ABSTRACT

The first research programme which was submitted to the Leon Bequest Committee in 1936 was based upon the belief that there existed a noticeable gap in criminological and penological research which might profitably be filled. The detachment was needed both for an evaluation of the criminological implications of the War and early post-War period as well as for an examination of the practical working of the new penal machinery built up by those great Reform Acts passed just prior to the War. Many items which should ordinarily have been included in a crime survey had to be dropped from the very beginning the survey of criminal administration in the Courts, the work of the Police and the functioning of the various categories of penal institutions and of probation. Psychological difficulties arose from the peculiar position which old-world criminology occupies within the fraternity of the social sciences.