About the Authors
G. Larry Mays
Education
Ph.D, Political Science/Public Administration, University of Tennessee, 1979
MA, Political Science, East Tennessee State University, 1975
B.S, Public Administration, University of Tennessee, 1971
Background
Dr. G. Larry Mays is a Regents Professor in the Criminal Justice Department at New Mexico State University. From 1981 to 1990 he served as academic department head. Dr. Mays holds a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Tennessee and he has held faculty positions at East Tennessee State University and Appalachian State University as well as at New Mexico State over his 33 year teaching career. Prior to entering the academic world he served as an officer with the Knoxville, Tennessee Police Department.
Dr. Mays has won a number of teaching awards including the Carnegie Foundation Award as the New Mexico Professor of the Year in 1997. He is author or editor of 17 books and has published over 100 articles, book chapters, and encyclopedia entries. One of his books, American Jails, was recognized by the Policy Studies Organization as one of the most significant books in the area of public policy. He also serves on the editorial boards of several of the nation’s leading journals in the field of criminal justice
Books
- Mays & Winfree, Essentials of Corrections, 4th edition
- Mays & Winfree, Juvenile Justice, 2nd Edition
- Mays & Gregware, Courts & Justice
- Mays & Ruddell, Making Sense of Criminal Justice
L. Thomas Winfree Jr.
Education
Ph.D., University of Montana,Sociology, 1976
M.S., Virginia Commonwealth University, Sociology, 1974
B.A., University of Richmond, Sociology, 1968
Background
Tom Winfree has spent nearly 40 years studying prisons and jails in the United States and across the globe. He has published extensively on inmate responses to institutional living conditions, including prisonization, suicide, and rebellion, as well as a textbook co-authored with his colleague Larry Mays on corrections that is in its fourth edition (Essentials of Corrections, 2009, Wadsworth).
Beyond prisons and jails—but including some of their younger inmates, Tom has also spent much of his career looking at the problems of youth in contemporary society, particularly the misuse of drugs by adolescence and the role of street gangs in youthful socialization. In this latter regard, he has also expanded his vistas to look internationally at gangs in other nations, including works in progress about gang in Great Britain, the Netherlands, Germany, and Bosnia-Herzegovina. He has also works with colleagues in the Eurogang Network, as that group works to define and examine troublesome youth groups in Europe. Tom’s interests in the contemporary youth led him to once again partner with Larry Mays, the product being Juvenile Justice (2006, Waveland Press, Inc.).
The third leg of Tom Winfree’s scholarship centers on the development of criminological theory, a topic that while passionate for him, often eluded the ken of his students. Consequently, beyond adding to the body of criminological theory, largely by his expansion on and extension of social learning theory into youthful drug use (including American Indian youth and illicit drugs), street gangs, and terrorist groups, Tom wrote, with Howard Abadinsky, Understanding Crime: Theory and Practice, a book dedicated to making theory accessible and relevant to criminal justice students.
In the spirit of Boyer’s work on contemporary academic scholarship, Dr. Winfree has worked with local jails to redefine their jail inmate handling policies and practices. He has testified as a jail expert in several jail death cases filed under 42 U.S.C. 1983 (Civil Action for Deprivation of Rights). He has worked with local communities in examining their gang problems and looking for workable solutions, and assisted the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, to examine the efficacy of Gang Resistance Education and Training (G.R.E.A.T.), as a collaborator working the Finn-Aage Esbensen, the principal investigator in the National Evaluation of G.R.E.A.T. He provided the City of Las Cruces with an assessment of its Municipal DWI Drug Court using an experimental design. He has supervised many masters theses that have directly benefited the agencies employing the graduate students, including a recent study on differential release outcomes from secure confinement for New Mexico’s Children, Youth and Families Department. His published work—articles, books, and book chapters—have been cited by journal articles included in the Social Sciences Citation Index nearly 375 times. Winfree is also a member of the editorial boards for the following journals: Crime & Delinquency, Youth & Society, and the Journal of Drug Issues.
Tom has been awarded NMSU’s Dennis Darnall Award for Excellence in Teaching, Research and Service (2003) and NMSU’s International Programs Globalization Award (2006-2007). He has also been included in many Who’s Who publications over the past 25 years, but his favorite is Who’s Who Among America’s Teachers (three times), since the nominations come from students.
Books
- Mays & Winfree (2006). Juvenile Justice. Waveland Press, Inc.
- Mays & Winfree (2009). Essentials of Corrections. Wadsworth.
- Winfree & Abadinsky (2003). Understanding Crime: Theory and Practice. Wadsworth.
- Samples of Recent Refereed Journal Articles:
- Esbensen, Winfree, He, & Taylor (2001). Youth gangs and definitional issues: When is a gang a gang, and why does it matter? Crime & Delinquency, 47:105-130.
- Ruddell & Winfree (2006). Setting aside criminal convictions in Canada: A successful approach to offender reintegration, The Prison Journal, 86(4): 452-469.
- Winfree, Taylor, He, & Esbensen (2006). Self-control and variability over time: Multivariate results using a 5-year multi-site panel of youths. Crime & Delinquency, 52(2): 253-286.
- Winfree, Giever, Maupin, & Mays (2007). Drunk driving and the prediction of analogous behavior: A longitudinal test of social learning and self-control theories. Victims and Offenders, 2:327-349.
