CRIMINOLOGY CONFERENCE OPENS
Thousands Streaming in From U.S. and Abroad
November 11, 1998
By Hoag Levins
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Photo: Hoag Levins
Crowds of criminologists stream into the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel
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WASHINGTON, D.C. (APBnews.com) -- In one of the world's largest gatherings of crime experts, nearly 3,000 speakers, attendees and other participants began converging on this capital city today for the annual conferences of the American Society of Criminology (ASC) and Criminal Justice Journalists (CJJ).
Courtyard forest
The Wardman Park Hotel, located in the capital's tony Northwest district of embassies and millionaires' mansions, is a sprawling conference center with 49 meeting halls, some of them of vast proportions. Parts of its interior glint and glisten with ultra-modern chrome-and-glass spaces. At the conference center's heart is an open, central court with a small forest where fall colors still blaze.
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APBnews.com Launches at ASC/CJJ Conference
New York-based APB Online, Inc., today announced the launch of its APBnews.com news Web site. A team of APBnews.com reporters is on-site in Washington, D.C., to provide daily news coverage at the four-day conference of the American Society of Criminology (ASC) and Criminal Justice Journalists (CJJ).
APBnews.com is an Internet site focused exclusively on covering crime and justice issues and events.
"Our mission is to provide accurate, responsible, fair and in-context news and features from across the United States," said APB Online, Inc., CEO Marshall Davidson. "We plan to be the Internet source for police and crime content; like CNET is for technology, or SportsLine is for sports."
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In both an intellectual and physical sense, there is a certain Olympian quality to this, the 50th annual ASC meeting. President Margaret A. Zahn pointed out that the gathering is the Society's largest and most complex to date.
Over the next four days, scholars, scientists, law enforcement officers, legislative experts, judges and others will be offered the opportunity to select from an astounding 522 sessions in which 1,918 crime-related papers will be delivered. These reports include themes ranging from "Caribbean Criminology" and "Religiosity and Delinquency" to "Crime Prevention in Public Housing" and "Prison and Jail Violence."
Marathon of sessions
Just today, in a 14-hour period beginning at 8 a.m., more than 151 separate sessions were held throughout this sprawling Marriott Wardman Park Hotel convention complex.
The proceedings ranged across a panorama of social, police, community, crime and corrections issues.
The opening session explored the concept of what "community" is and how shame -- along with responsibility, remorse and reparation -- must function as its glue.
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Photo: Hoag Levins
Directories thick as phone books list ASC conference events.
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Another morning event focused on the growth of gangs and gang warfare in St. Louis, while a third explored patterns -- or their absence -- in the murders of police officers across the United States during a 56 year period.
One event reported the findings of a study designed to determine how well jury members in capital cases actually understand the instructions given to them by the judge.
Crime reporters
Meanwhile, as the ASC's members began meeting to discuss the study of criminal issues, the Criminal Justice Journalists (CJJ) organization kicked off its simultaneous conference about the news coverage of the same topics. It was a much more modest schedule with four main sessions that looked at issues including school crime, the influence of media reporting on the fear of crime, the right of journalists to have access to prisons and the often baffling and controversial problem confonted in many newsrooms: How to make sense of crime statistics.
Hoag Levins is the managing editor of APBnews.com.
© 1998 APBnews.com
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