Centro Nazionale Di Prevenzione E Difesa Sociale (National Center of Crime Prevention and Social Defense)

Adolfo Beria di Argentine (1920–2000), a Milan judge and antifascist militant during the Resistenza (Resistance), founded the Centro nazionale di prevenzione e difesa sociale (CNPDS) in 1948. Its purpose was to study the social conditions of deviance and to contribute to the establishment of the elements of what would become the Movement for a New Social Defense.

Despite its formal label, one should not consider the Center solely an Italian organization. While on one side, its activities were indeed decisive for the renaissance of Italian social sciences, especially sociology, after World War II, on the other side, its activities have been largely international in scope from the beginning. For more than 50 years, it has covered the widest range of topics, most of them innovative with ...