Dr. Haller joined Temple's faculty in 1968. He was a professor in the history and criminal justice departments, which he helped establish, before retiring in 2010.
Dr. Haller, who wrote his doctoral dissertation on the history of the eugenics movement in the United States, transferred his interest to the study of the history of crime while teaching at the University of Chicago.
On Temple's history department's website, he explained how it happened: "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."
Dr. Haller said that after joining Temple's faculty, he began to study Philadelphia organized crime, which he preferred to call "illegal enterprise."
Over the years, Dr. Haller published articles describing the structure of gambling, bootlegging, loan sharking, and drug trafficking, and the relationship between organized crime and the community - especially political connections.
In an Inquirer article about the rising rate of robberies in Philadelphia in 1996, Dr. Haller pointed out that a century earlier, people were less likely to be robbed and more likely to lose money on the street to pickpockets. "It doesn't mean you lose more money, but the feeling of safety is very different," he said."I've been mugged twice in Philadelphia in 28 years, and I can tell you that was more frightening than four attempts to pick my pocket in Rome."
In 1990, Dr. Haller was interviewed about Moses L. Annenberg and his son Walter H., former owners of The Inquirer, for a WHYY TV12 series, Mobfathers. Moses Annenberg became a multimillionaire through his monopoly of the racing wire, which telegraphed race results and tracked odds from coast to coast. Eventually, he was convicted of income-tax evasion and went to prison.
Dr. Haller is the author of a book on the eugenics movement and of Life under Bruno : The Economics of An Organized Crime Family
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