THE APPROPRIATION OF THE JACK-ROLLER LIFE-HISTORIES

Jon Snodgrass, Ph.D.

Department of Sociology

California State University, Los Angeles

5151 State University Drive,

Los Ángeles, CA 90032

jsnodgr@calstatela.edu

(323) 343-2215 Tel

Proceedings of the 17th

International Oral History Conference

Buenos Aires, Argentina,

Sep 5, 2012 (revised 8-01-2015).

2

The Appropriation of the Jack-Roller Life-Histories

Abstract

The Jack-Roller: A Delinquent Boy’s Own Story (1930) contains the autobiography of a teenage

mugger at the center of a sociological casebook. The report included chapters by sociologist

Clifford R. Shaw; the official delinquent, work and school records; the treatment history and

commentaries by experts. The delinquent author signed an agreement with sociologist to receive

seven percent royalties and to retain the copyright to the life-history. The Jack-Roller is the most

well-known offender and the text a classic in criminology, claiming the reformation an incorri-

gible predator.

The Jack-Roller at Seventy: A Fifty Year Follow-Up was a collaboration between the Jack-Roller

and the present author 1976-1978. The subject revealed that he had been re-imprisoned for

attempted armed robbery one year after the publication of the original study in 1930. He was

institutionalized in a state hospital, on and off the violent ward, for five years during the mid-

1940s and twice escaped. In 1982, a commercial publisher redacted the follow-up study and

provided expert commentaries to approbate the volume.

An American criminology journal dedicated a special issue to the centennial birth of the Jack-

Roller in 2007. Covering 100 years, the case constitutes the longest longitudinal study and one

the most examined individuals in the history of the social sciences. This essay reviews: the dual

autobiographies, the theoretical disputes, the double appropriation, the suppression and the cen-

sorship of the follow-up research findings. The case illustrates the exploitation of a vulnerable

subject and the historical moral integrity of qualitative sociology.

Key Words

The Jack-Roller

Life-History Writing

Longitudinal Study

Life-Course Criminology

Chicago School Criminology

Qualitative Sociology

Research and Publishing Ethics

3

La Apropiación de las Historias de la Vida del ‘Jack-Roller’

Resumen

The Jack-Roller: A Delinquent Boy’s Own Story (1930) contiene la autobiografía de un atacador

adolescente. Al autor le fueron prometidas regalías y derechos de editor del libro y generalmente

es atribuido al criminólogo Clifford R. Shaw. El libro incluyó un análisis de Shaw, la historia del

tratamiento, documentos oficiales y comentarios de expertos. Se convirtió en una obra clásica de

la criminología al reivindicar la rehabilitación de un criminal violento.

The Jack-Roller at Seventy: A Fifty Year Follow-Up fue colaboración entre el Jack-Roller y el

autor presente (1978). El estudio reveló que “Stanley” había cometido un delito grave y había

sido devuelto a la cárcel en 1931, un año después publicó el estudio original. También fue con-

finado en una sala para violento en un hospital a lo largo de la década de 1940. La secuela apareció

en 1982 bajo condiciones estipuladas por el editor, incluyendo la expurgación del análisis crítico

y la inclusión de exposiciones de expertos que apoyaron la investigación original, a fin de

aprobar la publicación.

Un número especial dedicado al Jack-Roller apareció en el jornal Criminología Teórica en 2007.

Este caso es el más largo estudio longitudinal ya que cubre más de 110 años. Él es uno de los

individuos más intensamente estudiados en la historia de las ciencias sociales. Este artículo

muestra algunos de las controversias históricas y disputas teóricas detrás de esto más bien

conocido delincuente en criminología. Además, la historia de la vida del Jack-Roller ilustra el

cuadro más amplio de mala conducta profesional entre científicos sociales y las instituciones

académicas en la explotación de un individuo de clase baja y la asignación de su propiedad

intelectual en el proceso de investigación.

Palabras Clave

El Jack-Roller

Historias de la Vida

La Escuela de Chicago de la Criminología

Censura Académica

Mala Conducta Profesional

Fraude en Ciencias Sociales

4

The Jack-Roller Original Edition (1930)

In the 1920s, criminologist Clifford R. Shaw was a doctoral candidate at the University of Chi-

cago and a settlement house social worker in an ethnic neighborhood. He solicited the life-story

of a “Jack-Roller,” an individual who robs on city streets, by strong-arm or club, public drunks

and sleeping homeless men. The predation at times caused serious injury, but probably he never

killed anyone. Known for being heartless, jack rolling was regarded as the lowest form of crime

in the underworld.

The word “mugger” comes from “to mug” in pugilism, to strike the face. The word “jack” has

many references, from mechanical devices for lifting heavy objects, to flags on boats and ships.

“Cracker Jack” and “Jack in the Box” are two commercial uses in the United States. “Jack” may

be an Anglicization of the French, “Jacques,” alluding to foreigners marked as targets in seaports

and big cities. In Britain, “Everyman a jack” refers to “the common man” and “jack” is also

slang for money.

Shaw contributed three chapters to the sociological casebook and implemented a five-year social

treatment program to reform the young man. The autobiography was the centerpiece of an urban

ethnological research project that was funded by a state agency, but published by the University

of Chicago Press (UCP), a private university. “The case is published to illustrate the value

of the ‘own story’ in the study and treatment of the delinquent child,” Shaw explained

(1930: 1).

The Jack-Roller: A Delinquent Boy’s Own Story contained the official record of “Stanley’s”

arrests and commitments, his school and work records and a foreword by the Director of Public

Welfare, State of Illinois. Ernest W. Burgess (1886-1966), a widely known University of Chi-

cago social-psychologist, provided a personality assessment. Analyzed in textbooks and mono-

graphs, he is the most well-known criminal and the text, a classic in criminology. Reissued in

1966, it still sells about 300 copies per year.1

“Stanley” was the pen name Shaw gave to Michael Peter Majer,2 who was sixteen-years old

when he first met Shaw in 1923; Shaw was twenty-six (Shaw 1930: 1). Majer said he remem-

bered Shaw from age twelve in 1921, but actually he was fourteen. Sponsored by the Women’s

Club of Chicago, Shaw worked in a Polish neighborhood at “the House of Happiness.” Majer

recently had been released from the Illinois State Reformatory at Pontiac, serving one year for

burglary and jack-rolling.

Though a juvenile, Majer had been convicted as an adult and already had been institutionalized

for one-third of his life. He had encountered the police as a runaway in 1913 when he was six

and one-half years old and graduated quickly to petty stealing. When eight and again at age four-

teen, he was examined medically and psychiatrically by Doctor William Healy, whose prognosis

was: “good if constructive work is done in the case” (Shaw 1930: 199). The seriousness of

Majer’s record of thirty-eight arrests was escalating.

Shaw listed his official delinquencies and commitments; and instructed the young man, “. . . to

give a complete and detailed description of each experience, the situation in which it occurred

and the impression which it made upon him” (Shaw 1930: 22). Majer’s preliminary statement is

an appendix in the book. If the writing was meager, Shaw requested elaboration. “Aside from a

5

number of corrections in punctuation [and one section heading] the story is presented precisely

as it was written by the boy,” Shaw explained (1930: 47).

Many scholars have noted that Shaw structured and guided what he called Majer’s “own story.”

Majer, however, also was capable of sculpting an impression for Shaw. The first draft was inter-

rupted when Majer was rearrested and resentenced to another one-year term in the House of

Correction for burglary and jack-rolling (at sixteen years and nine months of age). Thus, he was

out on the streets committing crimes and composing his life-history.

Released in 1924, Majer expanded his ten page statement over an interval of several years to

supply Shaw with the serial chapters of his life and times in crime. Majer signed a letter of agree-

ment with Shaw on April 18, 1930, stipulating:

The story as it appears in the galley proof is exactly as written by me. It is under-

stood that in giving this permission to have my story published, I am to receive

(7%) seven per cent royalty on all books released for sale. It is further understood

that all other rights are retained by me.3

Shaw carried out a treatment program that he called “special,” which involved a foster home

placement, a change of neighborhood, employment suitable to his personality and weekly con-

sultations (for two years). Shaw previously had worked as a probation and parole officer; and he

actually put into practice Healy’s plan with and offender hopelessly incorrigible, according to

authorities.

A chronic runaway at age six and one-half, a habitual truant at age seven, a shoplifter and thief at

age eight, a burglar and mugger at age fifteen, he was in custody twenty-six times before the age

of ten and thirty-eight times before seventeen. By his eighteenth birthday, he had been institu-

tionalized six times for a total of six years, including three terms in a military school, one term in

the state reformatory and one term in the city House of Correction.

Shaw (1930: 183) concluded his report:

More than five years have elapsed since Stanley was released from the House of

Correction. During this period there has not been a recurrence of any delin-

quent behavior. Furthermore, he has developed interests and a philosophy of

life which are in keeping with the standards of conventional society.

No arrests had reoccurred in the five-year treatment period. Majer held twenty different jobs,

however, some for a few days and was fired twice for fist-fighting. He had an authority problem

that riled easily when being judged or controlled. Shaw advised door-to-door sales because he

functioned better with less supervision. “For two years now [he] has been employed as a [ap-

pliance] salesman and has apparently made a fairly satisfactory adjustment in this field”

(Shaw 1930: 31). Majer married, desired a loving family, fathered three sons and aspired to have

a middle-class lifestyle like his mentor.

The Jack-Roller at Seventy Manuscript (1978)

The present author had prepared a Ph.D. dissertation at the University of Pennsylvania on the

intellectual history of American criminology that included an analysis of the work of Shaw

6

(Snodgrass 1972). As a young criminology professor at a state university in Los Angeles in

1972, I wondered, “What happened to the Jack-Roller?” Surprisingly, Majer wrote a letter to me

on December 31, 1975. He lived in Echo Park, California, in East Los Angeles, and had made a New

Year’s resolution to make contact.

Majer and his wife, Marjorie, had divorced in 1955 and he moved to Los Angeles in the early

1960s. When he found me fifteen years later, he was nearly seventy years old, recently remarried

and inspired by the new love in his life to write a sequel autobiography. He wanted to show he

was family oriented and achieved middle class status, as Shaw had expected of him years before.

Shaw had remained an important figure to Majer who still wanted to be the successful person

Shaw had said he could become (Denzin 1989: 54).

We agreed to update his memoirs of a teenage mugger. With the guidance and support of Gilbert

Geis, a sociologist specializing in the study of white collar crime, the present author was awarded a

grant from the Crime and Delinquency Section, National Institute of Mental Health, to investigate the

outcome of Shaw’s rehabilitation program. The coauthor was given one quarter release time from teaching and Majer was paid $1,000 for his contribution.

By 1978, a manuscript was finished, The Jack-Roller at Seventy: A Fifty-Year Follow-Up of ‘A

Delinquent Boy’s Own Story.’ Written by Majer in 1976, it contained eleven chapters of his second

life-history, covering 1930-1978, plus the transcription of nine interviews. A prologue was promised

by Geis and the oldest and leading academic publishing house in the country, founded in 1891, the UCP was our logical choice for publisher.

What happened to Majer after the appearance of The Jack Roller in 1930 was described this way in

the follow-up study (Snodgrass 1978: xix-xxx).4

He attempted an armed robbery of a sporting goods store on one of Chicago’s major

streets during the middle of the day. The proprietor resisted fiercely, Stanley’s nerve

collapsed and he surrendered his gun to the owner, who subdued him with it until the

police arrived. Taken to jail and later to court, Stanley had the charge reduced [from

attempted murder] to a misdemeanor, “assault with a deadly weapon” and he was

sentenced again to the Chicago House of Correction for a [third] year. Stanley was

twenty-three years old at the time [Fall 1931].

In the 1940s, Majer was accused by his wife of threatening her with violence in a domestic dis-

pute concerning infidelity. He denied the accusation, but was arrested and referred to the diag-

nostic ward at the state hospital at Kankakee, Illinois. In The Jack-Roller at Seventy (1978) he

mentioned wanting to kill his spouse (57, 83, 107, 123-4). “I meant it too!” (107), he empha-

sized. For fist-fighting upon arrival at the facility, he was placed on the “hydrotherapy ward,”

reserved for violent inmates and twice escaped to Chicago.

Living in Los Angeles in the 1970s, Majer resorted to bellicose behavior, mainly fist-fighting in

bars and gaming clubs. He told of wanting to kill a female bartender’s boyfriend (Snodgrass

1978: 123-4) a security officer (131) a cab driver (135) an employer (138) and a mugger (174).

In the most serious incident, he beat-up and hospitalized a man who had attacked him after Majer

became verbally offensive over the quality of service in a bar. He weighed himself afterwards

and boasted of decking a 190 pound man while weighing only 136 pounds himself.

7

I kicked his fuckin’ head in. I kicked him unmercifully. He was just lucky I didn’t

have these shoes on, I’da killed him and I didn’t give a shit. But I had those light tan

shoes on and I just kicked his face in and his head and I wanted to kill the son of a bitch (123).

While drafting the sequel, Majer argued with his new spouse, who complained about his absences

from home. To shut her up, he had slapped her and she promptly divorced him after eighteen months

of marriage.

So when I slapped her she ran out of the house—(laughs)—it didn’t hurt her—it

wasn’t anything, just slight—I wanted to shock her a little, see. I’d never hurt

that woman, you know (laughs). She talked about it yesterday—she said, “You

slapped me” (laughs). “What do you want to do, make a federal case out of it?

Look, it’s the only way I could shut you up—(laughs)—you insisted on talking

about things that don’t mean anything.” . . . Of course, she realized she was wrong —she admitted it—she’s a sensitive woman” (114).

The researcher believed these various findings challenged Shaw’s conclusion regarding Majer’s

reformation. It appeared egregious that the UCP had continued to publish the book without

disclosing the events of the 1930s and 1940s. The attempted holdup took place in 1931; just

one year after the book was released and he was kept on the violent ward of a state

hospital, on and off, for five-years during the 1940s (Snodgrass 1976: 49-66).

Because Majer had fired a fully loaded pistol into the ceiling to intimidate the store owner, but

failed to demand any money, he was charged at first with attempted murder by the Chicago

Police. Compassionately compromising his research by interfering in the long-term outcome of

the case, Shaw obtained bail and a defense attorney. The charge was reduced to assault with a

deadly weapon and Majer was remanded to the Chicago House of Correction for a third consecu-

tive year long term.

The Jack-Roller Paperback Edition (1966)

The UCP reissued the book in 1966 with a new introduction by Howard S. Becker who had

audio recorded The Fantastic Lodge: The Autobiography of a Girl Drug Addict (1961). He

underwent a “torturous path to publication” “. . . To this day, Becker suspects Shaw impeded

publication because he wanted his own name to appear as author on any Institute for Juvenile

Research (IJR) book” (Bennett 1981: 221-233).

The Jack-Roller was the model reformed ex-offender in criminology. Becker accepted the

text at face value without questioning the official story. With a new introduction, but no factual

update, it was reissued twenty-five years later. “The book remains as relevant today to the study and

treatment of juvenile delinquency and maladjustment as it was when originally published in 1930,”

announced the back cover. The claim exists on the UCP website to the present day. Burgess’ essay

still referred to “The brilliant success of the treatment processes set into operation by Mr. Shaw . . .”

(Shaw 1966: 194).

Becker wrote, “. . . any theory of delinquency must, if it is to be considered valid, explain, or at least

be consistent with the facts of Stanley’s case, as they are reported here” (Shaw 1966: x). He added,

“Thus even though the life-history does not in itself provide definitive proof of a proposition, it can

8

be a negative case that forces us to decide a proposed theory is inadequate” (x-xi). Not inquiring into the facts appears to have solved the problem.

Becker was widely known in sociology for raising the question, “Whose Side Are We On?” He

believed in their research, scholars cannot avoid taking sides politically. The phrase was the title

of his presidential address at the annual meetings of The Society for the Study of Social Prob-

lems in 1966, the year the paperback appeared. Becker devised the concept, “hierarchy of cred-

ibility” to refer to the truth distorted by organizational elites.

He concluded:

We take sides as our personal and political commitments dictate, use our theo-

retical and technical resources to avoid the distortions that might introduce into

our work, limit our conclusions carefully, recognize the hierarchy of credibility for

what it is and field as best we can the accusations and doubts that will surely be our fate (Becker 1966: 247).

According to Bennett (1981: 233) Majer wrote a letter to the editor of the UCP:

In 1971 Stanley [Majer] contacted the University of Chicago Press asking

for royalties from the 1966 edition, but the Press replied that, since the copy-

right had not been renewed during the renewal year (1957-1958), the book

was in the public domain, though royalties were being paid to Shaw’s

widow. These life history publishing arrangements are never so innocent as

they seem—not any more

Majer was not on the cover or title page as an author and the royalties he received for the original

edition of The Jack-Roller came directly from Shaw.6 The UCP informed the present author in

1981 that sales of the paperback edition had been 23,000 copies.6 Correspondence between Majer

and Shaw refers to cash loans that are to be repaid from future book earnings. This was a casual

remark by Shaw, not a formal arrangement.7 The actual sums of money exchanged are impos-

sible to estimate, but Shaw was known as a kind and generous man.

The Jack-Roller at Seventy: Lexington Books Edition (1982)

The UCP Press expressed an interest in The Jack-Roller at Seventy. The refereeing of the manu-

script was given to two members of the Chicago School of Criminology who recommended

against publication. The lead reviewer was Solomon Kobrin, who had been mentored by Shaw at

the IJR (1940-1968) and succeeded him as director when Shaw died in 1957. Kobrin honored

Shaw in an obituary for the American Sociological Review in 1958.

An anonymous second referee wrote, “. . . to find out what happened to the Jackroller (sic) years

later turns out . . . not to be true—it just isn’t very interesting.” It was surprising that any scholar

thought the longest case history in the social sciences did not warrant attention. The two reader’s

reports are now appendixes to the uncut edition of The Jack-Roller at Seventy posted on the

Internet (Snodgrass 2010). The UCP may have declined the manuscript due to the improprieties

suggested by the finding and hired company scholars to provide the rationale.

9

The rejection of the follow-up study by the most appropriate publisher calumniated the research-

er’s reputation and for five years an alternative print outlet was sought. Having rejected the

manuscript twice before, Lexington Books, a subsidiary of D.C. Heath, relented in 1981 and

agreed to publish the work. A contract was contingent, however, upon the expurgation of the

analytic introduction and the provision of essays by scholars, vetted by the publisher, supportive

of the original research.

The contract also depended on a verbal understanding that the main UCP referee (Kobrin) would

take the role of principal commentator in the follow-up study. Further, he was appointed by the

publisher to oversee the content of the follow-up project, to approve the other contributors and to

circumscribe the present author’s contribution to the volume.8 The Jack-Roller’s life-story

hereby was appropriated for a second time by professional criminologists and publisher.

Consent to the dispossession of the research was given as a precondition for the dissemination of

Majer’s second autobiography and interviews, and the terms were not discloseable in the text.

Chapters IV-VII were excised, but appeared in an article for The Journal of Contemporary

Ethnography (Snodgrass 1983). The second autobiography became a launch platform for stock

Chicago School expositions and the coauthor’s role was relegated to collection editor, though

still listed with Majer as author on the cover and title page.

No contributor to the compendium referenced the original thesis in the follow-up manuscript

challenging the validity of Shaw’s treatment program based on Majer’s subsequent career.

Perhaps, Geis (1982: 123) implied support when he wrote, “The protagonist (Majer) is truly

Dostoyevskian in his . . . appalling ability to act in ways that seem stunningly self-destructive

and self-defeating by any one’s standards.”

With no comment on the content of the life-narrative, Kobrin stated9:

It is clear that Stanley’s [Majer] is a case of an incorrigible delinquent who

reformed. His reformation is attested to by the fact that whatever other forms of

unconventional activity he engaged in, it did not include either serious or

persistent law violation (in Snodgrass 1982: 156).

An obvious question of any longitudinal study, the persistence versus desistence of specific be-

haviors, was not addressed by the reviewers of the book for professional journals. A Los Angeles

Times reporter asked, “What happens to a juvenile delinquent in later life in Los Angeles?” He

answered his own question, “Stanley [Majer] came to lead a reasonably normal life, Snodgrass

said” (Ross 1983: 6). Thus, the journalist believed the researcher had agreed with the Chicago

School authorities and therefore, the censorship had accomplished its mission to obscure the

countervailing point of view.

The Jack-Roller Legacy

In The Polish Peasant, Thomas and Znaiecki (1958, originally 1918-1921) claimed “. . . personal

life records, as complete as possible, constitute the perfect (their emphasis) type of sociological

material” (1958: 1832). They published the first life-history, by Wladek Wisniewski of Lubotyn,

Poland, in the early 1900s. Majer’s father, Józef Peter Majerski, was a poor Polish farmer who

had immigrated to Chicago in 1891 at age 22 from Oświecim (Auschwitz in German) in southern

10

Poland. Wiszniewski was older; a baker by trade and a bachelor, not accompanied by family

(Abbott 2008).

In “Boys and Delinquency,” Thomas and Znaniecki referred to the kind of relationship that

actually had developed between Majer and Shaw. “The personal influence of the probation

officer could be a strong constructive factor, but only if it were continuous—and this is, of

course, impossible” (1958, 1798). They clarified, “The direct influence of a powerful person-

ality can only be partially successful in light of the massive social disorganization of the city

and its effects on the lives of children and adolescents.”

Thomas was a founding member of the Chicago School of Sociology at the University of Chi-

cago. He received his Ph.D. from the university in 1895 and was at the center of the formation of

the new discipline of “social psychology.” His conception emphasized the dynamic interaction

between the individual and society. Thomas also had a skeptical interest in psychoanalysis and

was listed as a progressive sociologist in Hale’s, The Beginnings of Psychoanalysis in the United

States (1971: 108).

The Polish Peasant was a massive study in five volumes, covering two continents. Following

Volume II in 1919, Thomas was arrested in a downtown Chicago hotel by the Federal Bureau of

Investigation for violation of the Mann Act. Ironically, the Mann Act involved the interstate

transportation of women for immoral purposes. Thomas was married at the time and discovered

with the twenty-four year-old wife of an army officer serving in France during World War I. He

was defended by Clarence Darrow and acquitted in court, but at age fifty-five, his reputation had

been defiled.

Due to the scandal, the University of Chicago fired Thomas and the University of Chicago Press

withdrew the contract to publish the remaining three volumes of The Polish Peasant. Abbott

(2008: 221) explains, “Thomas’s subsequent acquittal put the university in the position of having

fired him without cause.” Lewis A. Coser in Masters of Sociological Thought (1977: 535)

described the events in this way:

What followed constitutes one of the shameful chapters in the history of Amer-

ican Universities. The president of the University of Chicago, Henry Pratt Jud-

son, supported by the trustees, moved immediately to dismiss Thomas. Albion

Small, the chairman of his department, offered no public defense, although he

made some private moves to protect Thomas and wept in his office over the loss

of his prize student and colleague. There was no faculty protest and hardly a

voice was raised from the ranks of Thomas’s immediate colleagues.

Thomas never again held a tenured position, though he continued to teach and do research as an

independent scholar. In 1923, he published The Unadjusted Girl, a monograph on his “four basic

wishes” that motivated human behavior (security, novelty, recognition and intimacy). A group of

young colleagues organized to elect him President of the American Sociological Association in

1927. He is famous for the “Thomas Theorem”—“If men define situations as real, they are real

in their consequences.”

In the history of sociology, the Jack-Roller reappears in the same way the fictional film

character, Forrest Gump, is seen amidst historical events. For example, precedent cases are

11

evident in The Polish Peasant and Majer’s father was a Polish farmer from Auschwitz. One of

Majer’s sons attended a big ten graduate school and, as an airline pilot, got caught-up in an

international terrorist hijacking. Majer’s granddaughter grew up in an ideal Illinois suburb in the

1960s that esembled a planned community like Levittown (Gans 1982).

Roger A. Salerno, Pace University, New York, wrote Sociology Noir: Studies at the University of

Chicago, 1915-1935 (2007). Based on Majer’s narrative in The Jack-Roller at Seventy (1982),

Salerno stated, “What we do learn about Stanley [Majer] is that he was indeed violent” (152).

The sociologist refers to the “foiled armed robbery” of 1931 and the “charge of an attempted

assault on his wife with a knife [in which] he was sentenced to a psychiatric hospital for the

criminally insane at Kankakee” (152).

Salerno (2007: 157-8) reported on a conference in 1995 in Chicago honoring the 100th anniver-

sary of Shaw’s birth. Questions arose about the authenticity of The Jack-Roller autobiography,

i.e., some participants did not believe an eloquent passage had been written by Majer. An invited

speaker claimed Shaw had “rewritten” the life-history and here the conference took a turn to

disparage Shaw. The criticism had been anticipated by Shaw, however, who explained that Majer

was “prodigious reader . . . reflected in the rather superior literary quality of his own autobio-

graphy” (Shaw 1930: 44).

In 2007, countering quantitative trends in the discipline, Theoretical Criminology acknowledged

the centenary of Majer’s birth by issuing a special number, “N = 1: Criminology and the Person.”

The Jack Roller at Seventy (1982) was described, probably because of lacunae in the text, as an

“autobiographical sequel of sorts,” but the abridgement of the manuscript was not suspected by

the editors or contributors. The present author was listed in the bibliography as the “editor” and

so again, Majer went unrecognized as the author of his own autobiography.

The tribute promoted a “psychoanalytically informed psychosocial analysis” that coincided with

much of the content of the uncut follow-up study. For example, the lead essay by Gadd and

Jefferson (2007: 444), “On the Defensive,” describes a “tendency to read Stanley as a ‘social

type’, i.e. as an example of the powerful influences of social and cultural factors and the failure

to integrate Stanley’s psychological characteristics with his sociocultural background.” Gadd and

Jefferson were critical that “. . . scholars have been too willing to accept Stanley’s account as

‘told,’ ” but made the same mistake in consulting only published sources.

Gadd and Jefferson are also co-authors of a textbook, Psychosocial Criminology (2007) which

calls for the integration of psychological, psychoanalytical and sociological theories in crimin-

ology. Their appraisal of Majer’s personality begins by discussing, “A Note on Stanley’s Psy-

chology,” a section study that had avoided censorship in the follow-up by making the researcher

a fourth commentator.

In Theoretical Criminology, Loraine Gelsthorpe (2007) calls the new perspective “Reflexive

Criminology.” She believes Shaw did not recognize his personal influence on Majer’s autobio-

graphy and life-course. Drawing on literary scholarship that questions the very distinction

between biography and autobiography, Gelsthorpe (2007: 515) states, “I explore the origins of

‘Stanley’s’ story in Shaw’s own life and suggest that Shaw perhaps misses out the influence of

his own biography in his analysis.”

12

Shaw did not realize he influenced Majer’s interim rehabilitation during the five-year social

treatment program (nor the post-treatment relapse). Majer had major difficulties in residential

placements and in employee-employer relations, but had stayed out of official trouble. The

formal violation occurred after the treatment program had ended. Shaw had married at this time,

relocated to a rural area and moved up the professional social ladder, in part, due to the success

of The Jack Roller.

The salient feature in Majer’s thwarted robbery was not its failure, but its spectacular visibility.

He tried to hold-up a sporting goods store with a handgun on a major city street in bright day-

light. An accomplice deserted him, like his mentor perhaps and his nerve collapsed. As a cry for

help, Majer regained Shaw’s attention, but soon was off again to the Chicago House of Correc-

tion for a third year long term. Shaw fraternized with Majer, yet remained an objective thinker

about Majer’s interim reformation.

Majer’s fallback into crime in 1931 constituted a stressor for Shaw, but to document the emo-

tional impact is difficult in the absence of personal information. As Gelsthorpe (2007: 553)

noted, Shaw’s life-story is missing. Shaw passed away in 1957 at age sixty-two. To link his

declining health with the notorious failure of his case is hypothetical since he was not self-

revelatory. Shaw referred to a heart condition in correspondence with Majer as early as 1947

and medical issues often were mentioned in their letters.

Moral Integrity in Criminology

The “delinquent boy’s ‘own story’” really was not “his own” story because twice it was

acquired by criminologists and publishing houses as “their own story.” The suppression of

the follow–up study occurred in 1978 and the reframing of the manuscript in 1982. The follow-

up covered fifty years and the cover-up endured another forty years. In the occulted history of

the Jack-Roller, the reformation of an inveterate offender has been misrepresented in the

professional literature for eighty years.

The countervailing research was suppressed and findings adverse to the vested interests of elite

individuals and institutions were hidden. Sharing underlying motives and behaviors, the two life-

histories were acquired surreptitiously by scholars, editors and publishers. Majer was not clubbed

on the head, but organizational authority was wielded to take possession of his intellectual prop-

erty and the follow-up research was reframed to support the opposite conclusion. When the

researchers did not reform the offender, they reformed the research to their purpose.

Due to the risks and dangers investigations face when revealing legal and moral dilemmas

among the authorities, the research on outsiders historically has inspired more scholarship.

Institutions of surveillance and social control are not scrutinized and power holders are not trans-

parent. Studies of politically peripheral persons and groups, like the homeless, inmates and

patients, are funded by ruling elites and thereby shielded from retaliatory litigation. If qualitative

sociology is to develop into a science, however, the study on both sides of the law must be a

legitimate and respected focus of research.

The Jack-Roller case history illuminates the broader canvass of unscholarly conduct among social

scientists and academic institutions in the exploitation of socially vulnerable subjects in the re-

search process (Judson 2004, Couser 2004). Unlike much literature on unethical conduct that

13

focuses on the wrongdoings of individuals, this article concerns the entire one-hundred year

history of a discipline and implicates universities, publishers and research organizations. The

Jack-Roller case also continues to raise questions about the effects of ethnicity, nationality and

social class biases in social science theory and research.

The purpose of this essay has not been to expose the unethical practices of academic individuals

and institutions, nor is it written in angry protest by an activist seeking vengeance and justice.

Revealing the esoteric history of the Jack-Roller, the essay tells the wider story to the modern

researcher who is more removed from the events and possibly interested in the shared relational

psychosocial dynamics in the Jack-Roller case. The Jack-Roller research in the future may now

include what actually happened beyond the two officially arrogated versions.

This brief history of a life-history introduces a detailed historical account to facilitate intergen-

erational and international discourse and discovery in the succession of scholarship to advance

the psychological, sociological and psychoanalytical study of qualitative sociology. An intro-

spective social science may recognize that the observer and the observed often share licit and

illicit motivations and behaviors. The reflective approach may help lay the foundation for the

reconciliation of enduring personal grievances and theoretical disputes in social science.

FOOTNOTES

1. Email, Douglas Mitchell, Sociology Editor, UCP, June 28, 2010.

2. The first person to disclose the Jack-Roller’s full real name was Roger A. Salerno in Sociology

Noir (2007: 145).

3. Correspondence in the possession of Majer’s granddaughter, Mary Majer, given to her by

William Shaw, the son of Clifford R. Shaw.

4. These two paragraphs and four chapters of the manuscript were expunged from the published

version of The Jack-Roller at Seventy (1982) but are available in the original, uncut

edition posted on the Internet in 2010 at (www.academia.com).

5. Roger A. Salerno wrote, “Shaw gave all of his royalties from the book to Majer.” Shaw redis-

tributed the royalties sent to him by UCP to Majer but Majer did not receive any royalties

from the publisher. Whether Majer was designated to receive royalties according to the

publishing agreement signed by Shaw with UCP is not known.

6. Letter, Douglas Mitchell, Sociology Editor, UCP, February 8, 1981.

7. Shaw’s papers are held by the Chicago History Museum and a descriptive inventory is avail-

able (www.chicagohs.org). Also, see Bennett (1981) 233.

8. In a letter agreeing to contribute his commentary to the follow-up autobiography, Kobrin

recommended the provision of a uniform body of material and stated, “. . . ‘the facts’ of

the [auto] biography should not be in dispute as each of the invited criminologists

undertakes to make sense of the facts from his particular perspective” (personal

correspondence, March 13, 1981). Accordingly, four analytic chapters of the author’s

introduction were removed.

14

9. James Bennett (1983: 135) also believed, “Stanley was rehabilitated.”

References

Abbott, Andrew and Egloff, Rainer. 2008. “The Polish Peasant in Oberlin and Chicago: The

Intellectual Trajectory of W. I. Thomas.” American Sociologist 39(4) 217-258.

Becker, Howard S. 1967. “Whose Side Are We On?” Social Problems 14(3) 239–47.

Bennett, James R. 1981. Oral History and Delinquency: The Rhetoric of Criminology. Chicago:

University of Chicago Press.

Bennett, James R. 1983. Review of “The Jack-Roller at Seventy: A Fifty Year Follow-Up.”

International Journal of Oral History 4(2) 134-136.

Clark, Janet (pseudonym). 1961. The Fantastic Lodge: the Autobiography of a Girl Drug Addict.

Edited by Helen MacGill Hughes. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company.

Coser, Lewis A. 1977. Masters of Sociological Thought: Ideas in Historical and Social Context.

New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc.

Couser, G. Thomas. (2004). Vulnerable Subjects: Ethics and Life-Writing. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell

University Press.

Freud, Sigmund. 1918. From the History of an Infantile Neurosis. SE 17, 1-122.

Gadd, David and Jefferson, Tony. 2007. “On the Defensive: a Psychoanalytically Informed

Psychosocial Reading of ‘The Jack-Roller.’” Edited by Shadd Maruna and Amanda

Matravers. Theoretical Criminology 11(4) 443-467.

Gadd, David and Jefferson, Tony. 2007. “Re-reading ‘The Jack-Roller’ as a Defended Subject.”

Psychosocial Criminology. Los Angeles: Sage Publications, 124-145.

Gans, Herbert J. 1967, 1982. The Levittowners: Life and Politics in a New Suburban Community.

New York: Columbia University Press.

Gelshtorpe, Loraine. 2007. “The Jack-Roller: Telling a Story?” Edited by Shadd Maruna and

Amanda Matravers. Theoretical Criminology 11(4) 515-542.

Hale, N. G. Jr. 1971. Freud and the Americans. the Beginnings of Psychoanalysis in the United

States. New York: Oxford University Press.

Judson, Horace Freeland. 2004. The Great Betrayal: Fraud in Science. Orlando, FL: Harcourt.

Kobrin, Solomon. 1958. “Clifford R. Shaw, 1895-1957.” American Sociological Review 23(1)

88-89.

15

Obholzer, Karin. 1982. The Wolf-Man: Conversations with Freud’s Patient—Sixty Years Later.

Translated by Majer Shaw. New York: Continuum.

Ross, Robert W. 1983. “A Delinquent Reviews his Life.” Los Angeles Times, April 10.

Salerno, Roger A. 2007. Sociology Noir: Studies at the University of Chicago in Loneliness,

Marginality and Deviance, 1915-1935. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland & Co. Inc., Publisher.

Shaw, Clifford R. 1930, 1966. The Jack-Roller: A Delinquent Boy’s ‘Own Story.’ Chicago:

University of Chicago Press.

Snodgrass, J. 1972. “The American Criminological Tradition: Portraits of the Men and Ideology

in a Discipline.” Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Pennsylvania. (www.academia.edu).

Snodgrass, Jon. 1976. “Clifford R. Shaw and Henry D. McKay: Chicago Criminologists.”

British Journal of Criminology 16 (1) 1-19. (www.academia.edu).

Snodgrass, Jon. 1982. The Jack-Roller at Seventy: A Fifty Year Follow-Up. Lexington MA.

Lexing-ton Books.

Snodgrass, Jon. 1983. “The Jack-Roller: A Fifty-Year Follow-Up.” The Journal of

Contemporary Ethnography 11(4) 440-460. (www.academia.edu).

Snodgrass, Jon. 2010. Pioneer American Criminologists: Biography, Theory and Critique.

(www.-academia.edu).

Snodgrass, Jon. (1978). The Jack Roller at seventy (original uncut manuscript 1978): A fifty fear

follow-up of ‘a delinquent boy's own story’ (1930). (www.academia.edu).

Snodgrass Jon. and Majer, Mary. 2010. The Jack-Roller Chronicle: The History of a Life-

History. (unpublished archive).

Thomas, William. I. and Znaniecki, F. 1958, 1921. The Polish Peasant in Europe and America.

New York: Dover Publications, Inc.

Thomas, William I. 1923. The Unadjusted Girl with Cases and Standpoint for Behavior Analysis.

Boston: Little Brown and Company.