It is published biannually by Taylor and Francis on behalf of the Scandinavian Research Council for Criminology, together with the Danish, Finnish and Norwegian Crime Prevention Councils, the Finnish National Research Institute of Legal Policy, and the Department of Criminology and Sociology of Law at Oslo University.

The journal focuses on the Scandinavian or Nordic tradition of criminology research.

The journal was established in 1965 as an annual publication under the title Scandinavian Studies in Criminology by the "quasi-official" Scandinavian Research Council for Criminology.

[2] Before it was acquired by Taylor and Francis it was published by Universitetsforlaget.

[1] The journal is abstracted and indexed in Scopus,[3] PsycINFO,[4] EBSCO Legal Source,[5] Criminal Justice Abstracts,[6] and Academic Search.