Remembering Fred Cohen
We are saddened to report that Professor Emeritus Fred Cohen, a founding faculty member of the School of Criminal Justice, passed away at his home in Tucson, Arizona on March 30. He is survived by his wife Emily and his children, Roger, Rachel, and Reuben.
Fred graduated from Temple Law School and subsequently earned the L.L.M. degree at Yale Law School. He began teaching at the University of Denver Law School and then the University of Texas Law School, but was persuaded to leave to join the planning of the country’s first PhD program in the nascent academic discipline of criminal justice. Along with William Brown, Donald Newman, and Hans Toch, he helped design the core curriculum of the University at Albany School of Criminal Justice, which opened its doors to students in 1968. In this capacity, he contributed to the creation of “the Albany Model,” of criminal justice, a pioneering, multidisciplinary curriculum that was widely emulated as criminal justice was incorporated into scores of university degree programs nationwide. His ability to bridge gaps between legal doctrine and the behavioral sciences resulted in his developing a legal treatise, The Law of Deprivation of Liberty, in which he examined the different reasons motivating governmental action to deprive citizens of liberty and the important implications regarding personal freedoms and accompanying procedural protections. The tight compartmentalization of the criminal law and its punishment orientation, civil commitment laws and their objectives of protecting society while offering treatment to mentally ill and disabled individuals, and juvenile justice as a system uncertain of its role of punishing or helping miscreant youth, gave way to the encompassing “deprivation of liberty” framework. The new focus provided fresh insights into actions taken in the liberty deprivation domain, their justifications, and a host of attendant implications for constitutional interpretation and practical application. Fred designed and presided over the part of the curriculum devoted to Law and Social Control, which examined these and related issues. He also taught classes in correctional law, juvenile justice, criminal law, and criminal procedure to graduate students at the University at Albany until his retirement from the School of Criminal Justice faculty in 1997. He was known and respected (and occasionally feared) for his demanding Socratic method of instruction, and for his uncanny analytical skills, his epic hours-long exams, and his razor-sharp wit.
Fred made important contributions to legal scholarship, practices, and policies throughout his career. In addition to his groundbreaking casebook, the Law of Deprivation of Liberty, Fred authored The Mentally Disordered Inmate and the Law and A Practical Guide to Correctional Mental Health Law, as well as numerous book chapters and scholarly articles. He served as the editor of periodicals including the Criminal Law Bulletin, the Correctional Law Reporter, and the Correctional Mental Health Report. He assisted in drafting the current ABA Standards for Corrections, and served as a reporter to the American Bar Association’s Institute of Judicial Administration’s Juvenile Justice Standards Project. He testified at U.S. Senate Hearings and before other federal commissions about the use of solitary confinement in prisons, and was a court-appointed Monitor for mental health services and for medical and dental health care services in Ohio corrections institutions, and a court-appointed fact-finder who oversaw racial and ethnic integration in the Arizona Department of Corrections. He was a legal advisor to the Jesuit Social Research Institute, a social justice organization that works to bring human rights policies and practices to private correction facilities.
Fred was a larger-than-life figure with a personality to match. At 6’6” he had a commanding presence and could proudly lay claim to holding a record that still stands for the most rebounds in an NCAA basketball national tournament game (34), which he set in 1956 as a member of the Temple team in a win against UConn.
His vision in securing an essential role for law in academic criminal justice, his legal scholarship, his involvement in overseeing the provision of essential services to prisoners, his concern for human rights, and his decades of teaching are hallmarks of his distinguished career at the University at Albany School of Criminal Justice, where his passing is mourned and his memory is celebrated by generations of students and his former colleagues.