Oral History in Academic Criminal Justice: Reflections from ACJS "Triple Crown" Luminaries

Preserving and documenting the contributions of leading scholarship within criminology and criminal justice is essential to understanding the history of the field and serves to reaffirm high scholarly standards among the next generation of scholars. The current study, drawing from a leading professional organization within the field, the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences (ACJS), engages an oral history documentation of the recipients of the three most prestigious ACJS accolades. These awards are bestowed to respected, well-known scholars, although only six total in the history of the organization have been awarded all three, two have since passed away. We conducted in-depth interviews utilizing a semi-structured questionnaire with the four remaining Triple Crown winners. The importance of collaboration with other scholars is a key theme highlighted throughout, including in the capacity of official and unofficial mentors, external funding, publications, and professional organizations, to name a few.