Why do we need the KFN?

In Germany crime is felt to be a growing threat. Research into the causes, effects and control of punishable behaviour is therefore of increasing significance. However, these research questions cannot be satisfactorily answered with the theories and methods of one discipline alone. Appropriate criminological hypotheses can often only be formed by combining psychological explanations with sociological interpretations, while the actions of the controlling authorities and the effect of their decisions on the persons involved can only be fully analysed if lawyers and educators are also integrated in the research teams.

The universities, with their vertical division into separate faculties, offer too few opporunities for research teams to cooperate across subjects. The KFN is one of the few institutes in Germany which has succeeded in creating optimal conditions for the interdisciplinarity which is so essential in criminology. In addition, a small, independent research institute with its own business management can usually react more flexibly and quickly to topical problems than university departments which are tied by cumbersome bureaucratic machinery.

At the same time, the KFN's team structure gives it the necessary staying power for long-term projects (such as the completed project "The Consequences of Incarceration" and the current project "Crime Registered by the Police in the Lower Saxony"). And finally, as a result of concentrating on empirical field research, the KFN has more intensive and more frequent outside contacts than is usually the case with university academics. The KFN is thus in a position to assume the role of mediator between criminological science on the one hand and practice and politics on the other, and thus to contribute to an effective criminological policy based on scientific knowledge.