ABSTRACT
The influence of sociology as a discipline on criminology as a field of study is hard to exaggerate. As Ronald Akers observed in his presidential address at the annual meetings of the Southern Sociological Society, criminology was essentially incorporated into sociology by the middle of the twentieth century. 2 Subsequent developments, such as the emergence of criminal justice programs and the spread of criminological journals, have rendered sociology a less dominant force in the study of crime. Nevertheless, it seems fair to assert that “sociological perspectives still constitute…the intellectual center of gravity in criminology” (Akers, 1992: 4).
