John Jay College Of Criminal Justice | The City University of New York

   

April 25, 2012, New York, NY – Distinguished Professor of Criminal Justice Jock Young, a leader in the Critical Criminology movement, has been named winner of the 2012 Outstanding Achievement Award presented by the British Society of Criminology (BSC). The award celebrates outstanding contributions made to the discipline by members of the BSC.

"This is quite an amazing achievement by one of our distinguished faculty members," said President Jeremy Travis. "It speaks highly of our College, our Department of Sociology and our doctoral program in criminal justice, and we couldn't be more proud of Professor Young."

"He had to beat out some pretty heavy competition for this prestigious award," said Professor David Brotherton, Chair of the sociology department. "It is a fantastic achievement and his recent book, I believe, had a lot to do with giving him the edge."

Young joined the faculty of John Jay's Department of Sociology in 2002, following a long career at the University of Middlesex in England, where he was a professor and head of the Centre on Criminology. He is the author of the newly published The Criminological Imagination, the acclaimed concluding volume of a trilogy that also includes The Exclusive Society (Sage, 1999) and The Vertigo of Late Modernity (Sage, 2007).

Young first made a considerable splash in 1973 with his book The New Criminology, and hasn't let up since. In nominating him for the BSC award, previous winner Pat Carlen, a prominent feminist criminologist and editor-in-chief of the British Journal of Criminology, wrote: "Jock Young has produced, over time, a significant body of work which amounts to an outstanding achievement and a sustained contribution to the enhancement of British criminology and the discipline of criminology internationally…. No other living British criminologist has contributed so many varied concepts and perspectives which have become integrated into the international canon of theoretical criminology."

"I'm certainly known for my early work, but it's refreshing to be recognized for my later work," said Young. "I'm not coasting by any means."

Critical Criminology focuses on the genesis of crime and nature of 'justice' within a structure of class and status inequalities. The Critical Criminology Division is now the largest within the American Society of Criminology (ASC), and Young said that his latest award should help spark interest in the discipline. "Critical criminological theories already translate very well cross-culturally, especially in Latin America," Young said. "This award should provide a further shot in the arm." Young's scholarly trilogy has been translated into 11 languages in 15 different countries.

Of his experience at John Jay, Young is emphatically upbeat. "Nobody should apologize for this being a public college. Our sociology department is as good as any, anywhere."

In 2003, Young was honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Critical Criminology Division of the ASC. He also won the division's 2009 Distinguished Book Award for Cultural Criminology: An Invitation, which he co-authored with Jeff Ferrell and Keith Hayward, and the ASC's 1998 Sellin-Glueck Award for Distinguished International Scholar.

About John Jay College of Criminal Justice: An international leader in educating for justice, John Jay College of Criminal Justice of The City University of New York offers a rich liberal arts and professional studies curriculum to upwards of 15,000 undergraduate and graduate students from more than 135 nations. In teaching, scholarship and research, the College approaches justice as an applied art and science in service to society and as an ongoing conversation about fundamental human desires for fairness, equality and the rule of law. For more information, visit www.jjay.cuny.edu.