Social Bridges and Contexts in Criminology and Sociology

Reflections on the Intellectual Legacy of James F. Short, Jr.

Lorine Hughes, Lisa Broidy, Lorine A Hughes, Lisa M Broidy, Lorine Hughes, Lisa Broidy, Lorine A Hughes, Lisa M Broidy

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• eBook ISBN: 9781000288667
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Criminology
• Index: Social Sciences

Social Bridges and Contexts in Criminology and Sociology brings together leading scholars to commemorate the illustrious career and enduring contributions of Professor James F. Short, Jr., to the social sciences. Although Professor Short is best known as a gang scholar, he was a bridging figure who advanced the study of human behavior across multiple domains.

Individual chapters document Professor Short's intellectual development and highlight the significance of his theoretical and empirical work in a range of specialty areas, including suicide and homicide, criminological theory, field and self-report survey research methodologies, white-collar crime, hazards and risks, levels of explanation, microsocial group processes, and the etiology of gang violence and delinquency. A special feature of this book is the collection of brief personal reflection essays appearing after the main chapters. Authored by Professor Short's students, colleagues, collaborators, and friends, these essays provide powerful testimonials of the influence of his intellectual legacy as well as his generous spirit and commitment to mentorship.

Written in a clear and direct style, this book will appeal to students and scholars of criminology and sociology, and all those interested in the important contributions of Professor James F. Short, Jr., to these subject areas.

Part One
Intellectual roots

1 Reflections on disciplines and fields, problems, policies, and life^*

James F. Short Jr.

Introduction

It is a distinct honor to participate in launching the Annual Review of Criminology and to congratulate Joan Petersilia and Robert J. Sampson as Co-Editors of this new journal. Annual Reviews has a distinguished record of service to basic disciplines and related fields. Establishment of the journal is a much-deserved recognition of the maturity and progress of criminology.

The title of this essay reflects a few of the theoretical, empirical, and methodological issues with which I have been concerned and problems related to them as well as reflections on some of the major influences, personal and professional, over my long life.¹ Having written a fair amount on these topics, my hope is to encapsulate and summarize, to clarify rather than belabor, to argue rather than insist; always mindful that, as Emerson observed, “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds!”

The accident of birth and life’s beginnings

My first serious attempt to explain and understand myself, as well as others, was written for Sociological Self-Images, Irving Louis Horowitz’s “Collective Portrait” of 13 sociologists, including himself (Short 1969). I was flattered by the invitation and titled my essay “A Natural History of One Sociological Career,” which I began with the observation that I was born in Illinois on land homesteaded by my great-grandfather. That proud heritage—its strengths and its weaknesses and my attempts to sort them out and to cope with them—is reflected still in my personal and professional life.

That heritage served me well through the Great Depression and World War II. My father was the principal of the high school in the small town of New Berlin in the heart of farmland on the Illinois prairie.² His long tenure in that position was aided by being a Baptist, a minority in a community where religion was taken seriously and dominated by Irish-Catholics and German-Lutherans, both of which maintained parochial elementary schools.

It was common knowledge, boasted by some, that no black person had ever spent a night in our little town. I do not know whether this was true, but I remember vividly the only night in my memory when it was not true. A touring quartet of women from a small black church in the southern United States visited our church. Following their performance, fearful for the women’s safety, deacons from the church, including my father, spent the night guarding their small trailer against would-be intruders. History—at least for some of us—had been made (Short 1988).

In 1942, when US Marine recruiters showed up at Shurtleff College, where I was a freshman, rather than waiting for the military draft I signed up for a new Navy V-12 program, the attraction of which was the assurance of continuation of college enrollment at selective campuses for an unspecified period—assumed to be a year or more—in preparation for officer training.³

On July 1, 1943, I became a Marine in the Navy V-12 unit at Denison University in Granville, Ohio. Like Shurtleff, Denison was a small liberal arts college with nominal Protestant affiliation. We were in uniform, lived in separate barracks and had assigned duties, but the prescribed curriculum permitted a good deal of choice. I took my first courses in sociology, taught by Frederick G. Detweiler, a University of Chicago PhD. Like many social-gospel sociologists before him, Detweiler continued to preach occasionally and clearly favored social work, rather than sociology, as a vocation for his students.

Five quarters of V-12 at Denison were about as normal as the college experience could be, given the constraints of military service. I participated in extracurricular musical and theatrical activities, joined a fraternity to increase nonmilitary contacts, found a lovely girlfriend, and learned to love Shakespeare.⁴

In the winter of 1944–45, Marine boot camp was followed by a brief assignment to Camp Lejeune (North Carolina), thence to Quantico (Virginia) for Officer Candidate School. While there, Franklin D. Roosevelt, the only US President I had really known, died, and fighting in the European theater of WWII ended. Shortly thereafter, following one of the bloodiest battles in the Pacific theater, Okinawa fell and the war ended. I was—and will be always—acutely aware of how fortunate I was to avoid combat. Commissioned as a “shavetail” (2nd Lieutenant), I joined a Marine unit in the occupation of Japan.

Although my background had equipped me to survive small-town rural and small-college America, the Japanese occupation changed my life forever and raised serious doubts about what I wanted out of life and how to live it. A few examples—some humorous, some very serious and troubling—seem much like a Hollywood script.

Growing up in Japan ⁵

My first night in Japan was spent in Nagasaki in the midst of the destruction caused by the second atomic bomb. Walking to breakfast the next morning, I was greeted by Japanese children on the street, all shouting what seemed to be a reference to the state of Ohio, followed by something unintelligible to my ill-prepared ears. They were, of course, greeting me with the traditional polite form of morning greeting “o-hai-o go-zai-mas.” This was only the first of many sometimes-embarrassing encounters with the Japanese people.

I was assigned to B (Baker) Company, detached from battalion headquarters, in Omuta, a small coal-mining village on the island of Kyushu.⁶ Soon thereafter, I was appointed to a court martial for a young Marine who had confessed to an armed robbery of a Japanese civilian. The victim was not hurt and the amount stolen was trivial, but the matter was serious because of the delicacy of relationships between an occupying force and the host country. The senior officer of the court martial insisted that the boy be sentenced to prison and dishonorably discharged. Shortly thereafter, a member of the company was killed when he fell, in an inebriated state, from the jeep that was taking him back to camp for return to the States and discharge from the service. I was given the responsibility of informing the man’s parents of their son’s death. During this brief period, I also came perilously close to accidentally shooting the sergeant seated across from me as we were escorting a train to Nagasaki.⁷ Events over the ensuing weeks were equally challenging.

Soon after the return of Baker Company to battalion headquarters, two of the men in my platoon were arrested for black-market activity. They denied the charge and asked that I represent them at trial. Evidence for their complicity was flimsy. I was uneasy with the assignment, especially because my company commander, a not very likable character, was prosecuting the case. The men were acquitted at the trial, a most unusual occurrence in military justice in those days. The word quickly got around that I must be a good defense attorney, but my reputation quickly collapsed when I lost my next two cases and self-confessed defendants were given long prison sentences.

The pace of events picked up during the winter of 1946 when my platoon was assigned patrol and arms disposition over an area several miles from the battalion. We were billeted in a small hotel on the outskirts of a small city, next to which was a brothel, where a dozen prostitutes plied their trade. It was common knowledge that venereal disease was rampant among occupying forces at the time, but I was reasonably certain that none of the men in my platoon was infected. What to do?

I first did what regulations called for. A large sign reading “Out of bounds to all allied personnel” was placed at the entrance to the brothel. Short of posting 24-hour guard, however, this seemed unlikely to prevent some of the young men in my platoon from patronizing the place. Discussions with my platoon sergeant and an interpreter suggested a course of action.⁸ We contacted the mayor of the city and the chief of police, requested that the prostitutes be inspected, and asked that infected girls be removed and treated. Members of my platoon were informed and told that anyone who contracted venereal disease would be court martialed, and “nonallied” was added to the sign at the entrance to the brothel. The strategy worked. After two months in the field, we returned to battalion headquarters, without a single case of venereal disease.

More troubling during this period were two incidents. Our orders included collecting contraband small weapons, including swords, which were to be destroyed. Even then I knew that swords were primarily of symbolic significance to the Japanese, and I had some understanding of what their destruction might mean. Although we were not required to conduct a house-to-house search, a few dozen swords were collected. We dug a pit, poured oil over the swords and a few other items, set them afire, and buried the lot. I still feel pangs of guilt over having carried out the order.

The second incident was even more disturbing. Early one evening, I received a police report that two Marines had assaulted and robbed a local citizen, severely injuring him. After the incident was reported to headquarters, a paramedic was secured, which probably saved the victim’s life. Without warning, my platoon sergeant and I shook down the platoon, found the stolen goods, and quickly obtained confessions from the offenders—two young Marines, who then asked that I represent them at trial. My defense—their previous good behavior, ready confession, and genuine remorse—fell on deaf ears. They, too, were dishonorably discharged and sentenced to prison. The Marine Corps seemed oblivious to the seriousness of a dishonorable discharge for the future lives of those who received such a sentence.

Other incidents during this period were more pleasant, albeit at times embarrassing. Shortly after confronting the brothel situation, my platoon sergeant and I were invited for an evening of recorded classical music by the local physician who had supervised the inspections. We were greeted at the door with the announcement that his wife had prepared a special treat for us: American donuts! They looked delicious, but the first bite indicated that they had been fried in fish oil. We ate every one!⁹

While in charge of a group of Marines on weekend leave at a mountain retreat, I heard a good deal of chatter about how they planned to be on the lookout for local women. After the assignment of rooms, we were escorted to the resort’s hot baths. A few minutes after everyone had stripped and gingerly entered the hot water, several female staff members joined us, naked, as, of course, we were. My initial embarrassment changed to amusement as I watched the surprised and instinctively embarrassed reactions of the previously boastful men.

While on patrol, we discovered gun emplacements on the coast in preparation for the anticipated invasion, and armaments buried in a school yard. We entertained schoolchildren with American-English lessons and played baseball with a local team, even celebrating a most improbable victory. We made personal friendships with former enemies. In an isolated seacoast village, we met an elderly English woman who was indistinguishable from her Japanese husband and neighbors. When a fire broke out in a field after we had used explosives to destroy a damaged fighter plane, we witnessed a dramatic demonstration of effective village mobilization and the blaze was quickly extinguished. As a mobile poll watcher for Japan’s first general elections, I observed an exercise in democracy in a country that lacked democratic traditions. I saw the power of social stratification and culture, and challenges to both, demonstrated every day, without fully understanding either.¹⁰

Before returning to the United States, I turned down a field promotion and upon being mustered out of the service, was, I believe, the only officer among a large group to choose a reduction in rank rather than remain in the Marine Reserves.¹¹

Upon discharge, I returned to Denison filled with doubts and questions. My most compelling Denison influence while in the service had been W. Alvin Pitcher, who taught philo...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of contributors
• Editorial introduction
• Part One Intellectual roots
• Part Two Early career contributions
• Part Three Crowning insights
• Part Four Novel applications to knowledge and policy
• Part Five Reflection essays
• Index