Criminology, crime and criminal justice in Croatia
| Published date | 01 March 2017 |
| Date | 01 March 2017 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/1477370816648523 |
| Subject Matter | Country Survey |
research-article2016
Country Survey
European Journal of Criminology
2017, Vol. 14(2) 242 –266
Criminology, crime and
© The Author(s) 2016
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https://doi.org/10.1177/1477370816648523
DOI: 10.1177/1477370816648523
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Anna-Maria Getoš Kalac and Reana Bezić
University of Zagreb – Faculty of Law, Croatia
Abstract
Criminology and in more general terms ‘crime research’ have a very long tradition in Croatia,
dating back in terms of formal institutionalization as far as 1906, when the Chair for Criminal-
Complementary Sciences and Sociology at the Zagreb Faculty of Law was established. Despite
criminology’s long institutional tradition in Croatia, criminology as a serious and independent
research discipline started rather late to take off in Croatia in a systematic manner. The article
presents basic facts and figures about Croatian criminology, crime and criminal justice, providing
a solid overview of the complex country situation, which is still struggling with many transitional
challenges. Croatia, like many other countries in the region, does not seem to have a ‘conventional
crime problem’ and does not fit the profile of a ‘high crime region’ when compared with the rest
of Europe, but it struggles with corruption and organized crime, and it still has to deal with
atrocious crimes from the recent past and the far-reaching consequences of war profiteering and
criminal ‘privatization’.
Keywords
Crime, criminal justice, criminology, Croatia
Background
Croatia is located on the crossroads between Central and South-Eastern Europe. It has a
long coastline on the Adriatic Sea to the south, and borders with Slovenia and Hungary
to the north and with Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina to the east. Croatia’s popula-
tion is approximately 4.3 million people with roughly one-fifth of the population living
in Zagreb, the country’s capital.
In 1990, after the Communist Party of Yugoslavia fell apart, the first democratic elec-
tions became possible in Croatia. In 1991 Croatia became independent from the Socialist
Federal Republic Yugoslavia. The same year the Yugoslav People’s Army, which was in
Corresponding author:
Anna-Maria Getoš Kalac, University of Zagreb – Faculty of Law, Trg m. Tita 14, 10000 Zagreb, Croatia.
Email: agetos@pravo.hr
Getoš Kalac and Bezić
243
reality a Serbian army, attacked Slovenia, and then immediately after this Croatia and
then Bosnia and Herzegovina. The atrocities that followed affected the whole region and
left deep divisions along ethnic lines that are visible even today.
The war in Croatia was accompanied by an overnight transition to a market economy;
economic crime in the process of privatizing state-owned property and war profiteering;
large population immigration (primarily from Bosnia and Herzegovina) and emigration
(refugees from Croatia leaving for European countries and Serbs leaving for Serbia);
widespread personnel changes in the judiciary, police, military and governmental offices;
swift legal reforms; and so on. The majority of the Croatian population has personal expe-
rience of the past atrocities, the widespread violence, the mass victimization and the dis-
placement of persons, to name just a few long-term consequences of the war. This, as well
as the ongoing discussions on these topics in Croatia and the region, must be acknowl-
edged as an important influence when it comes to the overall socio-political context.
As in most European countries, the Croatian population shows a clear trend towards
ageing. The current average age in Croatia is 41.7, which places it among the oldest
nations in Europe. With respect to gender, the population is 48.2 percent men and 51.8
percent women.
Currently, overall unemployment in Croatia is 16.2 percent, and as many as 49.7 per-
cent of the unemployed in 2013 were aged puts Croatia at the bottom of the EU rankings (only Spain and Greece are worse off).
The vast majority of Croatia’s inhabitants are Croat by ethnicity (90.0 percent), fol-
lowed by Serb (4.0 percent) and Bosniac (0.7 percent). Accordingly, most inhabitants are
Catholic by religion, followed by Orthodox, not religious/atheists, and Muslims. We say
‘accordingly’ because those who declare themselves to be Croat by ethnicity are most
commonly Catholic by religion, whereas Serbs are usually Orthodox and Bosniacs are
Muslim. Ethnicity and religion are tied together closely in Croatia and throughout the
region. This is of particular criminological relevance when analysing specific types of
crime, such as hate crimes or war crimes. Even today in public and political discourse
religious and ethnic affiliation plays an important role.
Compared with this, immigration plays a relatively small role in Croatia. Croatia in
2013 had negative net migration with foreign countries. Only half of all immigrants to
Croatia were foreigners (the other half were Croatian citizens), and almost half of the
foreign immigrants had a regional citizenship background. Croatia has, at least so far, not
attracted any meaningful immigration and therefore lacks the typical criminological dis-
course about immigration and crime. Even in light of the ongoing migration crisis,
Croatia most probably will not become a country of destination for migrants.
Criminology in Croatia
Criminology and in more general terms ‘crime research’ have a very long tradition in
Croatia, dating back in terms of formal institutionalization as far as 1906, when the Chair
for Criminal-Complementary Sciences and Sociology at the Zagreb Faculty of Law was
established.1 Croatian criminology, like most of European criminology, is closely con-
nected to the so-called ‘Kriminalwissenschaften’ (crime sciences), especially criminal
law, sociology of criminal law, law of sanctions, and so on (Derenčinović and Getoš,
244
European Journal of Criminology 14(2)
2008; Horvatić and Derenčinović, 1998; Kaiser, 1996; Šeparović, 1987). Therefore, it
should come as no surprise that criminology in Croatia first and foremost emerged at the
University of Zagreb’s Faculty of Law. The Croatian regulation defining scientific areas,
fields and branches in 2009 classified ‘criminology’ together with ‘victimology’ as part of
the branch ‘criminal law and criminal procedural law’ in the field of ‘law sciences’ in the
area of ‘social sciences’. However, particularities in the history of Croatian criminological
development resulted in additional criminological lines that evolved outside the context
of this ‘criminal law’ line and in the framework of ‘criminalistics’ (studied at the Police
College of the Croatian Ministry of Interior’s Police Academy in Zagreb) and ‘behav-
ioural disorder studies’ in the field of ‘defectology’ (today called ‘educational-rehabilita-
tional sciences’, studied at the Faculty of Education and Rehabilitation Sciences at the
University of Zagreb).
The reasons for the evolution of these two additional lines, the ‘criminalistic’ and
‘defectological’ one, lie in the rather monodisciplinary approach that has until recently
dominated the discourse in Croatia’s ‘criminal law’ line in criminology. This affected
research topics and methods, as well as criminological education and related scien-
tific careers within the ‘criminal law’ line, where a normative approach clearly domi-
nated and led to the strict exclusion of non-legal professions. At the same time, the
‘criminal law’ line was not able to cover all the criminological topics and lacked a
fundamental background in empirical research, besides treating criminology as a sim-
ple addendum to criminal law, rather than an independent discipline closely con-
nected to criminal law. This led to the formation of two groups of researchers and
professionals with a non-normative background outside the ‘criminal law’ line: one
was within the framework of so-called police and security studies (the ‘criminalistic’
line, which primarily focuses on crime research for operational police purposes), and
the other was within the framework of so-called behavioural disorders (the ‘defecto-
logical’ line with a strong focus on crime-related behavioural disorders). All three
lines coexist in Croatian criminology and joint research efforts are still an exception.
A similar situation can be found in Slovenia and in Bosnia and Herzegovina, where
the ‘criminalistic’ line is the most prominent, or in Serbia, where the ‘defectological’
line dominates criminological research (see Getoš Kalac, 2014; Getoš Kalac and
Karlović, 2014).
The just mentioned three institutions, the Zagreb Law Faculty, the Police Academy
and the Faculty of Education and Rehabilitation Sciences, are the key players when it
comes to both criminological research and also education in Croatia (for a somewhat
different perspective, see Mikšaj-Todorović, 2008). Although the Croatian higher edu-
cation curriculum in criminology is well developed, there is no specialized study pro-
gramme in criminology – either at the (under)graduate level or at the postgraduate level.
Therefore, Croatian criminologists most commonly have a background in criminal law,
criminalistics, sociology, pedagogy, defectology or social work, with some sort of spe-
cialization in criminology later on. For the last couple of years there has been an ongo-
ing discussion about establishing a joint...
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