START Founding Director Gary LaFree delivered the Sutherland lecture, titled “In the Shadow of 9/11: How the Study of Political Extremism Has Reshaped Criminology,” in Chicago, Ill. at the annual meetings of the American Society of Criminology (ASC) in November.
LaFree received the Sutherland Award in 2020, which recognizes outstanding contributions to theory or research in criminology on the etiology of criminal and deviant behavior, the criminal justice system, corrections, law, or justice.
“Following Edwin Sutherland's influential research, the study of white-collar crime became a recognized specialization within criminology,” LaFree said. “Sutherland called for the end of a criminology that ignores the crimes of the rich and those who do not recognize their criminal behavior as criminal. Similarly, integrating political crimes into criminology forces us to rethink conventional ideas about crime.”
LaFree recently concluded his tenure as the Chair of the Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of Maryland.
Those interested can view a recording of the address on the ASC YouTube channel, and see the written version of the address as the lead article in the February 2022 issue of Criminology.