For one week, the international criminology community will descend upon Penn.
From August 7 to 14, Penn's Jerry Lee Center of Criminology will be hosting the International Society of Criminology's 14th World Congress of Criminology.
So far, just over 1100 participants are scheduled to attend the summit, but the actual attendance is expected to be over 1200 participants from 65 countries.
Attending will be "judges, police chiefs -- all kinds of people who care about the study of crime," said Director of the Jerry Lee Center Lawrence Sherman.
Sherman became president of the International Society of Criminology in January of 2000 and has been planning this conference since May of that year.
This will be the first international congress on criminology to be held in the United States.
It will also be one of the most diverse congresses, since most participants from past events have hailed from the host country.
A majority of this year's participants are not from the U.S., according to Sherman.
The congress will be welcoming participants from parts of the developing world, such as the Middle East, Africa and Latin America.
Sherman said that representatives from Senegal, Mongolia and Sierra Leone will be attending for the first time.
The participants from the developing countries will "have to sell their societies on post-industrial and information-age procedures such as data collection," Sherman said.
Sherman expected that it would be difficult to get attendees from the developing and Muslim world to come to America, but the "biggest problem was getting people from Europe." However, Sherman added that "Scandinavia and England are coming big time."
Among the highlights of the congress will be a major announcement from the minister of justice of Sweden concerning a partnership between the his department and Penn that will address new ways to enhance the ability of criminology to prevent crime and foster justice using science. Also notable will be conference including 50 prison inmates.
There will be a featured speaker from Iran, who will lecture on the Islamic system of criminal justice as well as give a presentation on the use of data-mining to predict terrorism.
This is all in an effort to "foster dialogue across cultures and religions," Sherman said.
In order to accommodate participants from so many nations, there will be live translations for all of the plenary sessions, and the University has offered dorm rooms for $50 a night.
The Congress also offered scholarships of $800 to the neediest attendees, along with waiving their conference fees.
The mornings will consist of plenary sessions in English with translation; in the afternoon there will be smaller, single-language discussion sessions followed by evening lectures, again in English with translation.
Penn Sociology professor Elijah Anderson will present a paper on urban civility in Rittenhouse Square at one of the evening lectures.
Other presenters form Penn include Dean of the School of Social Policy and Practice Richard Gelles speaking on domestic violence -- and Sherman speaking on terrorism.
There will also be a film festival focusing on restorative justice taking place at Houston Hall throughout the course of the congress, not to mention Mummers, Swedish dancers and an organ performance by Penn professor and Huntsman Program Director Roger Allen.
All of the events and lectures will be taking place in the buildings around the Perelman Quadrangle and will be free of charge to Penn faculty, staff and students with a PennCard.
