Marvin E. Wolfgang

Victim Precipitated Criminal Homicide

In many crimes, especially in criminal homicide, the victim is often a major contributor to the criminal act. Except in cases in which the victim is an innocent bystander and is killed in lieu of an intended victim, or in cases in which a pure accident is involved, the victim may be one of the major precipitating causes of his own demise.

Delinquency in Two Birth Cohorts

The material presented here is derived from the birth cohort study conducted at the Center for Studies in Criminology and Criminal Law at the University of Pennsylvania. The first display of this work was published as Delinquency in a Birth Cohort in 1972.1 The study involved analysis of a cohort of males born in 1945 who lived in Philadelphia from at least their tenth to their eighteenth birthdays. Through the use of school, police and Selective Service files, we were able to locate and gather data on 9945 boys. Since 1968 we have followed a ten percent random sample of the original cohort.

Quantitative Analysis of Adjustment to the Prison Community

The author, who is Associate Professor of Sociology in the University of Pennsylvania, is a frequent contributor to this Journal as well as other periodicals of interest to criminologists. As an outgrowth of his publication in 1958 of PATTERNS IN CRIMINAL HOMICIDE, an analysis of a large number of Philadelphia murderers, Dr. Wolfgang commenced a study of the post-offense adjustment of the individuals studied. Here, he reports on the adjustment of a select group of these offenders to life in a Pennsylvania maximum security institution. After describing his construction of an index by which adjustment or maladjustment could be measured, Dr. Wolfgang presents his findings which indicate that there are significant associations between adjustment and inmates (1) who are 35 years of age or older, (2) who are or have been married, (3) whose murders were other than felony murder, and (4) who have had some previous penal experience.-EDITOR.

RAPE, RACE, AND THE DEATH PENALTY IN GEORGIA

Following the 1972 Supreme Court decision on capital punishment, the Georgia legislature enacted a death penalty statute that attempts to avoid constitutional objections by establishing discretionary death sentencing for 361 rape cases in Georgia, comparing legal and nonlegal variables. Results indicate that blacks convicted of raping whites were disproportionately sentenced to death.

The Social Scientist in Court

Every profession has its own conflicts of interests, ethical issues and relativities. As a sociologist and, more particularly, as a criminologist, I have encountered a few. Although they were not excessively troublesome and may not even have bothered some of my colleagues, they nevertheless did cause me to be cautious. Among such encounters were those related to my role as a social scientist testifying as an “expert witness” for civil rights causes.

Delinquency in Puerto Rico : the 1970 birth cohort study

Foreword, by Miguel Hernandez Agosto Background for the Current Study Prevalence Incidence Age and Delinquency Delinquent Recidivism Police and Court Dispositions Cohort Comparisons Summary Policy Implications and Suggestions for Legislation Appendices Bibliography Index

International Criminal Statistics: A Proposal

The author is Professor and Graduate Chairman of the Department of Sociology of the University of Pennsylvania. He is also a Director of the Universitys Center of Criminological Research, President-Elect of the American Society of Criminology, author of many books and articles in criminology and sociology, and the Criminology Editor of this Journal. By applying the measurement theory involved in psychophysical scaling and obtaining seriousness scores for criminal offenses in various countries, Professor Wolfgang proposes here a new method for collecting international criminal statistics. His article was read as a paper at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association in Miami, Florida on September 1, 1966.

Making the Criminal Justice System Accountable

All parts of the criminal justice system should be accountable to the public at large, to the victim, and to the offender. More over, each subpart of the system should be accountable to the immediately preceding subpart. The democratic process requires public officials and organizations to be on public display.

Corrections and the Violent Offender

Improper attention is given to the diagnosis and classification of offenders sent to prison. An effort should be made to distinguish violent from nonviolent persons sen tenced to prison in order better to provide a more appropriate treatment setting for each. Past and current management of correctional institutions is based primarily on the image, behavior, and potential risk of the violent offender, much to the detriment of the nonviolent inmates who numerically pre dominate in prison.

Freedom and Violence

topic separately considered is too broad for the brevity I must employ and arrogant because the finest minds of Western civilization Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, Hobbes, Montesquieu, Locke, Rousseau, Mill, Hegel, Kant, to mention only a few-have written about freedom, or liberty (which I use interchangeably), civil disobedience, rebellion and revolution, individual and collective violence. I can do little more