Criminological literature documentation

Since 1986, the Centre for Criminology has been maintaining a literature documentation in the field of German-language criminology. The documentation is available as the Criminological Literature Database KrimLit on the Internet for research purposes. The database offers factual assessed evidence of criminologically significant contributions to the manifestations of crime, to perpetrators and victims, police, social services and the penal system. In addition, there are numerous documents on overarching issues and problems of criminal justice, criminal policy, crime prevention and internal security.

As of January 2024, the database contains about 53,000 records, including about 18,500 references to criminologically relevant articles with brief abstracts and the holdings of the KrimZ library. KrimLit is updated quarterly by current records.

Cooperations

In the field of literature documentation, KrimZ has been a contractual partner of Juris GmbH, which emerged from the Federal Ministry of Justice at the end of the 1980s. It evaluates specialist criminological literature and makes the evaluations of the Juris article database available. Conversely, Juris data, insofar as these are of criminological relevance, are processed and entered into the special database KrimLit.

In 2017, the KrimZ started a cooperation with the Leibniz Institute for Psychology (ZPID) in Trier. In exchange, essays from the psychological-forensic field will be made accessible.