Looking back: reflecting on the birth of radical criminology at Berkeley

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Notes

^1. Bonger became a leading social democrat and his radio broadcasts urged citizens to oppose the Nazi invasion. Since he was on the Nazi hit list, he committed suicide when German troops entered Amsterdam.

^2. The ‘long hair’ reference was provided by his student, Herman Bianchi, in a conversation with Herman Schwendinger.

^3. Gilbert Geis, ‘The Limits of Academic Tolerance: The Discontinuance of the School of Criminology at Berkeley.’ pp. 280-81.The School was closed down by the Berkeley Chancellor and California's Governor, Ronald Reagan in 1977.

^4. Deeds not words are the criteria behind this judgment.

^5. The radicals created an alternative to ‘the new criminology’ adopted by Taylor, Walton and Young’ in The New Criminology: For a Social Theory of Deviance. Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1973.Elliot Currie's review (in Crime and Social Justice: A Journal of Radical Criminology 2 Fall-Winter 1974 pp.109–113), concluded: that the book's ‘method and style are basically those of conventional academic criminology, and its main theoretical assumptions a bit confused and fundamentally misleading.’ in contemporary works, the amount of confusion and reliance on metaphors, stylish prose and conventional axioms is greater than ever.

^6. Although an exact count could not be made, estimates indicated that between two and three million Vietnamese were killed in that war. About 54, 000 Americans were killed.

^7. Depending on the ‘spin’ required, university public relations at first said the lot was slated to be a soccer field, student dorms or parking lot. Eventually, it was turned into a parking lot.

^8. A member of the School of Criminology's Advisory Council, Alameda County District Attorney Frank Coakley, declared that his office would make a ‘complete and thorough investigation’ of events in Berkeley and that ‘appropriate action’ would be taken ‘as has been done in other episodes of mass violence and criminality,’ according to Steve Wasserman, History of the School of Criminology: From 1915 to the Present. May 1973, unpublished monograph, p. 49. But Coakley never fulfilled his promise.

^9. Ibid.

^10. The Daily Californian, ‘Faculty Members Won't Teach’ Wednesday, May 21, 1969 contains the original call for faculty signatures and demonstrations against police on other UC campuses.

^11. Wasserman, op. cit. p. 49.

^12. The College recommended a representative body would control the use of the park.