Background
Leon Radzinowicz was born on August 15, 1906, in Lodz, Piotrków Governorate, Russian Empire (present-day Łodz, Poland) to affluent parents.
1930
In 1930, Leon was awarded with the Order of Leopold.
1953
In 1953, Leon received the Queen Elizabeth II Coronation Medal.
1970
Westminster, London SW1A 1AA, United Kingdom
Sir Leon Radzinowicz, pictured with his wife Mary Ann Nevins Radzinowicz and their two children, outside Buckingham Palace, London, on February 24, 1970, after he was knighted by the Queen during an investiture.
1970
On February 24, 1970, Leon was appointed a Knight Bachelor by Queen Elizabeth II during a ceremony at Buckingham Palace.
1973
Sir Leon Radzinowicz, the founder of the Cambridge Institute of Criminology, conducting his press conference at Goodsell Building, Chifley Square, on July 17, 1973.
University of Geneva, 1205 Geneva, Switzerland
Leon studied Law as an undergraduate student at the University of Geneva in 1925-1927.
University of Paris, Paris, France
Leon studied Law as an undergraduate student at the University of Paris in 1924-1925.
Gołębia 24, 31-007 Kraków, Poland
Radzinowicz studied at the University of Kraków (present-day the Jagiellonian University), where he received a doctor's degree.
(This is the first volume of a five-volume collection. The...)
This is the first volume of a five-volume collection. The series was published between 1948 and 1986.
https://www.amazon.com/HISTORY-ENGLISH-CRIMINAL-LAW-Administration/dp/B002ABUDEK
1948
(Sir Leon Radzinowicz is one of the key figures in the dev...)
Sir Leon Radzinowicz is one of the key figures in the development of criminology in the twentieth century. This account of the development of criminology intertwines his personal narrative as a criminologist with the progression of criminology itself. His experience, gained from a career, which has spanned 70 years since the 1920's, offers a profound overview of how the understanding of crime and criminals, of criminal justice systems and penology has changed and of the tensions and dilemmas these pose for democratic societies.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Adventures-Criminology-Sir-Leon-Radzinowicz/dp/0415198755
1998
administrator criminologist educator author scholars
Leon Radzinowicz was born on August 15, 1906, in Lodz, Piotrków Governorate, Russian Empire (present-day Łodz, Poland) to affluent parents.
Leon studied Law as an undergraduate student at the University of Paris in 1924-1925 and the University of Geneva in 1925-1927. Then, in 1928, he received a Doctor of Law degree from the Institute of Criminology in Rome, Italy.
Later, Radzinowicz continued his studies at the University of Kraków (present-day the Jagiellonian University), where he received a doctor's degree and then did his postdoctoral work in Belgium. It was in 1938, that Leon went to England on behalf of the Polish Ministry of Justice to study the English penal system.
In his later years, Radzinowicz was awarded an honorary Doctor of Law degrees from the University of Leicester (1965) and the University of Edinburgh (1988).
During the period from 1928 till 1931, Leon held the post of a Privatdozent at the University of Geneva. During that time, he published five monographs in French, including "La lutte moderne contre le crime" (1930) and "Le crime passionel" (1931), as well as the sociological study "Le problème de la population en France" (1929), a pioneering work, in which the concept of a demographic revolution was introduced earlier, than it was made in the work of Adolf Landry, and the causes of such revolutions were analyzed in the framework of Marxist methodology.
In 1932, Leon left for Poland and the same year, he began lecturing at the University of Warsaw, where, in 1936, he was appointed an assistant professor, the post he held till 1939.
In 1934, Leon changed his surname from Rabinowicz to Radzinowicz. As has been mentioned in the previous section (Education), in 1938, Radzinowicz moved to England on behalf of the Polish Ministry of Justice to study the English legal system. Because of the outbreak of When World War II, he didn't come back to Poland and it was in 1947, that he received British citizenship.
In the late 1930's early 1940's, Radzinowicz joined the University of Cambridge and was instrumental in the establishing of the Department of Criminal Science at the Faculty of Law there in 1941. During the period from 1949 till 1959, Leon held the post of director of the same department. Moreover, from 1940, Leon was the editor of 33 volumes of "English Studies in Criminal Science", called later "Cambridge Studies in Criminology".
It's important to note, that, in 1947-1948, Leon acted Head of the Social Defense Section of the United Nations. By 1949, Radzinowicz was appointed a member of the Gowers Commission on Capital Punishment. In 1955, he served as joint vice president of the United Nations Congress on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice. In addition, Radzinowicz acted as a consultant to several nations and, between 1968 and 1969, in the United States, to President Lyndon Johnson's Commission on Violence.
It was in 1959, that Leon founded the Cambridge Institute of Criminology and headed it till 1972. Also, in 1959, he was appointed the first Wolfson Professor of Criminology at the University of Cambridge, the post he held till 1973. In addition, between 1962 and 1968, Radzinowicz taught as a visiting professor at Yale Law School. He also held the same post at other educational establishments, including the University of Virginia (in 1968-1969), the University of Pennsylvania (from 1970), the University of Minnesota Law School (from 1977), the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law (from 1978), among others.
Leon penned a number of books, including ''In Search of Criminology'', "Ideology and Crime", "The Growth of Crime: The International Experience", and, with Roger G. Hood, the five-volume ''A History of English Criminal Law and Its Administration from 1750'', among others. The series ''A History of English Criminal Law and Its Administration from 1750'' was published between 1948 and 1986. Leon's latest book, ''Adventures in Criminology'', was published in 1998.
(Sir Leon Radzinowicz is one of the key figures in the dev...)
1998(This is the first volume of a five-volume collection. The...)
1948Radzinowicz converted to Christianity prior to World War II.
During his long career, Leon's philosophical view of crime evolved from Italian positivism, which emphasized psychological and sociological explanations of criminals and crime, to English pragmatism, emphasizing the social and political context.
Radzinowicz was an opponent of the death penalty and later of open-ended sentences, like 20 years to life. He believed, that these punishments gave too much power to the authorities and could be abused.
Besides, Leon opposed the privatization of prisons. He thought, that if it was the state, that punished, then the state should carry out the punishment. Radzinowicz was also concerned, that an incentive and profit for punishment would undermine the rule of law.
Radzinowicz was also a critic of the American justice system, at least in recent years. Leon felt, that it had turned its back on a reformist agenda and was becoming repressive - with the enormous prison population and the standards of the jails.
Leon was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Leon was a man, whose urbane manner was matched by a wry sense of humour, an often unexpected generosity and an excellent taste in wine. He was a master of the spoken word.
Leon was married three times. In 1933, he married Irena Szereszewska, whom he divorced in 1955. During the period from 1958 till 1979, he was married to Mary Ann Nevins Radzinowicz, an American academic and scholar of English literature. Their marriage produced two children - Ann Stacey Prior and William H. F. Radzinowicz. On July 26, 1979, Radzinowicz married his third wife - Isolde Klarmann, a scholar of German literature.