Returning from the ACJS conference ...

I did not blog last week since I spent the whole week in Philadelphia at the annual conference of the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences. Great conference. Great city. Amazing experiences.

Yet the world keeps going on ... with stories about disgusting racial discrimination in Mississippi and New Jersey. Even today? Wow.

And there were dozens and dozens of papers pertaining to race and criminal justice, including one of mine. I also met three more former death row inmates released from death row, men who were innocent and at least two of the cases, framed through acts of corruption by law enforcement and the prosecution.

There were also many, many panels on media coverage of crime and criminal justice.

One incredible finding I heard there was that only about nine or ten percent of all undergraduate criminal justice programs in the nation featured classes on white-collar crime, and almost none of them were required classes.

This is consistent with what is shown in the book about white-collar and corporate crime; it is rarely covered. Turns out it is we criminologists that share some of the blame. We largely ignore it as well. Even though it causes far more harm that all street crimes combined.