ABSTRACT
Governments across Europe increasingly collaborate with each other in economic, financial and social policies. In the area of crime policies, however, each of the European countries is still very much doing its own thing without giving much attention to developments elsewhere. In some respects crime policies of the main European countries are quite different from one another. In spite of the variety in organisational structures and policies, some common trends can still be discerned. In most countries, for instance, the interest in preventive policies has grown since the mid-1980s.
