All of the main schools of European scientific pursuit in criminology were represented in Poland prior to World War II, but during the Nazi occupation, the academic foundations of research were disrupted. In the immediate postwar years, criminological research focused on the nature and causes of war crimes and juvenile delinquency. As the communist ideology came to dominate Poland, crime was viewed as a transitional phenomenon that would be eliminated with the destruction of capitalist elements in Polish society. The development of criminology as a separate branch of science was declared unnecessary and even heretical. The empirical investigation of crime in Polish society virtually ceased. The foundations for contemporary criminology in Poland were set in the late 1950's with the passing of Stalinism. Social science endeavors expanded, and the collection of crime data and empirical studies increased. For the last two and a half decades, juvenile delinquency has remained the most intensively investigated subject. Five notes and 32 annotated bibliographic entries are provided.