Blumstein to Honor Janet Reno

Professor Al Blumstein, J. Erik Jonsson University Professor of Urban Systems and Operations Research and former Dean of the Heinz School, will be a featured speaker at an event honoring Janet Reno, former U.S. Attorney General. The event, entitled The Reno Years: National Leadership and the Great American Crime Drop, will be held at the University of Pennsylvania on March 31, 2006. Blumstein will discuss the relationship between the Department of Justice and the crime drop in the 1990s, after which there will be a panel discussion, reception and dinner. A fellowship named for Reno will also be announced.

Janet Reno served as Attorney General of the United States from March 12, 1993 until the end of the Clinton administration (January 2001). She was the first woman to hold that office. During her tenure the Department of Justice faced the Branch Davidian standoff and fire in Waco, Texas; the return of Elian Gonzalez to his father in Cuba; and the Whitewater investigation. Prior to her federal appointment, she held various state and county attorney positions in the state of Florida, including staff director of the Judiciary Committee of the Florida House of Representatives, Attorney General of Dade County and Attorney General of Florida. She helped revise the Florida court system and reformed the Florida juvenile justice system.

Blumstein's research over the past twenty years has covered many aspects of criminal justice phenomena and policy, including crime measurement, criminal careers, sentencing, deterrence and incapacitation, prison populations, flow through the system, demographic trends, juvenile violence and drug-enforcement policy. He is also director of the National Consortium on Violence Research (NCOVR), a multi-university initiative funded by the National Science Foundation and headquartered at the Heinz School.

Blumstein served on the President's Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice in 1966-67 as Director of its Task Force on Science and Technology. He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences Committee on Research on Law Enforcement and the Administration of Justice from its founding in 1975 until 1986. He served as Chairman of that committee between 1979 and 1984, and has chaired the committee's panels on Research on Deterrent and Incapacitative Effects, on Sentencing Research, and on Research on Criminal Careers. He is a member of the Academy's Commission on Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education. He served from 1979 to 1990 as Chairman of the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency, the state's criminal justice planning agency, as well as on the Pennsylvania Commission on Sentencing from 1986-96. He was President of the Operations Research Society of America (ORSA) in 1977-78, he was awarded its Kimball Medal "for service to the profession and the society" in 1985, and its President's Award in 1993 "for service to society." He was president of the Institute of Management Sciences (TIMS) in 1987-88 and was President of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS) in 1996. He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Dr. Blumstein is a Fellow of the American Society of Criminology, was the 1987 recipient of the Society's Sutherland Award for "contributions to research," and was the president of the Society in 1991-92.