Slovenia is a parliamentary democratic republic that gained its independence after the disintegration of Yugoslavia in 1991. The same year, Slovenia also adopted its Constitution, which formally signalled the end of the communist system that had been dominant in the country up to that point (Ustava Republike Slovenije, 1991). The European Community recognized Slovenia as an independent state in January 1992, and the United Nations accorded it membership five months later. In the ensuing years, and thanks to its historical ties to Western Europe, as well as its strong economy and stable democracy, Slovenia has managed to transform itself into a modern state. In 2004, the country joined both the European Union (EU) and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and in 2007 the Eurozone. This article provides an overview of trends in crime, developments in criminal justice, and the role of criminological scholarship in Slovenia over the last three decades, although, as it is also discussed below, criminology itself has a much longer history in the country. A brief account of criminology in Slovenia In Slovenia, criminology has been a part of academia for around a century. Aleksander Vasiljevič Maklecov, the pioneer of criminology in the country, produced a vast number of publications until his death in 1948, from the first Slovenian textbook on criminology to studies of juvenile delinquency and crime control policies. As a former student of
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.