Criminal justice scholar had national influence

John S. Goldkamp was both a sophisticated social scientist and a street-smart policymaker.

"He didn't just produce dry academic studies that were peer-reviewed and forgotten about," Jerry Ratcliffe said in an interview. "He really wanted to make a change."

Ratcliffe is the chair of Temple University's criminal justice department, which Dr. Goldkamp chaired from 1979 to 1983 and from 2004 to 2010.

In 1986, Dr. Goldkamp developed for Philadelphia the nation's first bail guidelines, using social science to govern the treatment of those awaiting trial.

"It became a model throughout the country," said Ralph Taylor, a Temple criminal justice professor who was department chair from 2000 to 2004.

On Sunday, Aug. 26, Dr. Goldkamp, 64, died of multiple myeloma at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania.

In early 2012, the American Society of Criminology gave him its August Vollmer Award, for activities that "have contributed to justice or to the treatment or prevention of criminal or delinquent behavior."

Dr. Goldkamp's wife, Rely Vilcica, who retired as a judge in Bucharest, Romania, said that "a lot of people have contacted me to tell me how much he touched their lives."

Currently an assistant professor of criminal justice at Temple, Ms. Vilcica noted how much his former students, now successful lawyers and judges, "attribute their success to his . . . mentoring."

His work outside the classroom affected other lives.

In the 1980s, when overcrowding exploded in Philadelphia jails, the city hired Dr. Goldkamp to help analyze the problem.

In the early 1990s, his evaluation of the effectiveness of the nation's first drug court - in Dade County, Fla. - helped encourage the opening of such courts across the nation.

Later that decade, he studied the effectiveness of Operation Sunrise, a police crackdown on drug crime in North Philadelphia and Kensington that generated thousands of arrests. He found that the police raids later foundered in court.

Not only did many defendants simply duck out of trials, he found, but they were no more likely to get court-ordered drug treatment than were their friends still on the street.

More recently, he, his wife, and others produced an exhaustive 2006 report on the Philadelphia criminal justice system.

And in 2008, after a convicted robber, newly released from prison, fatally shot a Philadelphia police officer, Gov. Ed Rendell named Dr. Goldkamp to head a review of the state parole system.

In 2010, the 98-page Goldkamp report recommended several ways to improve oversight of potentially violent parolees.

After The Inquirer published a 2009 investigative series on the Philadelphia criminal court system, Dr. Goldkamp served as a key volunteer on a panel advising the Pennsylvania Senate on reforms.

The panel's report is due shortly.

In the panel's public meeting, Dr. Goldkamp warned about the dangers of cash bail for defendants.

"People who shouldn't be released can purchase" bail and temporary freedom, he said. "People who should be released can't be because they can't afford it."

Born in Orange, N.J., Dr. Goldkamp earned a bachelor's degree at Wesleyan University in 1969 and a master's in 1975 and a doctorate in 1977, both in criminal justice and both at the State University of New York at Albany.

Dr. Goldkamp helped develop the criminal justice program at Temple, his colleague Taylor said.

In 1998, the National Association of Pretrial Services Agencies gave him a special award for his work.

From 1999 to 2004, he was the criminal law reporter for the American Bar Association's Task Force on Standards for Pretrial Release.

In 2006, he was named a fellow of the American Academy of Experimental Criminology.

Besides his wife, Dr. Goldkamp is survived by daughters Aurora Margarita-Goldkamp and Violet Margarita-Goldkamp, a brother, four sisters, and a former wife, Mona Margarita.

A visitation was set from 4 to 7 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 4, at the family home in Lafayette Hill.