Well-known criminologist John Goldkamp, chair of the Criminal Justice Department at Temple University in Philadelphia, died this week, reports the Pretrial Justice Institute, where he was a member of the board of trustees. Institute director Tim Murray called Goldkamp “a giant in our field” and said, “all who are concerned with fair and effective justice will feel his loss.” Goldkamp’s bail guidelines experiment in the early 1980's set the stage for the development and implementation of validated pretrial risk assessments that are used today.
Murray says Goldkamp was the “first researcher to recognize the implications of drug courts,” and the first to evaluate Miami’s pioneering drug court program. Goldkamp wrote several books, including “Two Classes of Accused” and “Personal Liberty and Community Safety.” Among his honors was the American Society of Criminology’s August Vollmer Award. Temple said that Goldkamp “developed and assessed policy reforms addressing problems relating to pretrial detention, jail crowding, alternatives to incarceration in the adult and juvenile systems, design and implementation of substance abuse treatment, and design of Philadelphia's criminal courthouse.”