Penn Professors on Writing in Criminology

Dr. Freda Adler

About the Professor

Dr. Adler works in the cross-section of psychology, sociology, and law. Her accomplishments are extensive. She served as President of the American Criminological Society, and has acted as a consultant to the United Nations for criminal justice matters since 1975. An extremely influential and prolific writer, her works have had a major impact on female criminality, international crime, piracy, drug abuse, and social control theories.

Typical Student Assignments

Freda Adler does not believe that undergraduates taking basic courses in the discipline are ready to produce major papers in the field of criminology as they “have not had enough input to give output." The only writing assigned in her introductory courses are written exam essay questions. A typical essay question, for example, may center around policy making, e.g., ‘given what you know about three theoretical schools, how would you advise policy makers (to make various decisions)'? This type of question mirrors the professional writing done in the field.

Personal Writing Process

Freda Adler begins her writing process with a tough research question in mind. With this focus, she writes individual ideas on cards and lines the cards up in order to shift the order of ideas before making a tentative outline. There is a story to be told - even with a research agenda.

More extensive biographies of Freda Adler can be found at:

The Penn Department of Criminology and Wikipedia