About the institute

The Institute of Criminology and Legal Policy, formerly National Research Institute of Legal Policy, is a research institute at the University of Helsinki, specialising in research and monitoring of crime and legal policy in Finland.

As specified in the law on the Institute of Criminology and Legal Policy (1139/2007), the tasks of the research institute are:

to practice independent research on legal policy, with regard to needs of the ministry of justice and society at large;
to monitor legal policy and crime, to analyze their trends;
to maintain research databases that are necessary for the research specified in the law.

History

The institute became part of the Faculty of Social Sciences (University of Helsinki) in 1 January 2015.

The history of the institute dates back to 1963, when the Criminological Research Institute (Kriminologinen tutkimuslaitos) was established under the Finnish Ministry of Justice. As research and investigation activities expanded, the name of the institute was changed to the Institute of Justice Policy Research (Oikeuspoliittinen tutkimuslaitos, OPTL), which is how it was known until 2014. The institute was transferred to the Faculty of Social Sciences of the University of Helsinki at the beginning of 2015 as part of the government sectoral research reform.