Joan McCord

In 1968 she joined the faculty in Drexel University and then moved to Temple University in 1987.^[3] In 1989 she became the first female president of the American Society of Criminology.^[4][5] She is particularly known for experimental longitudinal studies of mentoring programs, especially her work on the Cambridge Somerville Youth Study, which showed that such interventions could have counterintuitive negative effects.^[1][6] She also studied the causes of juvenile delinquency, and wrote about alcoholism and psychopathy. She is said to have made unique contributions by merging philosophical thinking with empirical social sciences.^[1]

Aside from being a criminologist Joan McCord was known for her editorial work, particularly chapter four of the Cures That Harm which came out in The New York Times in 2002.^[7] A volume of her essays on criminology, edited by her son Geoffrey Sayre-McCord, were published postmortem by Temple University Press in 2007.^[8]

In 1996 she was interviewed by The New York Times regarding a rape committed by a 12-year old.^[2] She also credited for appearing in Scared Straight!, a documentary on juvenile delinquents.^[9] Her researched was featured in an episode of Freakanomics, "When Helping Hurts."^[10]

Joan McCord was married to her first husband, the sociologist William Maxwell McCord, with whom she had co-authored numerous early books and articles. They had two sons, Geoffrey Sayre-McCord (who resides in Durham, N.C.), and Rob McCord and four grandsons. Her second husband, Carl A. Silver, was a professor at Drexel University. She died from lung cancer in Narberth, Pennsylvania, on February 24, 2004.^[2][11][12]