Jackson Toby

Jackson Toby (* 1925 in New York ) is an American sociologist and criminologist .

Scientific career

Jackson Toby received his PhD from Harvard University in 1950 . He then briefly taught at Brooklyn College and Harvard. In September 1951 he became a member of the faculty at Rutgers University , where he eventually became a professor and from 1961 headed the sociology faculty. From 1959 to 1963, he was the chief advisor in formulating a program for the Ford Foundation to address youth development. In 1966 he wrote a report for President Lyndon B. Johnson's Commission on Law Enforcement on "Affluence and Adolescent Crime". From 1969 to 1994 he was director of the Institute for Criminological Research at Rutgers University. Even after his retirement he continued teaching and publishing.

Research priorities and positions

Toby developed into an expert in the field of social deviance . He is particularly interested in juvenile delinquency , an area on which he has published several books and numerous articles. In doing so, he often takes controversial positions which he himself regards as contradicting the liberal zeitgeist. He advocates harsh treatment of juvenile offenders if they turn down rehabilitation offers and opposes the idea that the problem of juvenile delinquency can be solved through social programs alone. Toby himself described his positions in 2001 as "politically incorrect".

After he had only used scientific publication channels until then, Toby wrote an article for the New York Times in January 1973 for the first time for a wider audience. He himself was surprised that the liberal newspaper actually printed his plea for juvenile prison sentences. Since then, he has published numerous articles in the New York Times , Los Angeles Times , Chicago Tribune , Washington Post , Wall Street Journal , Weekly Standard, and a number of smaller newspapers, dealing with controversial topics such as education camps and curfews for young people, vandalism, violence in schools, rampages and racial profiling .

In an article for the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research , a conservative think tank , he warned in October 2011 that modern mass universities in western countries were developing into “unemployment factories”. Not unlike the events during the Arab Spring , this could develop into a source of social unrest.

Publications (selection)

• Social problems in America. Costs and casualties in an acquisitive society. Wiley, New York 1960 (with Harry C. Bredemeier).
• Contemporary society. Social process and social structure in urban industrial societies. Wiley, New York 1964. 2nd Edition: Contemporary Society. An introduction to sociology. Wiley, New York 1971, ISBN 0-47187-603-8 .
• The lowering of higher education in America. Why financial aid should be based on student performance. Praeger, Santa Barbara 2010, ISBN 0-31337-898-3 .

literature

• Toby, Jackson. In: Encyclopaedia Judaica . 2nd edition. Macmillan, Detroit et al. a. 2007. Vol. 20, p. 14.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Douglas Frank: 50 years and counting. Jackson Toby is still going strong. ( Memento of the original from May 9, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Rutgers University website. September 7, 2001. 
2. ↑ Jackson Toby: Open-Ended Sentence. New York Times. January 15, 1973. p. 29. Frank: 50 years and counting. ( Memento of the original from May 9, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Rutgers University website, September 7, 2001. 
3. ↑ Jackson Toby: The Revenge of the Unemployed Graduates. ( Memento of the original from January 16, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. On the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research's Minding the Campus website . October 11, 2011.