The work of WHO in the field of crime and delinquency began in 1949 with Lucien Bovet's comprehensive summary of existing psychiatric views on juvenile delinquency. That same year, Dr. Manfred Guttmacher prepared two reports on adult offenders--the first on the causes and prevention of crime and the treatment of offenders prior to sentencing. A striking feature of this report was the grouping together of juvenile and adult offenders for research purposes. In 1954, WHO sponsored a seminar on the prevention and treatment of alcoholism; in 1955, it prepared a paper on the detection of the predelinquent juvenile that considered how treatment would reduce the incidence of delinquency among certain potential delinquents. A paper by Professor Gibbens, in 1956, on the prevention of crime and the treatment of offenders stated that too much attention was being paid to legislation and too little to providing facilities for treatment of the offenders. Other WHO research has focused on the psychiatric treatment of offenders (1958), the use of psychosocial indices (1959), trends in juvenile delinquency (1959), deprivation of maternal care in delinquent behavior (1972), and a report of the European conference on the mental health of adolescents (1967). Reports have also been published on delinquency in Africa (1965), and health and social defense planning (1970). Two meetings (in Helsinki in 1972 and in Bratislava in 1973) discussed the problems of deviant social behavior and delinquency in adolescents and young adults. Footnotes are provided.