most recent attached). These were edited by Rosemary Barberet.
- Webpage. The DIC webpage, created in early 2002 as part of the ASC website by Liqun Cao, has been maintained throughout the year by him as well.
- DIC sponsored panels. There were 34 DIC sponsored panels at the ASC Annual Meeting in Chicago. This is a big increase from the four DIC-sponsored panels at the ASC Annual Meetings in Atlanta, and is due to the proactive stance of the DIC. DIC Officers and Executive Councillor Liqun Cao reviewed the Annual Meeting Program before it was sent to print and identified panels considered to be international/ comparative:

DIC Sponsored Sessions in Chicago, 2002

Presidential Panels

Session 512: PP126 -> Reinventing Punishment, Global and Local

Session 294: PP64 -> Cross-National Empirical Investigations of the General Theory of Crime

Session 146: PP36 -> Global Perspectives on Youth Victimization: New Directions in Research

Session 337: PP80 -> Drugs, Guns, and Violence Among Youth: Preliminary Findings From the Cross-National Study of the Youth Drug-Violence

Session 57: PP6 -> Gangs, Foreign and Domestic: International Perspectives on Diverse Gangs in Complex Contexts

Session 115: PP24 -> Crime and Justice in Israeli Society

Session 479: PP114 -> Violence and Gangs in Chicago in Comparative Perspective

Session 341: PP84 -> Terrorism Research and Criminology

Roundtable Sessions

Session 185: TC1 -> Roundtable: Comparative Punitivity

Session 186: TC2 -> Roundtable: Eurogang Program: Progress and Research Protocol

Session 227: TC13 -> Roundtable: Crime and Justice in Southern Africa

Session 229: TC15 -> Roundtable: Terrorism in Africa and Issues on African Security

Session 270: TC24 -> Roundtable: Reconstructing Justice in a Postcolony: A Round Table Engagement With Issues

Session 347: TC38 -> Roundtable: Terrorism and State Crime: Theoretical and Practical Responses

Session 192: TC8 -> Roundtable: Fulbright Fellowship as a Means of International Criminology Development A Generic Perspective

Session 346: TC37 -> Roundtable: Crime and Delinquency Around the World: A Panel Discussion on Comparative Research

Regular Sessions

Session 10: RS8 -> New Theoretical Approaches to Terrorism and State Terror

Session 23: RS21 -> Homicide: Cross National Perspectives

Session 174: RS124 -> Transnational Illegal Markets

Session 234: RS155 -> Crime and Drugs: Heroin Prescription as an Alternative

Session 503: RS314 -> Some Things You Should Know About Crime and Crime Control Outside the U.S.

Session 557: RS352 -> Thinking About Terrorism

Session 563: RS358 -> Organised and White Collar Crime in Emerging Countries

Session 326: RS203 -> Crime and Justice Across Cultures

Session 526: RS322 -> Theoretical Issues in the Study of Homicide: Cross Cultural Perspectives

Session 535: RS331 -> Money Laundering

Session 465: RS287 -> Women and War and Rape

Session 387: RS236 -> Crime and Social Transformation: Justice in a Changing World

Session 380: RS229 -> International Organized Crime

Session 377: RS226 -> International Police Issues

Session 328: RS205 -> Criminal Justice in the United Kingdom

Session 371: RS220 -> Profiles in Terrorism

Session 580: RS374 -> Crime and Criminal Justice: International Explanations

Session 423: RS260 -> Modern Anxieties in European Cities: A Research Project

According to our Constitution there is supposed to be a DIC representative on every programme committee. Although the DIC strongly feels that international/comparative papers should be integrated or "mainstreamed" with other papers and not ghettoised to a "catch-all" international panel, we feel that it is important that we have a voice on the programme committee in order to help structure a conference programme that blends non-comparative and comparative research effectively. We see the inclusion of Paul Friday, Susanne Karstedt, Mitchel Roth and Ray Teske under "Cross-National/Comparative/Historical Methods" as an acceptable move by the 2003 Program Committee, but probably still not the most effective way to achieve our aims. Ideally each program theme should have a comparative criminology representative in order to ensure that cross-national findings are appropriately mainstreamed.

- Social Activities at Annual Meetings in Atlanta

At the Annual Meetings in Chicago, besides our business meeting (the minutes of which are attached), the DIC sponsored a hosting service and a luncheon. The hosting service was organized by Alexander Vazsonyi and involved matching an ASC Annual meeting "first timer" to an ASC Annual meeting "old timer" in order to ensure that both scholars from abroad and from the United States are personally welcomed at the Annual Meetings. Again, despite our best efforts, there was little take-up. We have decided to incorporate this service into a reinstated active DIC table at ASC Denver 2003, which will be coordinated by Ineke Marshall.

The DIC luncheon was in a larger room this year than in Atlanta, and sold out, with 100 attendees, compared to 67 in Atlanta. A reduced price was offered to students and DIC members enjoyed a typical Chicago buffet. The DIC luncheon included an awards ceremony, and afterwards, "open mike" during which members were allowed to make spontaneous announcements of upcoming conferences and other activities.

- Awards

DIC Distinguished Book Award, 2002

The 2002 DIC Distinguished Book Award went to David T. Johnson’s The Japanese Way of Justice: Prosecuting Crime in Japan, 2002, Oxford University Press, NY.

David T. Johnson is assistant professor in Dept. of Sociology, University of Hawaii, specializing in criminology, sociology of law, and comparative sociology (Japan).

In this book David T. Johnson portrays Japanese prosecutors at work. He is the first researcher, Japanese or foreign, to gain access to the frontline prosecutors who charge cases and backstage prosecutors who manage and direct them. His study is clearly written, and skilfully argued and is an important contribution to the study of comparative criminal justice.

The DIC Distinguished Book Award Committee consisted of Mitchel Roth (Chair), Michael Israel, Paul Mazerolle and Janice Joseph. Oxford University Press will give a discount to DIC members who purchase the book.

DIC Lifetime Achievement Awards, 2002

The DIC 2002 Lifetime Achievement Award went to two awardees: Rosa del Olmo (posthumously) and Maria Lós.

Rosa del Olmo

died on November 17, 2001, in Caracas, Venezuela, after a long battle with cancer. Born in Barcelona, daughter of a judge during the Republic and a leader of the Communist Party, her childhood was influenced by the Spanish Civil War. Her mother was one of those in charge of organizing the transfer of the so called "war children" to the Soviet Union. Her parents had to go into exile and her family was displaced by the civil war and moved to Venezuela while she was still young. She majored in sociology under Marshall Clinard at the University of Wisconsin, and was a member of the first cohort admitted to the masters program in criminology at the University of Cambridge, UK. She took her doctorate at the Universidad Central de Venezuela, where she was professor of criminology and, for a time, director of the Institute for Research in Criminology and Criminal Law. She also held government posts in the fields of crime prevention and drug prevention during the 1970s and 1990s. She held several posts at the Venezuelan Ministry of Justice and she was director of the Institute of Penal and Criminological Sciences at the Legal and Political Science Faculty at Venezuela Central University. Subsequently, she held the post of Director of the José Felix Ribas Foundation (for research into, prevention of and treatment of drug abuse), in the Venezuelan Ministry of the Family. Her many publications include: Segunda Ruptura criminológica (1970), La Sociopolítica de las drogas (1975), América Latina y su criminología (1987), La cara oculta de la droga (1990), ¿Prohibir o domesticar? Políticas de drogas en América Latina (1992), Drogas: Inquietudes e interrogantes (1998). Together with her publications, she took part in specialist meetings and also in the creation of several organizations to offer alternatives to the social phenomenon of drugs in Latin America.

Rosa is perhaps best known for her history of Latin American criminology, first published in Mexico in 1981, and subsequently reprinted. Along with other researchers in the region she was influential in moving Latin American criminology from a legally oriented, "positivist," perspective to a sociological and critical stance. She maintained frequent contact with radical criminologists in Western Europe and North America and traveled widely in Latin America, attending conferences and teaching graduate seminars. She attended the ASC on many occasions and was a DIC member. She is survived by a son, Rodrigo, who lives and works in Caracas.

Maria Lós

, Professor of Criminology at the University of Ottawa, Canada is honored for her lifetime efforts to understand and explain the politics and economics of crime and crime control both globally and in particular regions of the world such as Eastern and Central Europe. She has been a DIC member since the very beginning of the Division and was a DIC Board member in the formative years.

Dr. Lós’ degrees are the University of Warsaw, Poland. Before commencing her career at the University of Ottawa, she lectured at the University of Sheffield, UK. Among her many honors are a Ford Foundation fellowship (1973-1974), a Research Scholarship at the Kennan Institute, Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars (1988). Dr. Lós is a frequent reviewer of manuscripts for various journals and publishers, and a regular evaluator of research proposals (especially in the French language) for the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, Canada. She has been active in the Polish Sociological Association, the International Sociological Association and the American Society of Criminology (DIC).

Maria Lós has published extensively. She is well known for her recent book, Privatizing the Police-State. The Case of Poland (with A. Zybertowicz), (2000), as well as her edited book, The Second Economy in Marxist States (1990) and Communist Ideology, Law and Crime: A Comparative View of the USSR and Poland (1988). DIC members will be interested to read her latest journal article entitled "Post Communist Fear of Crime and the Commercialization of Security" in Theoretical Criminology, Vol. 6No. 2 (2002). Dr. Lós’s publications have appeared in Polish, English, French, Italian and Portuguese.

The DIC Lifetime Achievement Award Committee consisted of William Chambliss (Chair), Liqun Cao, Lana Harrison, William Pridemore and Alexander Vazsonyi.

- Journal affiliation.

The DIC is currently considering a possible official affiliation with a journal. Journals that have come forward are the International Criminal Justice Review, the International Journal of Comparative and Applied Criminal Justice, and the International Journal of Comparative Criminology. A third option, raised by the Chairperson, was to have DIC provide guest editorship of one issue of the Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice, subject to a more regular arrangement in the future. A publications committee was nominated, chaired by Barberet, and including Joan McCord, Paul Friday and Phyllis Schultze. This committee will make a recommendation to the membership who will then vote on the options, which might include an increase in dues or an option to purchase the chosen journal at a reduced price.

- Elections.

The present term of office ceases in November, 2003. Elections are due to occur this summer for the next term, and a nominations committee will be appointed shortly.

- ASC Policy

1. Representatives sent to criminology association meetings abroad

ASC continued sending representatives in 2002 to meetings of the BSC, the ESC, the ANZOC and the AICLF. DIC Chair Rosemary Barberet was sent to the AICLF in Liège, Belgium and submitted a report which was published in the September/October 2002 issue of The Criminologist. To our knowledge no other reports have been submitted or published. In last year’s Annual Report, the DIC informed the ESC Board that it would like to play a greater role in these "ambassador" trips and that at the very least, it would like the ASC to specify the role of the "ambassador" and request a report on each journey. The DIC is disappointed that this role is not taken more seriously and that ASC funds have been disbursed for trips that have not resulted in any reports to the ASC membership.

2. United Nations

The American Society of Criminology applied for NGO special consultative status to the Economic & Social Council of the United Nations in 2001, thanks to the work of DIC members William Chambliss (DIC Chair at the time), Paul Friday and ASC Executive Director Chris Eskridge. In 2002 this status was granted. This enables the ASC to attend a variety of UN meetings in an observational role, the most important of which are the Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice annual sessions, held in May in Vienna and the quinquennial United Nations Congress on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice (the next one to be held in Thailand in 2005, for which the DIC is generating interest in special topic sessions) and to join organisations such as the Alliance of NGOs on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice and ISPAC (International Scientific and Professional Advisory Council). The DIC is proud to be spearheading this effort of representing the ASC at the United Nations. Cindy Smith has been attending Alliance meetings in New York since last Autumn, Nancy Grosselfinger and Cindy Smith attended the annual ISPAC meeting in Courmayeur, Italy in December, and a delegation of six, including Chris Eskridge, Rosemary Barberet, Nancy Grosselfinger, Cindy Smith, Liqun Cao and Alexander Vazsonyi, will be attending the Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice twelfth session in May, 2003 in Vienna. The DIC has drafted a document of procedures for this new ASC endeavor, as well as a brochure to be distributed at the UN which describes the ASC as an organization.