Promoting the Theory and Practice of Criminology: The Australian and New Zealand Society of Criminology and Its Founding Moment

Abstract

It is almost 40 years to the day that a notice advertising a meeting to form an Australian Society of Criminology was distributed by David Biles, a lecturer in the Criminology Department at the University of Melbourne. As the notice makes clear, discussion had been under way for some time about the need for a society that would bring together 'people working in all aspects of criminal policy, crime control and correction'. Earlier in 1967, Biles and his colleagues at the Melbourne department had canvassed support for the proposal in a survey distributed throughout Australia, to which about 120 people had replied positively. 1 It was the year in which Ronald Ryan had been hanged at Pentridge Prison, an event that involved and appalled many who helped form the society. It was a time when the whipping of violent offenders was still considered a penal option, as the first issue of the society's