In 1827 the first modern national crime statistics were published: the Compte général de l'administration de la justice criminelle en France. Before the onset of data criminology, the perception of crime relied on sources from classical antiquity, rational philosophical thought, travellers' observations, and unsystematic observations by criminal justice practitioners. With the new concept of national crime statistics, it became possible to test theories and hypotheses about crime using a shared data instrument, leading to an unprecedented avalanche of crime research by continental scholars.

Crime and Civilization: The Birth of Criminology in the Early Nineteenth Century explores the rise of data-based criminology as an intellectual field in continental Europe in the early nineteenth century. Janne Kivivuori creates a new interpretation of the era of "first criminology," one approached from the perspective of data and instruments, thus complementing the traditional story based on theories and explanatory shifts from "classicism" to "positivism" and beyond. Drawing on original French, German, and English publications, the book contextualizes the rise of criminology in wider cultural history, spanning from Enlightenment philosophers to the general rise of science in society.