Don M. Gottfredson Scholarship Fund

NCCD sponsors the Don M. Gottfredson Scholarship Fund at California State University, East Bay. Each year, Cal State East Bay and Shalom High School in Milwaukee, WI grant a needs-based scholarship of $2,000 to a ward or former ward of the juvenile or family court in memory of Don M. Gottfredson.

Don Gottfredson was a quiet giant in the field of criminology. He founded the NCCD Research Center in the 1960s and later went on to be the first Dean of the School of Criminal Justice at Rutgers University.

Don was the very model of the NCCD research tradition. He engaged in careful rigorous research but always with an eye to improve the criminal justice system. He was a pioneer in research that was the foundation of the risk assessment and Structured Decision Making work that NCCD does today. Don was a proponent of fairness in sentencing and helped expose forms of racial and gender bias in the sentencing process. He was instrumental in liberal sentencing reforms in several states and served on an influential statewide commission in New Jersey. Unlike some of his famous criminological peers, Don never joined the "get tough" bandwagon that was so popular in the 1980s and beyond.

He leaves a family noted for its continuing commitment to criminology. Several of his children are major figures in research themselves. Don was a great academic leader who built one of the strongest graduate programs in the nation in a few short years. He was a great mentor to younger criminologists. He was a gentle man with a wonderful sense of humor. He took his work very seriously but remained a modest and caring individual, perpetually open to new ideas.