Organising International Courses in Criminology in various parts of the world has for some considerable time been a distinctive feature of our Society. Saying that they have a bright future is not however as paradoxical as might at first appear. Among the different activities organized by the Society these Courses must surely count as one of its original and most exciting initiatives, and they play an important part in the implementation of our scientific policy aimed at spreading knowledge and encouraging research in the field of criminal law.

There has long been a cleavage between individual and family centered strategies of crime prevention and situational and organizational strategies. These approaches divide both academic and practitioner communities. One approach contends that the central focus of any crime prevention program should be on individuals and their behavior. Prevention programs should intervene in the lives of individuals or their families so as to change their propensity to commit antisocial or criminal acts. An alternative approach to prevention focuses on changing the structure of societies, communities, and situations to alter either the risks of criminal victimization or the environmental opportunities for offending. We shall briefly examine what is known about these two major strategies of crime prevention.1

Cuando se llega de último, como he llegado yo, no puede hacerse casi nada más que recoger lo que los otros han ido dejando en el camino.

En efecto, en cada una de las conferencias, de las mesas redondas, se fueron esclareciendo aspectos parciales de la naturaleza de los medios y de sus potencialidades constructivas.

Le thème de ce cours, «Les tendances actuelles de la criminologie en Europe», fut particulièrement riche d’enseignements épistémologiques, théoriques et empiriques. De nombreux exemples d’implications concernant des politiques sociales et criminelles furent relevés et analysés. Les problèmes particuliers touchant l’Espagne ont fait l’objet d’analyses détaillées.

In democracies a free press provides the forum for debate upon which good governement rests. The press is the means by which ideas are suggested, promoted, and criticized. Through the press, political positions can be formulated and expounded, meetings can be organized.

Today, in England, crime prevention is an important and lively area of policy and practice in national government, and is also growing steadily in local government. Let me take the most salient example, the Safer Cities Programme (SCP). This was set up by the Home Office in 1988, as part of the Government’s wider programme of coordinated action aimed at dealing with the multiple social, physical and economic problems of some of our larger cities.

In the last decade the mass media have worldwide to be larger, more influential and more powerful. After it was possible in the Federal Republic of Germany in the Fifties to receive one TV program and in the Sixties and Seventies to receive three TV programs, the number of receivable TV programs has risen for a huge part of the population in Western Europe through cable TV to eleven or even more programs in the last years. More TV channels are announced. Additionally there is the huge offer of videos. The distribution of video recorders in the population is increasing. Worldwide we are on the way to a communication — to a mass media society in which fiction, phantasy, the definition of reality assumes a greater role than reality itself, where people want to be permanently entertained, and where the portrayal of the contents gains more emphasis than the contents itself.