Ernesto Ugo Savona

Ernesto U. Savona, Founder of Transcrime, has been the Director of the Centre from 1994 until October 2026. He is now Chair of the Scientific Council, a body established to ensure the continuity and scientific quality of the Centre’s activities. He was Professor of Criminology at the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Milan, and previously at the Università degli Studi di Trento, the Università di Palermo and La Sapienza in Rome. Member of the Criminological Council at the Council of Europe and consultant to the United Nations, the European Union and various national governments. From 1990 to 1994, he directed a project on international crime at the National Institute of Justice, the research institute of the U.S. Government, in Washington D.C.  Visiting scholar at the Yale Law School, Oxford (Wolfson College), Cambridge (Dept. of Criminology) and the University of Salta (Argentina). President of the European Society of Criminology (2003/2004) and Chair of the Global Agenda Council on Organized Crime of the World Economic Forum (2011-2012). He is member of the European Commission’s Expert Group on Policy Needs for Data on Crime. Since 2003 he has been Editor in Chief of the European Journal on Criminal Policy and Research of Springer. Speaker at main international conferences, he is author, editor and co-editor of several books, chapters and articles on organized and economic crime.