  Dynamical evolution drives globular clusters toward core collapse, which
strongly shapes their internal properties. Diagnostics of core collapse have so
far been based on photometry only, namely on the study of the concentration of
the density profiles. Here we present a new method to robustly identify
core-collapsed clusters based on the study of their stellar kinematics. We
introduce the \textit{kinematic concentration} parameter, $c_k$, the ratio
between the global and local degree of energy equipartition reached by a
cluster, and show through extensive direct $N$-body simulations that clusters
approaching core collapse and in the post-core collapse phase are strictly
characterized by $c_k>1$. The kinematic concentration provides a suitable
diagnostic to identify core-collapsed clusters, independent from any other
previous methods based on photometry. We also explore the effects of incomplete
radial and stellar mass coverage on the calculation of $c_k$ and find that our
method can be applied to state-of-art kinematic datasets.
