What Should You Buy The Academic Criminologist in Your Life?
The holidays are fast approaching, and with them the annual tradition of buying gifts. Deciding what to purchase for the criminologist in your life can be challenging. As instructors, supervisors, mentors, colleagues, spouses, relatives, and friends, they are often a difficult lot to please.
They already get free books from publishers (mostly texts), and they are deeply tired of true crime. Although some of these suggestions may be more labor-intensive to secure than others, here are a few ideas beyond another Amazon gift card.
A Signed First Edition of Their Favorite Classic Book on Crime
Get them a book written by Cohen, Merton, or Young. Get it signed if you can. Watch them spend the next ASC conference casually showing it off to their homies at the hotel bar. They will be genuinely touched by the lengths you went to secure it, by what it signals about their respect for the canon, and how impressed they think their colleagues will be.
A Ring Doorbell System
Because they study and/or teach about crime all day but frequently live in gated communities or the leafy suburbs, they are probably concerned about package theft. They will present papers on mass incarceration at the morning panel, then check their phone during lunch to see whether that alert was the neighbor’s cat or an actual threat to their property.
Arrange a Police Ride-Along
It’s probably been years since they did a ride-along with the local police department, if they ever did one at all. They talk about “the streets” in classes, cite ethnographies about corner boys, and assign Code of the Street every semester. But the closest they get to the streets these days is taking their dog for a walk, or driving to campus or Whole Foods.
A Prison Tour With Someone Who Is Formerly Incarcerated
Not a warden. Not a “corrections professional.” Someone who did time and can explain what actually happens versus what they have come to believe from reading academic research.
A Framed Map with dots on the locations of the ASC Conferences They Attended
Atlanta four times. Philadelphia three times. Washington twice. They have seen the inside of more Marriott ballrooms than any human should. This gift says: I recognize that you have technically been to lots of major American cities.
A physical copy of Wilson & Kelling’s 1982 Broken Windows Article
They teach it every semester in their Crime and Public Policy seminar. They have relied on summaries for years. But now they might be finally motivated to read the piece without admitting they have never read the original in its entirety.
A Consultation With Someone Who Actually Reduced Crime
Not another academic. Not someone with a theory. Someone who ran a program that worked and has the data to prove it. Watch your criminologist carefully explain why it does not count: there was no randomization, the effect size is too small, or it is not generalizable. They need to be right more than they need solutions. This gift will remind them of that.
What Not to Buy
Anything true-crime related. No documentaries. No podcasts. No theories about who really did it. By the end of the fall semester, academic criminologists are probably tired. They just want to finish grading poorly written term papers and exams, and forget what they do to earn a living for a few weeks.
Photo
Title: Small Gift Boxes
Photographer: Thomas Sienicki
