Albert J. Reiss

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Albert J. Reiss Jr. (Born December 9, 1922 in Seattle , Washington ; † April 27, 2006 in Hamden , Connecticut ) was an American sociologist and criminologist .

Life

During World War II , Reiss was a student at Marquette University in Milwaukee ; however, he interrupted his studies to serve as a meteorologist in the US Air Force . After receiving his doctorate in sociology from the University of Chicago in 1949, he taught, among other things, from 1952 to 1959 at Vanderbilt University in Nashville , from 1961 to 1970 at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and from 1970 until his retirement in 1993 at Yale University in New Haven .

In addition, Reiss was active in government commissions and state committees. Ronald Reagan appointed him director of the National Institute of Justice, he was president of the American Society of Criminology in 1984 and president of the International Society for Criminology from 1990 to 1995.

research

Reiss' research is strongly empirical, whereby he has made important contributions to the methodology of criminal sociology. In 1966, as research director of a government commission, he headed an extensive investigation into over 5,000 incidents involving the police, in which around 10 percent of the cases were violent. His influential book The Police and the Public (1971) emerged from the study , in which he describes what the causes of violence in the encounter between the police and the public can be and how it can be prevented. Reiss makes it clear here that a police intervention often takes place without escalation, especially if the police were called by a person involved in the situation ( proactive ), since the alarm justifies the police presence. If, on the other hand, the clash is reactive, i.e. without prior summoning by those involved, violent acts often occur because this legitimacy is lacking. For example, arrests are less readily accepted.

Reiss also developed a questionnaire procedure in which the study participants reported previously undiscovered crimes ('self-reported crime surveys'). Reiss found that a large number of young people from the upper and middle classes of society had committed crimes without these being discovered. These results challenged the assumption that delinquency was a particular problem for the lower class.

As early as 1951 he had made a contribution to the criminological halt theory .

reception

The investigations into “proactive police work” in particular had a major influence on the handling of crime in the USA. The knowledge gained here was z. B. accepted by Rudolph Giuliani during his tenure as Mayor of New York and contributed to the success of Guiliani's crime-fighting policy in New York.

Awards

Publications (selection)

  • Delinquency as the failure of personal and social controls (1951).
  • Occupations and Social Status . Free Press, New York 1962.
  • Schools in a Changing Society . (Ed.) Free Press, New York 1965.
  • The Police and the Public . Yale University Press, Yale 1971, ISBN 0-300-01646-8 .
  • Communities and Crime . (Ed.) University of Chicago Press, Chicago 1987, ISBN 0-226-80802-5 .
  • Understanding and Preventing Violence . (Ed.) 6th edition. National Acadademic Press, Washington DC 1996, ISBN 0-309-04594-0 .

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Reiss, Albert J.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Reiss, Albert J. junior
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American sociologist and criminologist
DATE OF BIRTH December 9, 1922
PLACE OF BIRTH Seattle , Washington
DATE OF DEATH April 27, 2006
Place of death Hamden , Connecticut