AN INTRODUCTION TO COMPARATIVE CRIMINAL JUSTICE
There is one single justice, and one single law (Plato)

    The study of comparative justice and law is a fairly new field, only about thirty years old, and has corresponded with rising interest in a more established field, comparative criminology.  Whether the purpose is to discover more successful crime control policies or to test theories under diverse circumstances, the goal of both comparative justice and comparative criminology is to remedy American ethnocentrism (the view that American ideas apply naturally to other parts of the world).  Comparative research is usually carried out by the "safari" method (a researcher visits another country) or "collaborative" method (the researcher communicates with a foreign researcher).  Published works tend to fall into three categories: single-culture studies (the crime problem of a single foreign country is discussed), two-culture studies (the most common type), and comprehensive textbooks (which cover three or more countries).  The examination of crime and its control in the comparative context often requires an historical perspective since the phenomena under study are seen as having developed under unique social, economic, and political structures.  Hence, the method most often employed by researchers is the historical-comparative method.

    To summarize the historical-comparative method in a few words, it is basically an alternative to both quantitative and qualitative research methods that is sometimes called historiography or holism.  In historiography, there are at least eight ways to do history: the Great Man approach, the historical forces approach, the crisis of civilization approach, the dialectic approach, the evolutionary approach, the geographic factors approach, the conflict or "who won" approach, and the serendipity or accidental discovery approach.  In holism (which is a term that describes when a whole gives meaning to parts), there is an emphasis upon inductive inference from description, which is similar to Max Weber's notion of "ideal types" that are general to many cases.  It should be noted that historical-comparative method is tied to the origins of sociology.  Patterns, trends, and syndromes are the words most often used in comparative criminal justice with the same meaning as ideal-types.

SOCIETAL TYPES AND JUSTICE SYSTEMS

    There are four kinds of societies in the world: (1) folk-communal societies, which are also called primitive societies; (2) urban-commercial societies, which rely on trade as the essence of their market system; (3) urban-industrial societies, which produce most of the goods and services they need without government interference; and (4) bureaucratic societies, or modern post-industrial societies where the emphasis is upon technique or the "technologizing" of everything, with the government taking the lead.  Some people also talk about a fifth type, the post-modern society, where the emphasis is upon the meaning of words and the deconstruction of institutions.  Developing countries tend to be lumped into the first two (1) and (2) types, and the study of culture becomes more important in these contexts.  Developed countries tend to be the last two (3) and (4) types, and the study of structure becomes more important.  The study of culture involves the study of customs and folkways of the people.  The study of social structure involves the study of institutions, like economic and political systems. 

    A folk-communal society has little codification of law, no specialization among police, and a system of punishment that just lets things go for awhile without attention until things become too much, and then harsh, barbaric punishment is resorted to.  Classic examples include the early Roman gentiles, African and Middle Eastern tribes, and Puritan settlements in North America (with the Salem "witch trials").  An urban-commercial society has civil law (some standards and customs are written down), specialized police forces (some for religious offenses, others for enforcing the King's law), and punishment is inconsistent, sometimes harsh, sometimes lenient.  Most of Continental Europe developed along this path.  An urban-industrial society not only has codified laws (statutes that prohibit) but laws that prescribe good behavior, police become specialized in how to handle property crimes, and the system of punishment is run on market principles of creating incentives and disincentives.  England and the U.S. followed this positive legal path.  A bureaucratic society has a system of laws (along with armies of lawyers), police who tend to keep busy handling political crime and terrorism, and a system of punishment characterized by overcriminalization and overcrowding.  The U.S. and perhaps only eight other nations fit the bureaucratic pattern.  Juvenile delinquency is a phenomenon that only occurs in a bureaucratic society.

    Many comparativists romanticize the folk-communal society for its low crime rates as well as the way most quarrels and conflicts are settled privately.  However, folk societies are also known for "lumping it" which is process of letting things go on too long until it's too much to tolerate anymore.  Nonetheless, folk societies work very hard to avoid the overcriminalization common to modern bureaucratic societies.  The most frequently studied variable in comparative criminal justice is urbanization, or the process of internal migration from the countryside to the cities.  It is suspected that urbanization dissolves family ties, creates cultures of poverty, and produces a stabilized criminal underworld consisting of well-defined criminal career pathways.  Also of importance are the variables of colonization and underdevelopment, as these processes of globalization shape underdog ideologies among exploited Third World people which come back in the form of terrorism against the more developed countries.  However, an event (like urbanization or colonization) is not the cause of crime if it occurs when crime rates are falling.

    It is the consensus of experts is that there are four types of criminal justice systems in the world:  (1) common; (2) civil; (3) socialist; and (4) Islamic.  This pretty much classifies all 185 nations in the world.  It is important to compare nations that have similar legal traditions because crimes may not be defined the same.  Interpol and the U.N. have dealt with this problem for years.  Even something as simple as murder is defined differently by different nations.  In some countries, crime data is based on offenses known to police, and in other countries, statistical data is based on convictions.  Certain countries (such as those in Central Africa) do not even collect crime statistics.  In other countries (mostly socialist ones), crime statistics are collected, but the data are classified.  It is also difficult to compare punishments, since in some countries, the family members of the offender are punished, and the range of punishments includes such things as stoning and mutilation. 

    Common law systems are also known as Anglo-American justice, and exist in most English-speaking countries of the world, such as the U.S., England, Australia, and New Zealand.  They are distinguished by a strong adversarial system where lawyers interpret and judges are bound by precedent.  Common law systems are distinctive in the significance they attach to precedent (the importance of previously decided cases).  They primarily rely upon oral systems of evidence in which the public trial is a main focal point. 

    Civil law systems are also known as Continental justice or Romano-Germanic justice, and practiced throughout most of the European Union as well as elsewhere, in places such as Sweden, Germany, France, and Japan.  They are distinguished by a strong inquisitorial system where less rights are granted to the accused, and the written law is taken as gospel and subject to little interpretation.  For example, a French maxim goes like this: "If a judge knows the answer, he must not be prohibited from achieving it by undue attention to regulations of procedure and evidence."  By contrast, the common law method is for a judge to at least suspend belief until the sporting event of a trial is over.  Legal scholarship is much more sophisticated and elitist in civil law systems, as opposed to the more democratic common law countries where just about anybody can get into law school.  Romano-Germanic systems are founded on the basis of natural law, which is a respect for tradition and custom.  The sovereigns, or leaders, of a civil law system are considered above the law, as opposed to the common law notion that nobody is above the law.   

    Socialist systems are also known as Marxist-Leninist justice, and exist in many places, such as Africa and Asia, where there has been a Communist revolution or the remnants of one.  They are distinguished by procedures designed to rehabilitate or retrain people into fulfilling their responsibilities to the state.  It is the ultimate expression of positive law, designed to move the state forward toward the perfectibility of state and mankind.  It is also primarily characterized by administrative law, where non-legal officials make most of the decisions.  For example, in a socialist state, neither judges nor lawyers are allowed to make law.  Law is the same as policy, and an orthodox Marxist view is that eventually, the law will not be necessary.

    Islamic systems are also known as Muslim or Arabic justice, and derive all their procedures and practices from interpretation of the Koran.  There are exceptions, however.  Various tribes (such as the Siwa in the desert of North Africa) are descendants of the ancient Greeks and practice Urrf law (the law of tradition) rather than the harsher Shariah punishments.  Islamic systems in general are characterized by the absence of positive law (the use of law to move societies forward toward some progressive future) and are based more on the concept of natural justice (crimes are considered acts of injustice that conflict with tradition).  Religion plays an important role in Islamic systems, so much a role that most nations of this type are theocracies, where legal rule and religious rule go together.

    Each society also has its own customary law or tribal traditions.  Many parts of Africa, for example, have reverted back to a tribal system because they could not accommodate their heritage of colonialism, which essentially involved the problem of mixed Common, Civil, Socialist and Islamic influences.  Tribal justice systems tend to be characterized by arrest without trial and other summary procedures.  In other parts of the world, such as Latin America, the problem has been modernization.  Advances in technology and the profits of drug crime have outpaced the capability of Western-oriented justice systems, and what would normally be a trend toward decriminalization has become a haphazard set of legal practices that are sometimes lenient and sometimes harsh.  Traditionalism, colonialism, modernization, and the increasing tendency for crime to become transnational in an international marketplace form the components of the globalization problem in criminal justice.           

    Each type of system - Common, Civil, Socialist, Islamic - has local variation.  Even in English-speaking countries, for example, there is variation.  Canadian justice places more emphasis upon the right to a fair trial, free from prejudicial publicity.  In Canada, the public and the media are usually banned from the courtroom, and there is little interest in crime news.  In England, there is more emphasis upon fairness in sentencing, and making sure the guilty don't go free.  English police dossiers along with two types of lawyers (solicitors and barristers) and two types of courts (Magistrate and Crown) help ensure this.

    Police systems are quite different around the world.  With the exceptions of Japan and the Common Law nations, few countries hold their police officers accountable for violations of civil rights.  In Socialist and Islamic countries, the police hold enormous political and religious powers.  In fact, in such places, crime is always seen as political crime or co-occurring religious problem.

    Court systems of the world are of two types: adversarial, where the accused is innocent until proven guilty; and inquisitorial, where the accused is guilty until proven innocent or mitigated.  The U.S. adversarial system is unique in the world.  No other nation, not even the U.K., places as much emphasis upon determination of factual guilt in the courtroom as the U.S. does.  Outside the U.S., most trials are concerned with legal guilt where everyone knows the offender did it, and the purpose is to get the offender to apologize, own up to their responsibility, argue for mercy, or suggest an appropriate sentence for themselves.  Inquisitorial systems have more secret procedures.   

    Correctional systems worldwide can be easily distinguished by whether they support corporal punishment (beatings) or not.  Some so-called "civilized" countries that claim they are better than the U.S. because they don't have the death penalty regularly practice such corporal punishments as beatings and whippings.  Nations that practice corporal punishment do tend, however, to have less of a correctional overcrowding problem.  Probation and parole, where they exist cross-culturally, tend to be available only for native citizens, and not for foreigners nor immigrants.   

    Juvenile Justice systems vary widely.  Scotland has the toughest system, regularly sentencing juveniles to harsh boot camps with a strict military regimen and forced labor.  Germany has a juvenile justice system similar to the U.S., but there is more emphasis upon education as punishment. 

THE MODERNIZATION versus COLONIZATION THESIS

    The idea that technology produces common effects which tend to make all nations increasingly similar is the modernization thesis (Shelley 1981).  In this view, the developing countries are destined to go through the same crime and control patterns as the developed nations have gone through.  This pattern mainly involves a skyrocketing increase in property crime, the hallmark of industrial society.  It also involves more female emancipation, and certain problems arise from this, not the least of which is a backlash of male violence.  The implication of the modernization thesis is that developed countries, like the U.S., ought to reach out, and help developing countries manage or regulate the inevitable stages they will have to go through.

    Opposed to this idea is the underdevelopment, or colonization thesis (Sumner 1982) which holds that it is the more advanced, developed nations in the world which cause crime in dependent, Third World nations.  Corporations, for example, are allowed to pillage raw materials and resources in the Third World.  Likewise, most of the developed nations do not engage in free trade.  Instead, they subsidize their farmers and producers at home, prohibit the import of cheap, foreign-made products, and make their money by saturating foreign markets with luxury goods that create a sense of rising expectations or unreachable aspirations in the Third World.

    There is little debate, however, over the importance of urbanization.  Comparative criminologists believe urbanization is the primary cause of violent crime in any society (Archer & Gartner 1984).  When citizens migrate to the cities, kinship and community ties are broken, and a sense of anonymity and impersonality develops.  Some of this impersonality is inherent to the nature of industrial and bureaucratic work, but the problem in the cities appears to be the problem of income inequality, where vast numbers of poor people live in fairly close concentration to wealthier people, or those who are on the verge of "making it" economically. 

PLACES WITH LITTLE OR NO CRIME

    Switzerland for many years used to have travel brochures saying "there is no crime in Switzerland", and criminologists were stumped on why this was so, whether because of the high rate of firearm ownership or the extensive welfare system.  It turned out that the Swiss (along with some other welfare nations, like Sweden) were not reporting all their crime rates.  However, it was true that their crime rate was fairly low.  The answer seemed to be that nations such as this did a remarkable job in managing their underclass population, the poor people who lived in the ghettos and slums.  Swiss crime control is highly effective in using an "iron fist, velvet glove" approach toward those who commit crime and come from the bottom echelons of Swiss society.  For example, when a poor person commits a crime, the government goes to work analyzing the family, educational, and employment needs of everyone in that poor person's family.  Then, after some punishment (which the offender frequently agrees with as deserved), a long-term treatment plan is put into effect to raise that family out of poverty.

    Another country with an interestingly low crime rate is Japan where the crime rates are not necessarily that low, but stable and resistant to fluctuating spikes.  Some of the characteristics of this country include community policing, a patriarchal family system, the importance of higher education, and the way businesses serve as surrogate families.  Asian societies are also "shame-based" rather than "guilt-based" as Western societies are.  For example, it is unthinkable to commit a crime in such places because of the shame it would bring upon one's family and the business or corporation with which that family is associated with. 

    Ireland is another place with an unexpectedly low crime rate.  Despite a serious unemployment problem, the presence of large urban ghettos, and a crisis with religious terrorism, the Irish pattern of urban crime is no higher than its pattern of rural crime.  The key factor appears to be a sense of hope and confidence among the people.  Legitimacy surveys, for example, show that 86% of more of the population believe that the local authorities are well-skilled and doing everything they can.  Adler (1983), in her discussion of synomie (absence of anomie), found similar results in her study of seven other countries (Bulgaria, Germany, Costa Rica, Peru, Algeria, Saudi Arabia, and Nepal) where the people had a high degree of confidence in authorities and felt like they had a high degree of popular participation in crime control.

    The Siwa Oasis in Egypt is another place with little or no crime.  The population of 23,000 consists of 11 tribes who are the descendants of ancient Greeks, and it is said that Plato himself fashioned his model of perfect government in The Republic there.  The inhabitants practice a moderate form of Islamic justice, rejecting Shariah punishment and embracing Urrf law (the law of tradition).  Conflicts are resolved by a tribal council, and there are no jails or prisons.  The last known crime occurred around 1950, and was an act of involuntary manslaughter.  The typical punishment for wrongdoing is social ostracization (shunning).  This type of society is an excellent example of the folk-communal, or informal justice system.     

SEVEN THEORIES OF COMPARATIVE CRIMINOLOGY

       Schneider (2001) does a good job summarizing the various theories that exist with empirical support.  The first theory, which might be called the alertness to crime theory, is that as a nation develops, people's alertness to crime is heightened, so they report more crime to police and also demand the police become more effective at solving crime problems.  The second theory, which might be called the economic or migration theory, is that crime everywhere is the result of unrestrained migration and overpopulation in urban areas such as ghettos and slums.  The third theory, opportunity theory, is that along with higher standards of living, victims become more careless of their belongings, and opportunities for committing crime multiply.  The fourth theory, called demographic theory, is based on the event of when a greater number of children are being born, because as these baby booms grow up, delinquent subcultures develop out of the adolescent identity crisis.  A fifth theory, deprivation theory, holds that progress comes along with rising expectations, and people at the bottom develop unrealistic expectations while people at the top don't see themselves rising fast enough.  A sixth theory, modernization, sees the problem as society becoming too complex.  A seventh theory, the theory of anomie and synomie (the latter being a term referring to social cohesion on values), suggests that progressive lifestyles and norms result in the disintegration of older norms that once held people together (anomie).

THE CRITIQUE OF WESTERN CRIME CONTROL MODELS

    It would be foolish to argue that the American criminal justice system should be exported overseas to every developing country as a model to imitate or emulate.  Yet, it is being done every day, deliberately and also in a benign fashion.  Stanley Cohen (1988) was the first to point this out -- that the Third World tends to pick up on the criminological theories that have been discredited in the West.  For example, phrenology (or reading people's personalities from the bumps on their head), to take an extreme example, is totally discredited in the West, but someone, somewhere in the Third World will jump on this theory as viable simply because it came from the West.  It's almost as if a corollary existed with the modernization thesis -- along with developing nations having to go through the crime problems a developed nation has gone through, they also have to go through all the discredited theories and policies.  There seems to be few ways to avoid this, short of renouncing Western crime control models altogether.

    Latin American criminology, for example, renounces Western crime control completely.  The movement known as the criminology of liberation (de Castro 1987) has been an attempt to conceive of a totally new type of Latin American criminology, a type that will benefit the masses of people, and free them from exploitation and suppression.  It is unfortunately tied to outdated conflict or Marxist viewpoints, and there is sadly too little empirical research on crime in Latin America.  What is vastly needed is a way to transfer the best of what American criminal justice and criminology has to offer, and to blend or hybridize those ideas with what is appropriate in the local context.      

INTERNET RESOURCES
ASC Division of International Criminology
BJS International Justice Statistics
Comparative Criminal Justice chapter of Handbook of CJ Administration
International Center for Criminal Law Reform
International Center for the Prevention of Crime
Interpol, the International Criminal Police Organization
Max Planck Institute for Foreign and International Law
Michigan State's List of International Criminal Justice Sites
NCJRS International Resources
Office of International Criminal Justice
Prof. Dreveskracht's Comparative Criminal Justice Resources
Prof. Greek's Comparative Criminal Justice Resources
Prof. Reichel's Textbook Supplement Site
Prof. Round's Textbook Companion Website
Transnational Crime and Corruption Center
United Nations Crime and Justice Network
United Nations Interregional Crime Institute
United Nations Surveys of Criminal Justice Operations
World Criminal Justice Library Electronic Network
World Factbook of Criminal Justice Systems

PRINTED RESOURCES
Adler, F. (1983). Nations Not Obsessed with Crime. Littleton, CO: Rothman. 
Archer, D. & R. Gartner. (1984). Violence and Crime in Cross-National Perspective. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press.
Austin, T. (1987). "Crime and Custom in an Orderly Society: The Singapore Prototype" Criminology 25(2): 279-94.
Bayley, D. H. (1985). Patterns of Policing. NJ: Rutgers University Press.
Cohen, S. (1988). Against Criminology. NJ: Transaction Books.
Cole, G., Stanislaw, J. & M. Gertz (eds.) (1981). Major Criminal Justice Systems. Beverly Hills: Sage.
Dammer, H.R., and Reichel, P.L. (1997). Teaching About Comparative/International Criminal Justice. Highland Heights, KY: Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences.
de Castro, A. (1987). Criminologia de la Liberacion. Maracaibo: Universidad del Zulia.
Diesing, Paul. (1971). Patterns of Discovery in the Social Sciences. Chicago, Aldine-Atherton.
Gurr, T. (1989). Violence in America: The History of Crime. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.
Ebbe, O. (ed.) (1996). Comparative and International Criminal Justice Systems. Boston:  Butterworth Heinemann.
Ehrman, H. (1976). Comparative Legal Cultures. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Hoebel, E. (1970). The Law of Primitive Man. NY: Atheneum. 
Ingraham, B. (1987). The Structure of Criminal Procedure: Laws and Practice of France, the Soviet Union, China, and the United States. NY: Greenwood Press.
Mueller, G. & F. Le Poole-Griffiths (1969). Comparative Criminal Procedure. NY: NYU Press.
Reichel, P. (1999). Comparative Criminal Justice Systems. NJ: PrenticeHall.
Rounds, D. (2000). Comparative Criminal Justice. Boston: Allyn & Bacon.
Schneider, J. (2001). "Comparative Criminology." Pp. 359-76 in H. Pontell & D. Shichor (Eds.) Contemporary Issues in Crime & Criminal Justice. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Shelley, L. (1981). Crime and Modernization. Carbondale: SIU Press.
Sumner, C. (1982). Crime, Justice, and Underdevelopment. London: Heinemann.
Terrill, R. (1997). World Criminal Justice Systems. Cincinnati: Anderson.
Vagg, J. (1994). Prison Systems: A Comparative Study of Accountability in England, France, Germany, and the Netherlands. NY: Oxford University Press.

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