Samenvatting

This article briefly outlines the origin and development in the past fifty years of institutions in the Netherlands and Flanders which have explicitly been labelled ‘criminological’. There are remarkable differences in developments between both regions. But in The Netherlands as well as in Flanders criminology has grown over the course of a century from a very modest phenomenon in the margin of criminal policy to a fully-fledged specialisation in socio-scientific and criminal research in universities, and a recognised qualification on the labour market.