The insecurity felt in various latitudes makes scientific dialog between the various criminal sciences pressing in the context of a renewed gesamte Strafrechtwissenchaft (Franz von Liszt).

The statute and function of contemporary Criminology - namely Empirical Criminology - has a decisive importance in relation to the strategies defined by Criminal Policy, in view of the control of crime, in terms of both high crime (organized crime, economic, and financial crime, environmental crime ), and ordinary crime (crimes against property, crimes against persons). Criminal Policy strategies that operate through the influence on the creation and interpretation of Criminal Law (in a broad sense, covering criminal law, criminal procedure, and execution of penalties) - the principles and rules of penal dogmatism, in a teleological-functional perspective, must be adapted to the social and technological evolution of crime - as well as in the area of action by the formal and informal monitoring bodies.

Overall goal: Constitute a system of interdisciplinary communication between three major scientific areas whose main purpose is to study crime and punishment. That is, it is a question of reactivating in a dynamic, current, and efficient way the project, which is not new, of the development of "Criminological Sciences", in the sense that they have defined since the 1930s in Portugal by Beleza dos Santos, Eduardo Correia, and Figueiredo Dias. Thus, it is intended to give a historical continuity to a fruitful project that, until the extinction of the Institutes of Criminology of the Ministry of Justice, produced works of national and international importance in a critical-constructive dialog between Criminal Law and Criminology, for about four decades.

Specific Objective: To clarify, through theoretical, dogmatic, and empirical research, the complexity of the criminal phenomenon in its current structural morphogenesis, and contribute: 

1. To the definition of criminal policies supported by critical rationality;
2. To its evaluation through the scientific method.

1. Criminal law

Description: This research line, which is essentially theoretical, questions the great theoretical-dogmatic systems, from the finalism to the systemic-functionalism, in view of the need to transform criminal law in the face of the threats that current crime represents for the security of society and the state.

2. Criminal policy and punitiveness

Description: Its epistemological status within the Criminal Sciences can be summed up in the formula prescribed by Marc Ancel: the investigation of policies. Such research, essentially theoretical, has as its purpose a double opening: on the one hand, the opening of criminal law to systems and models of action and social control taking into account the history of the present time, namely the profound transformations seen in Western society from the 1970s on; and on the other hand, the opening to the empirical evidence produced by the different constituent disciplines of criminology.

3. Empirical criminology

Description: Criminology is restricted to its empirical aspect, that is, criminology that produces criminological knowledge through the scientific method deployed in quantitative methods and qualitative methods. Such methods apply to antisocial and pre-delinquent behavior, to the offender, to the victim, to criminal police agencies, to judicial decisions, to the penitentiary system and social reintegration, to repetition, and to deviant trajectories. They also apply to the scientific evaluation of policies and practices, namely through Experimental Criminology.