ZIMRING, Franklin E(ster) 1942-

PERSONAL: Born December 2, 1942, in Los Angeles, CA; son of Maurice (a writer) and Molly (an attorney; maiden name, Dilman) Zimring; married Susan Hilty, February 18, 1967; children: Carl, Daniel. Education: Wayne State University, B.A. (with distinction), 1963; University of Chicago, J.D. (cum laude), 1967. Religion: Jewish.

ADDRESSES: Office—Earl Warren Legal Institute, 383 Boalt Hall, University of California—Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, assistant professor and research associate at Center for Studies in Criminal Justice, 1967-69, associate professor, 1969-72, professor of law, 1972-85, associate director of center, 1971-73, codirector, 1973-75, director, 1975-85; Earl Warren Legal Institute, University of California, Berkeley, director, 1985—; William G. Simon Professor of Law, University of California, Berkeley. Visiting professor at University of Pennsylvania and Yale University. Center for Advanced Studies in Behavioral Sciences, fellow. Member of National Science Foundation and National Academy of Sciences panels and committees; chairperson of advisory committee of Vera Institute of Justice Project, 1976—, and Assessment Center for Alternatives to Juvenile Courts, 1977; panel member for National Center for Policy Analysis.

MEMBER: American Society of Criminology (fellow), American Academy of Arts and Sciences, National Pre-Trial Services Association (member of advisory committee, 1975—), American Civil Liberties Union, Illinois Academy of Criminology (member of executive committee, 1968-71, 1977—), Illinois Youth Services Association (honorary member of board of directors, 1977—), Phi Beta Kappa.

AWARDS, HONORS: Gavel Award, American Bar Association, 1973; civilian award of merit, Chicago Crime Commission, 1975; Distinguished Speaker of the Year Award, American Forensic Association, 1986; Paul Tappan Award, Western Society of Criminology, 1993-94, for outstanding contributions to the field of criminology; John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship, 1995; Best Edited Book Award, Society for Research on Adolescence, 2002, for The Changing Borders of Juvenile Justice: Transfer of Adolescents to the Criminal Court.

WRITINGS:

(With George N. Newton) Firearms and Violence in American Life, U.S. Government Printing Office (Washington, DC), 1969.

Perspectives on Deterrence (monograph), National Institute of Mental Health (Washington, DC), 1971.

(With Gordon Hawkins) Deterrence: The Legal Threat in Crime Control, University of Chicago Press (Chicago, IL), 1973.

Confronting Youth Crime: Report of the Twentieth Century Fund Task Force on Sentencing Policy Toward Young Offenders, Holmes & Meier (New York, NY), 1978.

(With Peter W. Greenwood and Joan Petersilia) Age, Crime, and Sanctions: The Transition from Juvenile to Adult Court, Rand (Santa Monica, CA), 1980.

(With Richard Frase) The Criminal Justice System, Little, Brown (Boston, MA), 1980.

The Changing Legal World of Adolescence, Free Press (New York, NY), 1982.

(Editor, with Michael Tonry) Reform and Punishment: Essays on Criminal Sentencing, University of Chicago Press (Chicago, IL), 1983.

(With Peter W. Greenwood and Allan Abrahamse) Factors Affecting Sentence Severity for Young Adult Offenders, Rand (Santa Monica, CA), 1984.

(Editor, with Gordon Hawkins) The Pursuit of Criminal Justice: Essays from the Chicago Center, University of Chicago Press (Chicago, IL), 1984.

(With Peter W. Greenwood) One More Chance: The Pursuit of Promising Intervention Strategies for Chronic Juvenile Offenders, Rand (Santa Monica, CA), 1985.

(With Gordon Hawkins) Capital Punishment and the American Agenda, Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 1986.

(With Gordon Hawkins) Pornography in a Free Society, Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 1988.

(Editor, with Michael D. Laurence and John R. Snortum) Social Control of the Drinking Driver, University of Chicago Press (Chicago, IL), 1988.

(With Gordon Hawkins) The Scale of Imprisonment, University of Chicago Press (Chicago, IL), 1991.

(With Gordon Hawkins) The Citizen's Guide to Gun Control, Macmillan (New York, NY), 1992.

(With Gordon Hawkins) Prison Population and Criminal Justice Policy in California, University of California (Berkeley, CA), 1992.

(With Gordon Hawkins) The Search for Rational Drug Control, Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 1992.

(With Gordon Hawkins) Incapacitation: Penal Confinement and the Restraint of Crime, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 1995.

(With Gordon Hawkins) Crime Is Not the Problem: Lethal Violence in America, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 1997.

American Youth Violence, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 1998.

(With Sam Kamin and Gordon Hawkins) Crime and Punishment in California: The Impact of Three Strikes and You're Out, University of California Press (Berkeley, CA), 1999.

(Editor, with Jeffrey Fagan) The Changing Borders of Juvenile Justice: Transfer of Adolescents to the Criminal Court, University of Chicago Press (Chicago, IL), 2000.

(With Sam Kamin and Gordon Hawkins) Punishment and Democracy: Three Strikes and You're Out in California, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 2001.

(Editor, with Margaret K. Rosenheim, Franklin E. Zimring, David S. Tanenhaus, and Bernardine Dohrn) A Century of Juvenile Justice, Chicago University Press (Chicago, IL), 2002.

The Contradictions of American Capital Punishment, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 2003.

An American Travesty: Legal Responses to Adolescent Sexual Offending, University of Chicago Press (Chicago, IL), 2004.

American Juvenile Justice, Oxford University Press, 2005.

Contributor to books, including Deviance and Liberty, Aldine, 1974, and The Serious Juvenile Offender, U.S. Government Printing Office (Washington, DC), 1978. Contributor of articles to scholarly journals, magazines, and newspapers, including Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, San Francisco Chronicle, Buffalo News, Nation, Indiana Law Journal, Columbia Law Review, and Trial. Member of editorial board of Evaluation Quarterly, Law and Behavior, Crime and Delinquency, and Journal of Criminal Justice, all 1976—. Member of editorial advisory board, Western Criminology Review.

SIDELIGHTS: Franklin E. Zimring is a professor of law at the University of California—Berkeley and a prolific author of books on the law. His particular fields of interest are criminal justice and family law. His studies of the analyses of violent assaults and robberies are a significant part of the foundation of modern firearms control. For many years, Zimring has spoken out against reactive policymaking on such matters as juvenile crime, the death penalty, and gun control, arguing that harsh, inhumane punishment is not an effective deterrent to crime.

Over the years Zimring has written many studies on juvenile crime and its punishment. He collected years of his research in American Youth Violence, praised by Carolyn Frantz in Michigan Law Review as a "remarkably comprehensive" work. Frantz stated: "He comes at the issues from all angles—he is at the same time a social scientist, a policy specialist, and a legal philosopher. He uses empirical data to challenge (quite convincingly) the perception that American youth are increasingly violent." Doing so, she noted, "The basic aim of [Zimring's] project is to quell the storm of youth crime policy motivated by 'fear and hostility' towards young offenders…. Increased length of punishment, as well as abandonment of efforts at reform, have characterized the recent moves in juvenile justice. Zimring argues against these trends." The author analyzes data to disprove the notion that a new class of "superpredator," or extremely dangerous youth, is developing, and that harsh punishment will correct that situation.

The Contradictions of American Capital Punishment addressed another of Zimring's principle concerns. An earlier work, Capital Punishment and the American Agenda, had offered a history of the gradual abolition, in Western industrial democracies, of the death penalty. Contradictions examines the conflicting impulses in the American psyche that have led to the United States continuing to enact capital punishment even when other Western nations have abandoned it. Zimring, an avowed opponent of capital punishment, is straightforward about the purpose of his book, which is to explore the changes that must come about to end the death penalty. An Economist reviewer remarked, "Mr. Zimring tackles head-on the most puzzling question of all: why are Americans so determined to keep the death penalty when nearly all other developed democracies have given it up, and now view it as barbaric?" A Library Journal critic concluded, "Although controversial, this work is undoubtedly at the forefront of the debate over interstate variations in death penalty jurisprudence."

Zimring has published several books on the problem of guns and violence. Crime Is Not the Problem: Lethal Violence in America seeks, through investigation of World Health Organization reports and fact-gathering from big-city police departments in other countries, "to understand why our rate of violence is so much higher than in England, Australia, France or Germany," observed James Wilson in the New Republic. Wilson continued, "The answer given by Zimring and [coauthor Gordon] Hawkins is that we kill each other more often (and engage in property crimes, such as robbery, that often have fatal outcomes) in large part because Americans are more heavily armed than are other societies." Wilson predicted that "opponents of gun control will reflexively object to this conclusion," yet added that "if they are to prevail, they will have tough going against the arguments made here."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

periodicals

America, October 27, 2003, Richard Garnett, "Final Justice," p. 20.

American Journal of Sociology, March, 1999, Gary Kleck, review of Crime Is Not the Problem: Lethal Violence in America, p. 1543.

American Political Science Review, March, 1988, Mary Thornberry, review of Capital Punishment and the American Agenda, p. 308; March, 1991, Susan Gluck Mezey, review of Pornography in a Free Society, p. 254; June, 1992, Gregory Russell, review of The Scale of Imprisonment, p. 530; June, 1993, John Gilliom, review of The Search for Rational Drug Control, p. 504.

American Prospect, July-August, 2003, Wendy Kaminer, review of The Contradictions of American Capital Punishment, p. 69.

Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, May, 1990, Joseph Kalet, review of Pornography in a Free Society, p. 191; July, 1997, Barbara Boland, review of Incapacitation: Penal Confinement and the Restraint of Crime, p. 187.

Booklist, July, 1997, Mary Carroll, review of Crime Is Not the Problem, p. 1783.

British Journal of Criminology, summer, 1990, Philip Bean, review of Pornography in a Free Society, p. 402; winter, 1993, Rod Morgan, review of The Scale of Punishment, p. 123; spring, 1994, Vincenzo Ruggiero, review of The Search for Rational Drug Control, p. 239.

British Journal of Sociology, September, 1991, Michael Kimmel, review of Pornography in a Free Society, p. 475.

California Law Review, January, 2002, Michael Vitiello, review of Punishment and Democracy: Three Strikes and You're Out in California, p. 257.

Canadian Journal of Criminology, April, 1993, Richard Ericson, review of The Scale of Imprisonment, p. 214.

Canadian Journal of Law and Society, spring, 1993, Janet Chan, review of The Scale of Imprisonment, p. 207.

Choice, October, 1995, R. Zingraff, review of Incapacitation, p. 375.

Christianity and Crisis, January 8, 1990, Arthur Moore, review of Pornography in a Free Society, p. 419.

Contemporary Sociology, January, 1988, James Acker, review of Capital Punishment and the American Agenda, p. 67; May, 1988, Gary Kleck, review of The Citizen's Guide to Gun Control, p. 363.

Corrections Compendium, March, 2002, Craig Hemmens, review of Punishment and Democracy, p. 23.

Criminal Justice Review, spring, 1999, David May, review of Crime Is Not the Problem, p. 64; spring, 2002, John MacDonald, review of American Youth Violence, p. 175.

Economist, May 23, 1992, review of The Search for Rational Drug Control, p. 96; May 31, 2003, review of The Contradictions of American Capital Punishment, p. 83.

Ethics, January, 1989, Peter Williams, review of Medical Innovation and Bad Outcomes: Legal, Social, and Ethical Responses, p. 466; July, 1989, Stephen Nathanson, review of Capital Punishment and the American Agenda, p. 964; April, 1990, Susan Coultrap-McQuin, review of Pornography in a Free Society, p. 710.

Federal Probation, June, 1985, Edward Tromanhauser, review of The Pursuit of Criminal Justice: Essays from the Chicago Center, p. 78; September, 1993, Jay Whetzel, review of The Scale of Imprisonment, p. 89; December, 1999, Charles Shireman, review of American Youth Violence, p. 93.

Harvard Law Review, June, 2001, review of Punishment and Democracy, p. 2586; December, 2002, review of A Century of Juvenile Justice, p. 747.

Inquiry, fall, 1988, David Warren, review of Medical Innovation and Bad Outcomes: Legal, Social, and Ethical Responses, p. 413.

Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, May, 2005, Daphne Dorce and Stephen Bates Billick, review of An American Travesty: Legal Responses to Adolescent Sexual Offending, p. 502.

Journal of Criminal Justice, May-June, 1988, M. Dwayne Smith, review of Capital Punishment and the American Agenda, p. 255; January-February, 1993, Ann Munster, review of The Search for Rational Drug Control, p. 93; November, 1993, Peter Hoffman, review of The Scale of Imprisonment, p. 605.

Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, summer, 1988, Raymond Kessler, review of The Citizen's Guide to Gun Control, p. 541; winter, 1997, Kevin Reitz, review of The Scale of Imprisonment, p. 604; spring, 1999, Bard Ferrall, review of American Youth Violence, p. 1163; fall, 1999, Thomas Geraghty and Steven Drizin, review of American Youth Violence, p. 363.

Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, fall, 1992, Philip Cook, review of The Search for Rational Drug Control, p. 716.

Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, August, 1992, Geoffrey Pearson, review of The Search for Rational Drug Control, p. 363.

Journal of the American Medical Association, August 11, 1989, Kevin Olden, review of Social Control of the Drinking Driver, p. 840.

Kirkus Reviews, March 15, 2003, review of The Contradictions of American Capital Punishment, p. 451.

Lancet, July 27, 1996, Mike Males, review of The Search for Rational Drug Control, p. 253.

Law and Social Inquiry, summer, 1989, review of Pornography in a Free Society, p. 623; fall, 2002, Gary LaFree, review of Punishment and Democracy, p. 875.

Law and Society Review, 1988, Patricia Ewick, review of Reform and Punishment: Essays on Criminal Sentencing, p. 821; February, 1991, Steven Alan Childress, review of Pornography in a Free Society, p. 177; April, 2000, Williams Lyons, review of Crime Is Not the Problem, p. 213.

Law, Medicine and Health Care, spring, 1989, Marshall Kapp, review of Social Control of the Drinking Driver, p. 94; spring, 1989, Marshall Kapp, review of The Citizen's Guide to Gun Control, p. 94.

Library Journal, February 15, 1989, Kenneth Kister, review of Pornography in a Free Society, p. 168; summer, 1988, review of Social Control of the Drinking Driver, p. 650; January 1, 1999, Mary Jane Brustman, review of American Youth Violence, p. 126; August, 2003, "Death Row Conversions," review of The Contradictions of American Capital Punishment, p. 107.

Los Angeles Times, April 13, 2003, Susan Salter Reynolds, "Discoveries," p. R19.

Michigan Law Review, May, 1988, John Pierce Stimson, review of Capital Punishment and the American Agenda, p. 1331; May, 2000, Carolyn Frantz, review of American Youth Violence, p. 1974.

Nation, October 26, 1992, Diana Gordon, review of The Search for Rational Drug Control, p. 478.

New England Journal of Medicine, May 12, 1988, Arthur Caplan, review of Medical Innovation and Bad Outcomes: Legal, Social, and Ethical Responses, p. 1285.

New Jersey Law Journal, August 22, 1991, Anne Kornhauser, review of The Scale of Imprisonment, p. 18.

New Republic, August 25, 1997, James Wilson, review of Crime Is Not the Problem, p. 38.

Pacific Law Journal, summer, 1996, Raymond Parnas, review of Incapacitation, p. 1653.

Political Science Quarterly, winter, 1992, Sanya Popovic, review of The Search for Rational Drug Control, p. 774; fall, 1995, John Dilulio, review of Incapacitation, p. 470.

School Library Journal, February, 1988, Dorcas Hand, review of The Citizen's Guide to Gun Control, p. 97.

Science, July 29, 1988, Philip Cook, review of Social Control of the Drinking Driver, p. 603.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer (Seattle, WA), November 9, 1999, "Three Strikes Law Not Working, Study Claims," p. A4.

Social Science Quarterly, September, 1993, W. David Watts, review of The Search for Rational Drug Control, p. 699.

Social Service Review, March, 2003, Rosemary Sarri, review of A Century of Juvenile Justice, p. 145; December, 2004, Bernardine Dohrn, review of The Contradictions of American Capital Punishment, p. 688.

Society, November-December, 1988, Nathaniel Pallone, review of Capital Punishment and the American Agenda, p. 84; January-February, 1990, Mary Curtis, review of Pornography in a Free Society, p. 89.

Sociological Inquiry, spring, 1990, L. W. Buckalew, review of Social Control of the Drinking Driver, p. 216; fall, 1993, H. David Allen, review of The Search for Rational Drug Control, p. 496.

Sociology, August, 1992, Elizabeth Wilson, review of Pornography in a Free Society, p. 527.

Times (London, England), November 10, 1999, Grace Bradberry, "Three strikes law 'a failure,'" p. 20.

Times Literary Supplement, August 12, 1988, N. S. Sutherland, review of Social Control of the Drinking Driver, p. 880; January 12, 1990, Anthony Clare, review of Pornography in a Free Society, p. 32.

Washington Post, December 20, 1985, William Raspberry, "Could-be criminals," p. A23.

Washington Times, June 22, 2003, Bruce Fein, review of The Contradictions of American Capital Punishment, p. B7.

Yale Law Journal, March, 1996, Catherine Sharkey, review of Incapacitation, p. 1433.*