engleski

The role of academics in shaping crime policy: some thoughts from Croatia.

Crime is reality of each society, historically and cross culturally speaking. Crime related topics are part of political rhetoric, especially in pre-election period (mainly reflecting an idea “how to get tougher on crime”). Criminologists are giving their best trying to identify models of best practice for keeping the crime rates at tolerable levels, to figure out what works in treatment of offenders and their relapse prevention. Yet, criminologists often note their exclusion from crime policy decisions and many note that crime policy decisions are often based more on ideology, speculations or international trends than on evidence gained from scientific researches. On the other hand, those who could use those researches for strategy or policy purposes, often find them un-understandable or non applicable. It seems that science and policy can be very distant form each other which often result in non effective crime policies. The purpose of this paper is to identify some reasons for this distance and to offer possible solutions for bridging that gap.

academics; crime policy; Croatia

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