Criminology in Hungary prior to World War II basically followed Western European development, which considered offenders' personalities and social circumstances as well as their crimes. During the 10 years immediately following the War, Hungarian jurisprudence held that crime was extraneous to the social order, crime would cease to exist with the withering away of the state, existing crime could be traced back to somatic and psychic reasons and was a capitalist remnant, and criminals were enemies of the people and deserved punishment. From the mid-1950s to the mid-1970s, Hungarian criminology concentrated on causality; since then it has centered on crime prevention, reaction to crime and the problem of justice. Specific considerations include: establishing responsibility, justifying preventive measures, socioeconomic correlations, and victimology studies. The article considers theoretical trends and problems of today, including a neo-positivist or rationalist trend. Bibliography