The Fifth Annual Conference of the European Society of Criminology was organized in Krakow, Poland in the summer of 2005. The conference was hosted by the Jagiellonian University’s Department of Criminology and the Polish Criminological Association. The main theme of the conference was “Challenges of European Integration: Challenges for Criminology”. Relating to this, the six plenary presentations are comprised under three headings, “Contemporary Criminological theory and Penal Reality”, “Issues of Social Cohesion and Social Exclusion in Contemporary Criminology”, and “Criminal Justice Reform in Central and Eastern Europe”. The plenary presentations focus on the areas of penal policy, justice reform, and social exclusion. Revisions to the text by the authors are mainly of technical character. Tables, figures,graphs, and references