The 2024 EuroCrim conference of the European Society of Criminology (ESC) was held in September in Bucharest, Romania under the title “Criminology Goes East”. The conference was organised by Prof. Dr. Andra-Roxana Trandafir of the Faculty of Law, University of Bucharest, who is Associate Professor of Criminology and Criminal Law and Vice-Dean of the Faculty of Law, as well as a Criminal Law Lawyer. She is the co-chair of the Working group on Balkan Criminology of the ESC and also part of the Balkan Criminology network established by the Max Planck Partner Group (MPPG) for Balkan Criminology together with the University of Zagreb. The EuroCrim 2024 was attended by many Balkan Criminology Network members, such as Prof. Dr. Albrecht (Germany), Dr. Kilchling (Germany), Prof. Dr. Lambropoulou (Greece), Assist. Prof. Dr. Bezić (Croatia), Dr. Šprem (Croatia), Prof. Dr. Aebi (Switzerland), Prof. Dr. Savona (Italy), Assoc. Prof. Dr. Hacin (Slovenia), Dr. Ćopić (Serbia), Prof. Dr. Trandafir (Romania) and Prof. Dr. Getoš Kalac (Croatia).
On the first day of the conference Assoc. Prof. Dr. Andra-Roxana Trandafir within her Conference Opening Plenary shared with around 1.600 conference participants her valuable insights on conducting empirical field work and researching homicides in Romania as part of the Balkan Homicide Study. She thus presented her research on Romanian criminology.
On the second day of the conference Prof. Dr. Anna-Maria Getoš Kalac in the First Conference Plenary shared her findings on “Violence in the Balkans: Between Myths and Realities in Times of Penal Populism”. She provided a brief overview of the work of the Balkan Criminology Network, elaborated on the origins and impacts of past and current violent images of the Balkans, followed by key findings from the Balkan Homicide Study and then concluded by calling upon the criminological community to more vigorously engage in science activism in order to address growing penal populism by evidence-based crime policy.
On the second conference day the Balkan Criminology Working Group of the ESC also held the roundtable on “Mapping the Penological Landscape of the Balkans” which was chaired by Prof. Dr. Anna-Maria Getoš Kalac, Dr. Michael Kilchling, Prof. Dr. Hans-Jörg Albrecht, Prof. Dr. Andra-Roxana Trandafir and Prof. Dr. Marcelo Aebi. The discussion focused on the current state of art in penological research throughout the Balkans as well as relevant neighbouring countries and presented key issues in comparative penological research and its findings. The discussion was base din one of the first regional surveys launched by Balkan Criminology, originating in 2015 and undertaking a detailed mapping of the penological landscape of the Balkans. Meanwhile 3 out of the 4 major Balkan Criminology “mappings” have been successfully concluded and published: in 2014 the Criminological Mapping , in 2020 the Victimological Mapping and in 2021 the Violence Mapping. With the book “Mapping the Penological Landscape of the Balkans – A Regional Study on Sentencing and Imprisonment with a Critical Analysis of Current Penal Policies”, edited by Anna-Maria Getoš Kalac, Michael Kilchling, Gorazd Meško, Marcelo F. Aebi & Almir Maljević and forthcoming in 2024 with Springer, the Balkan Criminology Quadrilogy is now finally being completed.
Finally, on the second day of the conference Prof. Dr. Hans-Jörg Albrecht and Prof. Dr. Anna-Maria Getoš Kalac participated in the ESC’s European Criminology Oral History Project (ECOH). With the ECOH the ESC aims at creating an organised collection of recorded interviews with prominent criminological scholars, such as Prof. Dr. Hans-Jörg Albrecht, the Former Director of the Max Planck Institute for Foreign and International Criminal Law in Freiburg in Germany and current director emeritus at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Crime, Security and Law and thus one of the 26 Founding members who back in 2000 established the ESC, who played a role in the development of European criminology. The interview conducted with him by Prof. Dr. Getoš Kalac will be available soon on YouTube .
On the third day of the conference Balkan Criminology organised the panel “Balkan Criminology: Punishment and Prisons and their Alternatives” chaired by Prof. Dr. Hans-Jörg Albrecht. The panel included presentations by Andra-Roxana Trandafir & Daniel Nitu (Crime, Punishment and its Alternatives in Romania), Anna-Maria Getoš Kalac (Prisons Responding to Overcrowding – Migration, Human Smuggling and THB), Hans-Jörg Albrecht (Immigration and Alternative Forms of Justice) and Lea Feuerbach (Recidivism in Croatia).
On the last day of the conference a spectacular closing ceremony was held and the organiser of the 2024 EuroCrim conference Prof. Dr. Andra-Roxana Trandafir officially presented the ESC flag to the organiser of the 2025 EuroCrim conference in Athens Prof. Dr. Effi Lambropoulou, who is also distinguished member of our Balkan Criminology Network.
Balkan Criminology congratulates and thanks Prof. Dr. Andra-Roxana Trandafir, the organiser of the 2024 EuroCrim conference, for having hosted utmost successfully an international criminological conference of such magnitude and prominence in a truly welcoming and wholehearted spirit of generous Balkan hospitality. We are grateful and proud of you being part of our joint criminological (ad)venture ‘through the gorges of the Balkans’!
