Bergalli and the Spanish Common Sessions

• Author: John Lea
• Pages: 471-472

Page 471

I first met Roberto Bergalli during the mid1980s when I was engaged in the process of integrating the Middlexex University Masters Programme in Criminology into the European Common Study Programme on Critical Criminology and Criminal Justice (the ‘Common Study Programme’) which had been established some years previously by Roberto Bergalli, Sandro Baratta, Massimo Pavarini, Louk Hulsman and others. These were interesting and also difficult times.

In those days the idea was very ambitious; to work out a common syllabus including literature which all the participators would adhere to. This meant of course great battles as we fought line by line through the wording of long documents. The task of trying to get agreement between British Left Realists and Dutch Abolitionists about the content and orientation of teaching was of course almost impossible! Added to that the fact that continental European academics were all well read in Anglo-Saxon debates in criminology and law and knew what was happening in each other’s countries, while we British had only a minimal familiarity with continental literature and debates and for us the United States was more familiar that the geographically proximate continental Europe.

Maybe this was a receipe for disaster but it is to the credit of individuals like Roberto...