In the author's view, the essential elements of criminology are research, teaching, and doctrine. In the last 20 years, there has been a marked expansion in all three areas. Today, 34 centers are devoted exclusively to teaching criminology and 22 to criminological research. The most important centers are the Vaucresson Center of Education and Research, the Office of Penal and Criminological Studies, and the National Center of Penitentiary Studies and Research. A number of centers are also located at university institutes, notably at the Universities of Lyon, Bayonne, Pau, Aix-en-Provence, and Toulouse. In general, the criminological research in France displays a wide diversity of approaches. Directions range from Jean Pinatel's theory of the criminal personality to the new criminology movement of Foucault. However, French criminology also possesses several glaring weaknesses. Research funds are distributed unequally, with Parisian institutions receiving a major portion of the available resources. As a result, programs for teaching criminology are inadequately developed, and teaching has been unnaturally separated from research. Consequently, theories are frequently developed with little or no empirical basis. Furthermore, as the large research teams are located at the Ministry of Justice in Paris, the danger exists that research could focus exclusively on special interests in the context of particular problems without concern for other types of research. Criminology has little influence on official criminal policy or on the preparation of reform laws. Finally, a schism has developed between advocates of new theories and traditional criminologists. Efforts such as the 1979 18th congress for Organized Criminology have been undertaken to unify discordant trends. Elements contrary to the spirit of science must be removed from new theories, and the different approaches must be assigned their places in a new, coordinated construction. Several notes are supplied.