John E. Conklin, professor of sociology at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts, was born in Oswego, New York, in 1943 and raised in Syracuse, New York.  After earning a bachelor's degree from Cornell University in 1965, he completed his doctorate at Harvard University in 1969 and did research at Harvard Law School's Center for Criminal Justice for one year before taking a position at Tufts, where he now offers courses in criminology, crime and the media, sociology of law, and sociology of sexual behavior.

   Professor Conklin's first book, Robbery and the Criminal Justice System (1972), was based on data he gathered in Boston.  He also wrote The Impact of Crime (1975), a study of community reactions to crime, and "Illegal but Not Criminal": Business Crime in America (1977). The first of nine editions of Criminology appeared in 1981.  Art Crime—a study of theft, forgery, and fraud in the art world—was published in 1994.  His New Perspectives in Criminology (Allyn & Bacon, 1996) is an edited collection of papers published by leading criminologists during the 1990s.  In 2003, Allyn & Bacon published Professor Conklin's Why Crimes Rates Fell, an examination of the reasons that crime declined so dramatically in the 1990s.