The conference was called for the purpose of discussing issues and priorities for international cooperation in criminological studies in developed and industrialized nations and to arrive at some consensus concerning basic issues and priorities within areas of study that would lend themselves to comparative and cooperative research in different countries. An explicit goal of the conference was to arrive at a tentative agenda of high priority research subject areas, which would lend themselves readily to comparative study, depending on the state of development of research capabilities and which reflect the research interests of the different participating countries. The ultimate goal of the conference will be to produce an essay, constituting a written outline for the field of comparative criminology and comparative research, which will be made available to the field at large.