ABSTRACT
In the 1960s, I began my effort to help reorient criminology from its ultimately futile quest to learn what is wrong with lawbreakers to the intriguing question of what is wrong with the societies that produce and reproduce criminals, and then discriminate in labeling and punishing them. I had learned to distrust political and religious ideologies that defined truth through allegiance to faith-based doctrines. I opted instead to use scientific research standards to establish what is probably true based on systematic empirical studies versus any notion of absolute truth (Turk 1982b).
