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
(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
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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.”
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