Violence has been more and more often reported in contemporary societies, and representatives of international organizations, experts, stakeholders as well as ordinary citizens have expressed their concern about the problematic number of violent acts and the diverse forms of this phenomenon. Fear and feeling of insecurity are expressed by citizens of various social and cultural areas, and they have been increasingly invoked in discourses of specialists concerned about violence evolution across time and space.
To challenge this thematic, an international workshop, untitled “Violence and Crime in Europe – Social Interventions and Research Methods”, took place in Bucharest (Romania) in December 2011. Initiated by Ecaterina Balica, member of the ‘Violence and Crime. Prevention and Mediation (VCPM)’ Laboratory from the Institute of Sociology of the Romanian Academy, and by Pascal Décarpes, member of the VCPM and research associate at the Department of Criminology of the University of Greifswald (Germany), it lead to this publication with papers presented by the workshop´s participants.