Southern Criminal Justice
Association
General Business Meeting
Nashville, TN
Sept 26, 2003
Meeting called to order at 10:35am
Mustaine called the roll of the Board of Directors (BOD)
BOD Present: Tewksbury, Robinson, Crews, Mustaine, West, Miller, Sanborn, Morgan, Everhart, and Hunter.
BOD Absent: Sloan, Fields, and Hensley.
Copies of previous minutes are available for your perusal if you are interested.
Welcome to Nashville. Things are looking good. Panels are well attended. Things are going smoothly. Tewksbury expressed extreme gratitude to Robinson and Miller for all of their hard work putting the program together. Tewksbury is worried about an “accidental death” due to some interesting aspects of the by-laws.
Constitutional and By-laws committee (Tewksbury, Robinson, Sanborn, Camp (chair), Fields, Mustaine) went over these documents very carefully and made changes relating to out of date policies, operating procedures being different, etc.
Called Dave Camp forward to discuss what we did. Camp: we are trying to streamline these documents. We also discovered that we don’t exist. We have been dissolved with the secretary of state. He will get this taken care of this afternoon. Some of the changes we have discussed are membership and membership dissolution, if circumstances arise. We would like to have some control over who can be members of our organization. We are also trying to make clearer and streamline the elections process and the succession process in cases of removal and death. You will be receiving a copy of proposed changes via e-mail soon.
Tewksbury: we also went over the policies. We rescinded 28 policies, and cleaned up several of them. Details will be available on the web page.
Please talk up the SCJA with colleagues. We need some involvement! We are looking for folks who are interested and enthusiastic in escalating their involvement.
After the Clearwater conference you received a survey in the mail about your views. We are doing it again so please fill out the survey when you get it!
Report of the 1st VP: Robinson:
Robinson expressed his gratitude for the help he has received on this conference: Steve Lab, ACJS President for attendance, Ralph Weisheit for coming and giving a great talk. Thanks to several past presidents for helping and giving advice. Thanks to Tewksbury for assistance. Thanks to Crews for work on Awards program. We are also doing a raffle, and there is still an opportunity to buy tickets! Thanks Etta Morgan for bringing the great artwork from the inmates in Alabama. Thanks to Mustaine for paying people. Thanks to Miller for doing a great job as local arrangements. Thanks to West and Everhart for selling tickets.
Awards Luncheon follows this, and there are great panels still to come. There is a panel on the association that promises to be interesting.
Report of the 2nd VP: Crews:
Crews has been coordinating the awards. He has also been working on a procedural manual for officers and BOD so that we don’t have to reinvent the wheel each time when we take over a new office.
Site selection: we are looking at either Savannah or Jacksonville Beach. Crews is leaning toward Jacksonville Beach.
Report of the Secretary/Treasurer: Mustaine:
Went over financial report, noted people could look at past minutes if they were interested. We will be looking at options for our money this year and our nonprofit status and compliance.
No meeting occurred due to Isabelle. So nothing to report as of yet.
Steven Lab, current ACJS president, was in attendance and make some remarks: There will be changes to the website: there will be a front end and also a back end for members only. It will also look more professional, because we are having a professional company take it over. The academy is looking more and more into having an international presence. Lab has been to foreign locations this year in support of the Academy. People don’t know about us in other countries. Criminologists are interested in getting involved, however, when they find out about ACJS. We are an organization registered with the UN. We can send representatives to speak at the UN meetings. We need to do this, it will benefit us in the long run. Issue that will be on the table at the next meeting (rescheduled for 3 weeks) is certification. This does not refer to accreditation as that is too expensive and not worth the money. We will have certain standards that we will require our members to follow and we will get a certificate for the next few years. ACJS would like people to get involved in the certification process. This will be a big major change from what we are doing now. Annual meeting is in Los Vegas. Deadline for submissions is Oct. 15th. Please come! We are at the Riviera Hotel again. We got good rates. It may seem high for Vegas, but we get our meetings space for free, all tables, chairs, etc… So we pay a bit more in rooms in order to help the Academy with its other expenses and keep conference registration costs lower. Questions about accrediting and certification followed. These are issues that are still being considered and researched.
Committee
Reports:
AJCJ Editor:
Hensley:
No report.
Tewksbury noted that members need to support our journal. So send Hensley papers! Morgan discussed an idea that we may pursue: we may try to publish a conference journal with papers from the conference. The deadline for completed papers would be earlier than the conference.
Audit: (Miller and Everhart)
No changes in the audit since the mid-year meeting. Mustaine indicated that per the suggestion of the audit committee she conducted a self-audit prior to the meeting. It came out just fine.
Awards: Crews
Things are fine. The luncheon is next and we have some great awards winners.
Budget and Finance:
Robinson
We are selling T-shirts, have a raffle, and we are taking in money.
Fund Raising:
Morgan and Crews
It has been covered. We have T-shirts, a raffle, and a silent auction. We have some great art to auction off.
Crews is going to finalize the program in the upcoming year. The theme may be something like, what we don’t know about crime. It will be a great conference. Please come and be involved.
Nominations and Elections committee: Sanborn
Sanborn announced the winners of the elections: Peter Wood as new 2nd VP, Julie Kunselman and Florence Ferguson are the new Directors.
Secretariate: Fields
Tewksbury noted that we should thank the EKU students for their work at the registration desk. Mustaine indicated that our membership profiles are available.
Webmaster:
Robinson
Update your information. Information about the policy changes, etc. will be on-line.
Constitution and By-laws committee is still working.
One member suggested that we should explore using a credit card to register, perhaps even to register on-line. We will look into that.
Be sure to thank the publishers for coming. They pay for some of our amenities here. We do appreciate them being here. Go up and get some free books this afternoon.
Next meeting is ACJS Annual Meeting, Las Vegas, March 2004.
Motion to adjorn? Yes (Sanborn), second (Conya). Meeting adjourned at 11:28.