ABSTRACT

This chapter is a previously unpublished manuscript authored by Jim in response to Al Blumstein’s “Anticipating a Twenty First Century Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice,” one of three papers presented at a presidential plenary panel session held during the 2016 Annual Meeting of the American Society of Criminology. (Past presidents David Farrington and Roland Chilton presented the other two papers.) Jim was disappointed to end up having to miss the meeting, but he was happy to have had a reason to think and write about an important topic and to share his experiences and ideas with others he thought would find interest in them. Jim quotes extensively from this manuscript in the conclusion of his final autobiographical essay, published in 2018 (Chapter 1 in this volume), describing his appointment as Co-Director of Research for the National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence (1968–1969), with Marvin Wolfgang, as “the steepest learning curve and the most intense period of research activity in my life.” He endorses Blumstein’s call for a new commission on crime and justice, careful to insist that any such effort to “wrestle with the beast” be informed by the social and behavioral sciences.