NCJ Number
91355
Date Published
1983
Length
31 pages
Annotation
This paper discusses the key perspectives and themes that have dominated Yugoslav criminology and secondarily the social and cultural context of its development.
Abstract
In Yugoslavia, 'criminology' refers exclusively to academic, didactic, and research-oriented activities and does not include among its concerns administrative and professional practice in criminal justice agencies. Yugoslav criminology had periods of speculative studies before the comparatively recent development of criminology as a scientific field engaged in incisive investigations of crime and criminals which has involved scholars from many disciplines. The scholars and scientists have been drawn primarily from jurists and to a lesser extent from psychologists and physicians. Only recently have social scientists given serious attention to the crime problem. Almost all universities offer criminology as a standard course, primarily in law schools. For the most part, criminologists have been inclined to look for the causes of criminal behavior in sociocultural milieu and the individual's response to it, although the biological and psychological makeup of the offender has not been excluded as a factor in certain types of offenders. Yugoslav criminology has been dominated by efforts to elaborate the theoretical Marxist explanation of the crime problem as rooted in alienation attributable to styles of economic development, industrialization, and the migration of people. A total of 112 notes and 7 annotated bibliographic listings are provided.