Call Number:

Ms. Coll. 694

Repository:

University of Pennsylvania: Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts

Extent:

82 boxes

Preferred Citation:

Johan Thorsten Sellin papers, Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts, University of Pennsylvania

Date:

1886-1990 (inclusive)

Creator:

Sellin, Johan Thorsten

Form:

Research notes, Negatives (photographic), Photographs, Memorabilia, and Correspondence

Abstract:

The Johan Thorsten Sellin Papers include correspondence; biographical materials; drafts of writings; notes; clippings about Sellin's work; minutes; reprints of criminology articles; memorabilia; and some photographs. The material is largely professional, not personal, and documents Sellin's research as a penologist and his career as a teacher of sociology and criminology, as well as his works in Swedish-American causes.

Johan Thorsten Sellin was a sociologist and internationally-recognized criminology expert. Born in Örnsköldsvik, Sweden in 1896, he emigrated to Canada in 1913 and enrolled in Swedish-American Augusta College in Rockport, Illinois in 1914. After completing his Bachelor of Arts degree there in less than two years (1915), Sellin earned a Masters degree in sociology at the University of Pennsylvania (1916) and taught for a time at the University of Minnesota (1916-1920). After marrying Augustana classmate Amy Anderson in 1920, Sellin moved to Philadelphia once more and finished his doctorate (1922) at the University of Pennsylvania and began a long and productive career in the Deptartment of Sociology there, for which he served as chairman from 1944 to 1959. Though frequently undertaking visiting lectureships at European universities, Sellin continued to teach as professor of sociology and criminology at the University of Pennsylvania until his retirement in 1968.

Sellin's research interests were wide and varied within the field of criminology, but he was particularly known for his books and researches on penology (Pioneering in Penology, 1944), penal slavery (Slavery and the Penal System, 1976), juvenile delinquency (The Criminality of Youth, 1940; The Measure of Delinquency, 1964; and Delinquency in a Birth-Cohort, 1972 – the latter two co-authored with Marvin E. Wolfgang), social theory (Culture Conflict and Crime, 1938), and the ineffectiveness of capital punishment (Capital Punishment, 1967 (ed.); and The Penalty of Death, 1980). He was also a pioneer in the application of criminal statistics: he drafted the Uniform Criminal Statistics Act (adopted by the United States Department of Justice in 1969) and served as a criminal statistics consultant to the United States Bureau of the Census during the 1930s.

Interested in applying his research in a practical way, Sellin was a consultant to the Swedish Penal Code Commission (1946-1947), the prison experiment at the state prison colony at Norfolk, Massachusetts (1933-1934, while he was a staff member at the Bureau of Social Hygiene in New York), and the American Law Institute Youth Correction and Model Penal Code projects. He also served as an official commissioner for the United Nations on Prevention of Crime and the Treatment of Offenders (1949-1956), a member of the board of inspectors for Philadelphia County Prisons (1939-1950), and the chairman of the Philadelphia Police Advisory Board (1959-1963).

Sellin was also an active member of numerous state, national and international organizations relating to sociology and criminology, including the American Philosophical Society, the American Society of Criminology, the Osborne Association, the Pennsylvania Committee on Penal Affairs, the Pennsylvania Council to Abolish the Death Penalty, and the United States Social Science Research Council. He furthermore served as secretary-general of the International Penal and Penitentiary Commission (1949-1951), the vice-president and later president of the International Penal and Penitentiary Foundation (1956-1965, 1965-1971), and president of the International Society of Criminology (1956-1965). Sellin did all of this while editing the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science (1929-1968).

International recognition of his researches also brought Sellin a number of honors: he was awarded the Swedish Order of the North Star in 1955, taught as a Fulbright scholar at the University of Cambridge in 1959-1960, and received honorary degrees from Augustana College, the University of Uppsala, the University of Leiden, the University of Copenhagen, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Brussels. In 1985 the University of Pennsylvania Center for Studies in Criminology and Criminal Law was renamed in his honor as the Sellin Criminology Center.

Sellin remained an active scholar long after his retirement from the University of Pennsylvania, and continued to write on criminology from his home in Gilmanton, New Hampshire, until his death in 1994.

The Johan Thorsten Sellin Papers are made up of 63 boxes of material including correspondence; biographical materials; drafts of writings; notes; clippings about Sellin's work; minutes; reprints of criminology articles; memorabilia; and some photographs. The collection spans through Sellin's professional life, beginning with correspondence from before Sellin had received his doctorate through to the very last years of his life. The material contained in this collection is largely professional, not personal, and documents Sellin's interests and works as a scholar and teacher of sociology and criminology, as well as his works in Swedish-American causes.

The Correspondence series, the largest single series within the collection, contains numerous items from both individuals and organizations in a variety of languages (English, Swedish, French, German, Spanish, Danish, Dutch, Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese). The majority of the correspondents are sociologists, criminologists, other social scientists, lawyers, politicians or judges. Items mostly relate to the evolution of criminology as a discipline throughout the 20th century, as well as its international study. Topics covered particularly well within this series include the history of the International Penal and Penitentiary Foundation (1932-1971), the prison experiment at the state prison colony in Norfolk, Massachusetts (1933-1934), the development of the Uniform Criminal Statistics Act (1944-1969), the development of the University of Pennsylvania Center for Studies in Criminology and Criminal Law (ca. 1950-1985), and the United Nations commission on Prevention of Crime and the Treatment of Offenders (1949-1956).