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Criminology and Criminological Research in Croatia

If key words to define criminology are: individual and social phenomenon, incidence, forms and consequences of crime, ethiology, prevention, interdisciplinarity, social and governmental regulations and reactions to crime... then criminology does exist in Croatia for pretty long time. On the other hand, if we try to define who criminologists are, what is their training and what is their role in Croatian society, then the statement from above could easily be canceled. The existence of Criminology between 1965. and 2007. could be proved by about 60 comprehensive criminological scientific projects, several dozens of smaller individual projects serving mostly to reach master’s or doctor’s degree, hundreds of scientific and professional papers in Croatian journals and five or six textbooks refering criminological topics. Schools of law at the University of Rijeka and Split have their institutes for research in criminal law and criminology, and two years ago at the University of Zagreb, Faculty of Education and Rehabilitation Sciences the Department of Criminology was established. In 2007. this Faculty published 15th volume of journal titled Criminology and Social Integration. Despite of all those facts, criminology in Croatia has not been recognized neither as science nor as profession. At the most universities in Croatia, in the field of social sciences there is very few, mostly optional, criminology courses. The exception is the study of Social pedagogy (Faculty of Education and Rehabilitation Sciences, University of Zagreb) that traditionally provides comprehensive education in criminology (among all courses on baccalaureate, master’s and doctor’s level, about 70% are typical criminological courses) and yet, the diploma does not bring the title ‘’criminologist’’. In such situation, the general knowledge in the field of criminology in Croatia is pretty crumbled and to make the review of what is really going on takes time and effort. The survey that has been done by now allows to state that in Croatian ‘’criminological’’ literature (1) is not much of critical tones, (2) that papers in the form of review mostly compare the facts in Croatia and abroad with small original contribution of the author(s), and (3) that the ‘’strictly’’ scientific papers based on quantitative methodology, are under strong influence of western criminology. The scolars from the Department of Criminology who take part in education of Social pedagogists, have very clear vision about better recognizing criminology and certain strategy for it’s development in Croatia.

Criminology; research; Croatia

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