Personal Statement:
In the mid-1960s I received, unsolicited, a grant to write a report on an aspect of crime and criminal justice in 1920s Chicago. I found the topic challenging, particularly since I seemed to be the only professional historian studying the history of American urban crime. At first I concentrated on Chicago, but I soon branched out in order to develop a comparative focus. In the years since, I have published on the history of city police, gambling, bootlegging, vice, loansharking, and drug trafficking. In the 1990s I was given complete access to the intelligence files of the Pennsylvania Crime Commission in order to undertake a study of the Bruno family centered in south Philadelphia. In my work, I have tried not only to understand how criminal entrepreneurs organize their businesses but also place them within the broader context of urban history -- linking crime to such topics as city politics, race and ethnicity, urban geography, professional sports, and entertainment. Crime is an interesting prism through which to understand the society within which the crime occurs.

Representative Publications:
Eugenics: Hereditarian Attitudes in American Thought (1963).

"Urban Crime and Criminal Justice: The Chicago Case," Journal of American History (1970).

"Bootleggers as Businessmen: From City Slums to City Builders," in David Kyvig, ed., Law, Alcohol, and Order: Perspectives on National Prohibition (1985).

"Illegal Enterprise: A Theoretical and Historical Interpretation," Criminology (1990).

"Policy Gambling, Entertainment, and the Emergence of Black Politics: Chicago from 1900 to 1940," Journal of Social History (1991).

Notes:
Professor Haller received the Herfurth Award for his book Eugenics. He has been awarded fellowships from the Ford Foundation, the American Bar Association, and the Social Science Research Council and has been a Visiting Fellow at the National Institute of Law Enforcement as well as a consultant for federal commissions investigating crime.