14 OCTOBER 1960, Page 16

'PIONEERS IN CRIMINOLOGY

Snt,—I would respectfully advise my former LSE colleague D. Leach to look slightly more care1.111'Ye at the bdoks he has to review. The. first sonic'', of his review of Pioneers in Criminology (.51erlan; October 7, 1960, p. 532) contains no fewer 1," three errors of fact. He writes: 'Now that N'.' Butler and the Teds have given new respcetabilittoY to an old idea [sicil Dr. Mannhcini is able , assemble a band of American academics to irlIrList duce his lifework to the British public.' in the °rot place, the 'band of American academics' was ,11 assembled by me but by the American Journal• Criminal Lou', Criminology and Police Science 110`r fore I was invited to edit and introduce the book 1Y twelve are American, the others come from Australia, Austria, Great Britain, Western Germany, the Netherlands and the Spanish-speaking countries. a fact which gives the volume an international character ignored by Dr. Leach. If he had read Preface he would have avoided at least these errors. Thirdly, while I greatly enjoyed my work of editing and introducing this volume on behalf of Northwestern University, Chicago, as owners of tthhee,selournol, it puzzles me why Dr. Leach regards biographies of distinguished criminologists, Written by other distinguished criminologists, as my con "ework. My literary lifework, or at least part of it, unka°sists of my other books which are apparently wn to Dr. Leach, but he could have dis- covered their existence in Who's Who 13r. Leach tries to give the impression that most contributors to the volume are in favour of what he calls the 'ultra-radical Erewhonian mode of argument,' whereas in fact the arguments pro and con are well balanced. It is equally misleading to main- tain' as Dr. Leach does in his review of the first !lumber of the British Journal of Criminology, that hits Predecessor, the British Journal of Delinquency. as 'consistently upheld theourna view that crime is a 2.11.1Ptom of maladjustment better handled by psy- '1"latrists than by policemen.' In the Journal, WO, le,clitors of whom I happen to be one, have the past ten years tried to keep the balance tween the different theories on crime and punish- and the change in the title will make no t'huierence in our attitude. As everyone familiar with Deli subject knows, the alternative 'psychiatrist v. thercettlail' is much too narrow and misleading; chi:, are many other important figures on the bc-„4"°ard of whose existence Dr. Leach seems to "naware--Yours faithfully.

ZtJ HF.RMANN MANNHEIM ,,oddington Lane. Orpington, Kent