299 Slovenian criminology and recent developments in the field of criminal justice and security studies in Slovenia Gorazd Meško, Bojan Tičar Abstract Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to present the development of criminology and ‘’criminal justice & security studies’’ in Slovenia. Design/Methodology/Approach: The paper is based on a literature review and review of a COBISS on-line library using keywords criminology, names of researchers and institutions which provide students with criminology training as well as conduct research in the fields of criminology, criminal law and security studies. Findings: The paper presents some aspects of the development of criminology and criminal justice & security studies in Slovenia. Institutionalisation, research, textbook, conferencing and other aspects of teaching criminology to students, professionals and other interested parties are presented. In addition, recent developments of criminal justice and security studies have been presented. The article also presents the most influential institutions and individuals of the Slovenian criminology education and criminology research. UDK: 343.9(497.4) Key words: criminology, research, education, training, development, Slovenia 1 INTRODUCTION Criminology has quite a long tradition in Slovenia, dating back to the period before the Second World War. One of the pioneers in criminological thought was Fran Milčinski (1867-1932), the author of a novel ‘Birds without the nest’ (orig. Ptički brez gnezda, 1917/1972). He was a judge who dealt with juvenile delinquency and was quite gifted in portraying some factors of juvenile delinquency in the literature. Another pioneer of Slovenian criminology, Aleksander Vasiljevič Maklecov,