ABSTRACT
Hungary's history in the twentieth century — similar to that of other Eastern European countries — has been characterised by constant change, which has often meant fundamental transformations in its political, social and economic system. The free parliamentary elections in the spring of 1990 ended 40 years of socialist rule in Hungary. This had an enormous impact on all aspects of the social, political and economic life of the country, and thus on crime and crime control policies. This chapter discusses the following issues: first, the history of crime prevention, trends in crime, and the main features of Hungarian crime control policy; second, the ‘stillbirth’, birth, and then revival of the idea of crime prevention; and the circumstances influencing crime prevention policy over the past 18 years; and third, harmony and discordance in the Hungarian approach to crime prevention and the main features of the Community Crime Prevention Strategy.
