Distinguished professor leads American Society of Criminology
Valerie Jenness, distinguished professor of criminology, law and society, has been elected president of the American Society of Criminology. She will begin her time in office as president-elect in November 2022 and take over as president in November 2023.
The society is an international organization whose members pursue scholarly, scientific, and professional knowledge concerning the measurement, etiology, consequences, prevention, control, and treatment of crime and delinquency.
“As I explained in my candidate’s statement, I attended my first annual meeting of the ASC about thirty years ago and last year’s annual meeting of the ASC in Chicago was the first professional conference I had attended in person since the pandemic began,” Jenness says. “As I recall, the first meeting was overwhelming and alienating; the last, a kind of homecoming. In between these bookends, my engagement with the ASC over the course of my career has been a gift that has nurtured and shaped me. For that, I am extraordinarily grateful. It is a debt I can never fully repay. By serving the organization, I can acknowledge the gift and attendant debt. Service as the ASC President is an honor and a great opportunity to show my continuing gratitude for the ASC and ‘pay it forward’. It will be a boatload of work, and work I welcome doing.”
Her plans as president include “an ongoing attentiveness to — and appreciation for — the wide range of disciplinary work being done by criminologists and the diverse audiences and communities with whom they engage and serve.”
Jenness, who has received numerous awards from the ASC for her research, teaching, and service, and earlier this month she received the 2022 Peterson-Krivo Mentoring Award from the American Sociological Association's Section on Crime, Law and Deviance and its Section on the Sociology of Law, is a former dean of the School of Social Ecology and former Chair of the Department of Criminology, Law and Society.
She has focused her research on prostitution, hate crime, and prison violence and grievances to explore the links between crime and social control, the politics of crime control, social movements and social change, and corrections and public policy.
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