Criminology Prize Winners 2016
The international jury for the Stockholm Prize in Criminology has selected Travis W. Hirschi, Cathy Spatz Widom and Per-Olof Wikström, as award winners 2016. The winners are awarded the prize in recognition of their important joint advance in knowledge about how parents and peers shape successes, or failures, in preventing adult violence and crime.
Video from Criminology Prize Winners 2016
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| Travis Hirschi |
The
first study began in 1965, when Travis Hirschi gathered data on 4,077 teenagers in Richmond California
His
theory did not ask why people do break
the law, but why people don’t break
the law. His answer is that adolescents decide not to commit crimes according
to the degree of their attachmentto their parents, their commitment to conventional success, their involvement with conventional activities, and
their beliefs in
conventional moral values.
In
his studies of the police records, self-reported criminal activities and
attitudes of these teenagers, Hirschi showed the importance of their attachment
to parents not in directly preventing crime, but it shaping commitment,
involvement and belief. Even with unconventional or criminal parents, Hirschi
found, with confirmation from police records, that having strong attachments to
one or both parents acted to prevent delinquency, and even increased respect
for police.
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| Cathy Spatz Widom |
While
Hirschi showed what parents did right, Cathy Spatz Widom pioneered in systematic research on
what parents did wrong. In tracking 908 children in 1967-71 in a Midwestern US city
who, before the age of 11, had been victims of criminal abuse or neglect by
responsible adults in, she compared them to a matched sample of 667 control
group children for whom there was no criminal record of abuse or neglect. Over
the next two decades, she found that maltreatment of children increased their
adult rates of crime and violence, but that most maltreated children had no
criminal record as adults. Her evidence suggested a more complex relationship
between parents and maltreated children than the conventional “cycle of
violence” theory, that violence begets violence—which it did not, in three out
of four cases. Her work extended Hirschi’s evidence that even bad parenting can
have good features, that even criminal parents might build strong attachments
with their children, which lead children to obey the law.
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| Per-Olof Wikström |
The
work of Per-Olof Wikström, who is the first
Swedish criminologist to win the prize, offers the most detailed evidence on
the dynamic processes by which children negotiate their daily lives between
their parents and peers. In a ten-year study of 716 families in the ethnically
diverse city of Peterborough , England
Travis W. Hirschi
Travis
W. Hirschi (born in 1935 in
Rockville , Utah )
is Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the University of Arizona University
of California at Berkeley University of Washington , University
of California at Davis
Cathy Spatz Widom
Cathy
Spatz Widom (born in 1945) is Distinguished Professor of Psychology at the John
Jay College of Criminal Justice and a member of the Graduate Center Brandeis University ,
she taught at Harvard, the University
of Indiana , and the State University
of New York at Albany
Per-Olof Wikström
Per-Olof
Wikström (born in 1955 in
Uppsala , Sweden )
is Professor of Ecological and Developmental Criminology, Director of the
Centre for Analytic Criminology, and Fellow of Girton College at the University of Cambridge University of Stockholm , he worked at both the Swedish National
Council for Crime Prevention and the Swedish
National Police
School
Further information
- Chairmen of the Jury
Professor Lawrence Sherman ,
University of Cambridge
and University of
Maryland
Lawrence.Sherman@crim.cam.ac.uk, +44 (0)1223 335 369
Lawrence.Sherman@crim.cam.ac.uk, +44 (0)1223 335 369
- Award winners
Professor Travis W. Hirschi, tfn +1-520-297-6032 alt.travishirschi212@gmail.com
- Prize award ceremony
The
prize ceremony will take place in the Stockholm City Hall
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Source: http://www.su.se/english/about/prizes-awards/the-stockholm-prize-in-criminology/criminology-prize-winners-2016-1.255296
