Penn State Dickinson School of Law Professor Joins Inaugural International
Jury for Stockholm International Prize in Criminology

Tiyanjana Maluwa, the H. Laddie and Linda P. Montague Professor of Law at Penn State University’s Dickinson School of Law, has been invited to join the inaugural international jury established to select the winner of the Stockholm International Prize in Criminology. The jury is composed of leading scholars from Australia, Germany, Hungary, Japan, Sweden, the United States, the United Kingdom and Venezuela.

The role of the jury is, inter alia, to provide expert advice on, and proposals for, the nomination and prize-awarding processes, including the rules of procedure of the jury and criteria for the selection process.

The formal announcement of the prize will take place today at the 14th World Congress of the International Society of Criminology in Philadelphia. It is envisaged that the first prize will be awarded at a ceremony at Stockholm’s Stadshus, the same location as the Nobel Prize ceremonies, in June 2006. The prize will be awarded for outstanding achievements in criminological research or the application of its results for the reduction of crime and the advancement of human rights.

The idea for an international prize recognizing achievements in the field of criminology was developed by a group of interested institutions who gathered at a meeting in Stockholm on July 23, 2004. Their proposal received support from the Swedish Government, which offered to provide a secretariat and handle all administrative and legal issues pertaining to the prize.

Professor Maluwa is the former legal advisor to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and served as the first legal counsel of the Organization of African Unity (now the African Union). In 1997, he was asked by the United Nations to serve as the Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in Nigeria following the execution of poet-activist Ken Saro Wiwa, and he has recently undertaken assignments as a special consultant to the United Nations. Prior to joining Penn State Dickinson, he was a professor of law at the University of Cape Town, South Africa, and an Extraordinary Professor of Law at the University of Pretoria, South Africa.