Jock Young (4 March 1942 – 16 November 2013) was a British
sociologist and an influential
criminologist
Criminology (from Latin , "accusation", and Ancient Greek , ''-logia'', from λόγος ''logos'' meaning: "word, reason") is the study of crime and deviant behaviour. Criminology is an interdisciplinary field in both the behavioural and so ...
.
Biography
Jock Young was educated at the London School of Economics
, mottoeng = To understand the causes of things
, established =
, type = Public research university
, endowment = £240.8 million (2021)
, budget = £391.1 millio ...
. His PhD was an ethnography of drug use in Notting Hill
Notting Hill is a district of West London, England, in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. Notting Hill is known for being a cosmopolitan and multicultural neighbourhood, hosting the annual Notting Hill Carnival and Portobello Road M ...
, West London, out of which he developed the concept of moral panic
A moral panic is a widespread feeling of fear, often an irrational one, that some evil person or thing threatens the values, interests, or well-being of a community or society. It is "the process of arousing social concern over an issue", usua ...
. The research was published as ''The Drugtakers''. He was a founding member of the National Deviancy Conferences and a group of critical criminologists in which milieu he wrote the groundbreaking, ''The New Criminology: For a Social Theory of Deviance'' in 1973, with Ian Taylor and Paul Walton and ''The Manufacture of News'' (with Stan Cohen).
He was Distinguished Professor of Criminal Justice and Sociology at the Graduate Center, City University of New York
The Graduate School and University Center of the City University of New York (CUNY Graduate Center) is a public research institution and post-graduate university in New York City. Serving as the principal doctorate-granting institution of the C ...
, Visiting Professor at the University of Kent
, motto_lang =
, mottoeng = Literal translation: 'Whom to serve is to reign'(Book of Common Prayer translation: 'whose service is perfect freedom')Graham Martin, ''From Vision to Reality: the Making of the University of Kent at Canterbury'' ...
, UK, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts
The Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA), also known as the Royal Society of Arts, is a London-based organisation committed to finding practical solutions to social challenges. The RSA acronym is used m ...
. Before moving to New York he was Professor of Sociology at the University of Middlesex
Middlesex University London (legally Middlesex University and abbreviated MDX) is a public research university in Hendon, northwest London, England. The name of the university is taken from its location within the historic county boundaries of ...
where he was head of the Centre for Criminology.
At Middlesex he devised the first postgraduate course in crime and deviancy in the UK. With his colleagues, most notably John Lea and Roger Matthews, he developed left realist criminology in a series of books including ''What Is to Be Done About Law and Order?'' (1984). He completed research on criminal victimisation, stop and search Stop and search or Stop and frisk is a term used to describe the powers of the police to search a person, place or object without first making an arrest.
A 2021 survey by the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights found that minority ethnic ...
, and urban riots, and was a frequent contributor to media debates on crime and policing. He was lead investigator in the Gifford Inquiry of 1985 following the Broadwater Farm riot
The Broadwater Farm riot occurred on the Broadwater council estate in Tottenham, North London, on 6 October 1985.
The events of the day were dominated by two deaths. The first was that of Cynthia Jarrett, an Afro-Caribbean woman who died the ...
. The Centre for Criminology was particularly known for left realist criminology and its series of local crime victimisation surveys, for example, the Islington Crime Surveys which were conducted in 1986 and 1990. In 1998 he was awarded the Sellin-Glueck Award for Distinguished International Scholar by the American Society of Criminology
The American Society of Criminology (ASC) is an international organization based on the campus of Ohio State University whose members focus on the study of crime and delinquency. It aims to grow and disseminate scholarly research, with members wo ...
followed in 2003 by the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Critical Criminology Division.
Subsequently, his theoretical interests were oriented towards cultural criminology
Cultural criminology is a subfield in the study of crime that focuses on the ways in which the "dynamics of meaning underpin every process in criminal justice, including the definition of crime itself." In other words, cultural criminology seeks ...
, publishing with Jeff Ferrell and Keith Hayward ''Cultural Criminology: An Invitation'' (2008), which was awarded the Distinguished Book Award of the International Division of the American Society of Criminology. He completed a trilogy of books about social life and sociological research in late modernity: ''The Exclusive Society'' (1999), ''The Vertigo of Late Modernity'' (2007) and ''The Criminological Imagination'' (2011).
In the 21st century Young published sixteen articles in refereed journals on topics ranging from the US/UK crime drop
The crime drop or crime decline is a pattern observed in many countries whereby rates of many types of crime declined by 50% or more beginning in the mid to late 1980s and early 1990s.
Historical context
The crime drop is not a new phenomenon e ...
to moral panic theory, Bernard Madoff
Bernard Lawrence Madoff ( ; April 29, 1938April 14, 2021) was an American fraudster and financier who was the admitted mastermind of the largest Ponzi scheme in history, worth about $64.8 billion. He was at one time chairman of the NASDAQ s ...
, crime and the financial crisis, terrorism and immigration. Twenty-seven of his articles were published as book chapters, whilst essays from his early work in the 1970s to today have been reproduced in readers and in translation. His work has been translated into eleven languages. In 2011 Young gave the introductory plenary at both the British Criminology Conference and the York Deviancy Conference. In 2012 he was awarded the Outstanding Achievement Award of the British Society of Criminology British Society of Criminology (BSC) is a leading international organizations aiming to further the interests and knowledge of both scholars and practitioners involved in any aspect of professional activity, teaching, research or public education ...
. In the months before his death he was working on a book entitled ''Merton's Dreams and Mills' Imagination''. In 2013 he completed a new introduction to the anniversary edition of ''The New Criminology''.
Personal life
Jock Young was born in Midlothian, Scotland, the son of a lorry driver. He died of anaplastic thyroid cancer on 16 November 2013.
Major works
* Young, J. (1971) ''The Drugtakers: The Social Meaning of Drug Use'', London: Judson, McGibbon and Kee
* Taylor, I., Walton, P. & Young, J. (1973) ''The New Criminology: For a Social Theory of Deviance'' (International Library of Sociology), London: Routledge.
* Lea, J., and Young, J. (1984) ''What Is to Be Done About Law and Order''?, London: Penguin.
* Young, J. (1999) ''The Exclusive Society: Social Exclusion, Crime and Difference in Late Modernity.'' London; Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications.
* Young, J. (2007) ''The Vertigo of Late Modernity'', London: Sage Publications.
* Ferrell, J., Hayward, K., Young, J. (2008) ''Cultural Criminology: An Invitation'', London: Sage.
* Young, J. (2011) ''The Criminological Imagination'', Cambridge: Polity.
References
Further reading
* Hayward, K., Maruna, S., Mooney, J. (2010) ''Fifty Key Thinkers in Criminology'', London: Routledge.
External links
Jock Young's articles
{{DEFAULTSORT:Young, Jock
1942 births
2013 deaths
Academics of Middlesex University
Academics of the University of Kent
Alumni of the London School of Economics
British criminologists
Deaths from thyroid cancer
Graduate Center, CUNY faculty