Pioneers in policing: Richard V. Ericson

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Notes

1. Anyone familiar with the work of Richard Ericson will know that he also made significant theoretical and substantive contributions in a number of other areas of criminological research.

2. I should also add that, were this a book and not an essay, I would also want to write at length about his mentorship of graduate students and junior scholars. Today, many leading criminologists from Canada can trace their ‘academic lineage’ – that is, the major influences upon their own work – to Richard and/or to Clifford Shearing (Richard’s friend and collaborator).

3. In generously reading a draft of this paper, Kevin Haggerty reminded me that it was important to not completely gloss over the importance of Richard’s contributions to criminological theory. As he put it, ‘he was constantly driven by theory. He did research to connect with and advance with theory and was always thinking about how developments on the ground contradicted or supported any number of theoretical approaches.’ Although I have tended to focus more on Richard as a researcher, which is how I most closely connect to him, I do agree: for Richard these things were not divisible.

4. Although neither Richard nor Aaron directly speak to Douglas’ work, the entire book was clearly inspired, at least in part, by Richard’s enormous respect for not only Douglas, but also Ian Hacking. Although he had the anthropologist’s ethnographic eye, I often felt he secretly (or not so secretly) wished he’d been a philosopher like Hacking.

5. I still have a set of notes he wrote on my thesis – all three solid pages of comments for just one review. There are plenty of citation suggestions; not one refers to his own work.

6. Kevin Haggerty also kindly agreed to answer questions by email.