American Society of Criminology

History

The society traces its history back to a meeting of seven men at the home of retired Berkeley Police Department chief and criminology professor August Vollmer on December 30, 1941. The meeting was said to be "for the purpose of furthering college police training and standardizing police training curricula". Establishing itself as the National Association of College Police Training Officials (NACPTO), the group elected Vollmer, who was due to be deployed into the military following the attack on Pearl Harbor, as President-Emeritus and Orlando W. Wilson as president.

After the end of World War II, the NACPTO underwent a reorganization in 1946 and became known as the Society for the Advancement of Criminology (SAC). In June 1950, the society became affiliated with the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and in December of that year, was accepted into the International Society of Criminology. The SAC officially changed its name to the American Society of Criminology in November 1957.