Comparative, International, and Global Justice

Perspectives from Criminology and Criminal Justice

Cyndi L. Banks, Denis William James Baker

• Publisher: SAGE Publications, Inc
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781506337296
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Law
• Subtopic: International Law
• Index: Law

Comparative, International and Global Justice: Perspectives from Criminology and Criminal Justice presents and critically assesses a wide range of topics relevant to criminology, criminal justice and global justice. The text is divided into three parts: comparative criminal justice, international criminology, and transnational and global criminology. Within each field are located specific topics which the authors regard as contemporary and highly relevant and that will assist students in gaining a fuller appreciation of global justice issues. Authors Cyndi Banks and James Bakeraddress these complex global issues using a scholarly but accessible approach, often using detailed case studies. The discussion of each topic is a comprehensive contextualized account that explains the social context in which law and crime exist and engages with questions of explanation or interpretation.

The authors challenge students to gain knowledge of international and comparative criminal justice issues and think about them in a critical manner. It has become difficult to ignore the global and international dimensions of criminal justice and criminology and this text aims to enhance criminal justice education by focusing on some of the issues engaging criminology worldwide, and to prepare students for a future where fields of study like transnational crime are unexceptional.

Learn more at http://study.sagepub.com/banksbaker

Part I Comparative Criminology and Criminal Justice

1 Introduction

This text addresses a wide range of topics relevant to criminology, criminal justice, and global justice. We use the term global justice to signify the totality of the fields of criminology included in the text, namely, comparative, international, and transnational and global criminologies. Although wide-ranging, the text does not sacrifice breadth for depth: discussion of each topic is characterized by a comprehensive contextualized account of a contemporary global justice issue and a critical approach. Specificity is a fundamental quality of topic discussions, and the analysis of topics and issues is scholarly but accessible, often taking the form of case studies and country profiles.

Criminology, it has often been said, is a parochial and ethnocentric discipline (Hardie-Bick, Sheptycki, and Wardak 2005, 1). As Paul Friday (1996, 231) puts it, “Criminal justice education in general has taken a narrow, pedantic view stressing knowledge of our own system and the dominant American theories of crime. If any comparative material is introduced into the curriculum, it is generally offered as a single special-topics course.” As he correctly notes, this “reinforces the notion that the way things are done in the United States is the only way to do things.”

This text aims to enhance criminology and criminal justice education by its focus on some of the issues engaging criminology worldwide and to prepare students for a future in which fields of study such as transnational crime are unexceptional. Not only is this important because society is now global but the topics discussed here challenge us to confront important moral, social, cultural, and political issues. The approach taken in this text recognizes the changes that have occurred in the study of criminal justice internationally, many of which can be ascribed to the process of globalization.

We agree with David Nelken (2013, 9) that the increased interest in global criminological issues has “so far gone largely hand in hand with a continuation of the older type of comparative enquiries” and “trying to keep comparative and globalization issues strictly apart has little to recommend it.” René Van Swaaningen (2011, 133) gives three reasons for the emergence of a global criminology: the need to look beyond Western models in order to understand worldwide changes; the challenges to the sovereignty of the nation-state brought about by globalization; and the emergence of criminological challenges with a global scope and effect necessitating a shift from traditional levels of analysis. David Friedrichs (2011, 170) agrees that the traditional criminological framework is limited and that to be relevant in this century criminology “must increasingly become comparative international and global.” Piers Beirne (2008, vii) declares that a comparative approach is limited because it cannot capture “the full complexity of globalization” but that “comparative criminology will remain a crucial avenue of inquiry for global criminology” (p. ix). We agree with these perspectives, and this text therefore incorporates issues of global, transnational, international, and comparative interest and concern.

It used to be that criminology and criminal justice studies included only comparative criminal justice or comparative criminology in a typical undergraduate degree course. This topic commonly involved a discussion of how various countries (predominantly Western) organized their justice systems. Sometimes, additional topics, such as terrorism or international police cooperation, were added. With the advent of globalization, international cooperation in criminal justice in areas such as policing, the increasing internationalization of law (especially criminal law), and the growth of transnational crime, it became apparent to many scholars that the traditional presentation of comparative criminal justice did not equip students with the knowledge they needed to understand how justice issues are organized globally.

Scholars active in the international, global, and comparative fields of study have commented on how the traditional approach has been changing. For example, Nelken (2011a, 1) has asked how the field of traditional comparative criminology has been affected by globalization. He and others have noted that traditional comparative studies accept national state boundaries and focus on explaining differences in national laws and practices. However, what of the fact that there are now multiple global links relating to crime threats and criminal justice responses? Arguably, students now need to understand how the nation-state or other locally based justice practices shape or resist global trends. The overall issue is to what extent globalization should be integrated into comparative textbooks and what comparative work might have to say to students about globalization.

It is argued that the cross-cultural study of crime and justice has evolved from a comparative or international approach to what is now being called a transnational or global approach to crime and justice (Larsen and Smandych 2008, xi). Thus, comparative approaches are inadequate to capture the complexity of these global issues, including topics such as global trends in policing, security, convergences in criminal justice and penal policy and international criminal justice, war crimes, and human rights protection. Generally, many international criminology scholars agree that trying to keep comparative and globalization issues apart has little to recommend it.

Francis Pakes argues that comparative criminal justice is “losing its relevance” (Pakes 2010, 17). For one reason, it typically compares and contrasts phenomena in different cultures, and the diffuse interrelations and complications caused by globalization are simply ignored or understated. However, Francis Pakes believes comparative study will remain a useful tool in inquiries into globalization and transnationalization. The comparative approach, he points out, is a matter of methodology, whereas globalization is an object of study. Another scholar, author of a recent text that does not follow the traditional form, seeks to show the complex processes through which the global and the local are intertwined and does not spend time comparing individual countries. Her text looks at convergences in criminal justice policy, trafficking of persons internationally, migration, transnational crime, cyberspace, and other global criminal topics. Katja Aas suggests the comparative approach to criminology should be distinguished from global and transnational perspectives. Her objective is to look at the global and transnational as an increasingly salient explanatory factor and frame of criminological reference (Aas 2007, 86).

European scholars of comparative study point to differing conceptions in legal systems and ask whether the comparative approach in fact compares like with like or whether it simply assumes system and conceptual universality (Brants 2011, 57). In attempting to understand the culturally determined meaning of concepts of and in law, they call for data on the social context in which systems of justice function and about their effects on society or about social change and its effects on the law. This, they say, points to the desirability of an interdisciplinary approach (Brants 2011, 55; Rothe and Freidrichs 2015, 3). It is also contended that most comparative studies remain too much on the surface and do not put the phenomena at study in their specific structural and cultural context: a more interpretative, cultural paradigm for comparative criminology is needed (Van Swaaningen 2011, 125). Certainly comparative textbooks have long been criticized for failing to explain the social context in which law and crime exist and operate. Nelken has noted that most work in comparative criminology does not really engage in questions of explanation or interpretation. The pivotal question of why things are different is not answered, and comparison by juxtaposition often leads to a dead end (Nelken 2011c, 185).

Others argue that global and national penal law and practice interact, leading to the conclusion that both studies of globalization and cross-national comparative research are needed and must be closely linked. Given that globalization is a powerful process that affects criminal justice and penal policies in many countries, comparative penal studies that treat countries as independent units of analysis can no longer be justified. Instead, broader comparative analyses are needed (Savelsberg 2011, 82). Consequently, Richard Vogler argues that “criminal justice can no longer be seen as a purely local phenomenon” (Vogler 2005, 3).

Looking at the effects of globalization, John Muncie (2011, 87) explains that because of globalization, a more complex and transnational level of analysis is thought necessary. State sovereignty in criminal justice seems to be challenged by international courts, human rights conventions, multinational private security enterprises, cross border policing, policy networks, and flows and technologies of global surveillance. As well, global governance and transnational justice have tended to proceed from a Western perspective, and globalization has been applied predominantly to transformations in Western and Anglophone countries. An important issue is how to adequately address the impact of the global on the local, or vice versa, when most criminal justice research continues to be parochially based in national or local contexts.

Arguing for comparative and transnational studies to be combined, James Sheptycki (2011, 145) suggests that criminology should foster both transnational and comparative studies because “patterns of governing through crime are becoming more general and more transnational.” Criminology ought to be both comparative and transnational. An attempt to move toward a globalizing criminological perspective has the merit of bringing crimes that have been neglected, such as state crimes (including genocide), into better focus (Nelken 2011c, 201).

We maintain that debates concerning the recognition of the process of globalization as a field of study for criminology and the compatibility of comparative and global studies in criminology are now concluded in favor of the relevance and importance of global justice studies, and this text reflects that idea. We have therefore opted for an approach in this text that provides students with a set of topics in comparative, international, and transnational and global criminology. Whereas the comparative studies are of topics commonly contained in textbooks, the range and depth of the transnational and global topics are not found in other similar texts.

Terminology

The most comprehensive explanation of the terminology now being used in the various fields of comparative, international, and transnational and global criminology is that of David Friedrichs (2011, 167), who has put forward the following classification and explanation of the fields of study that collectively comprise what we have termed global justice:

• Comparative criminology addresses the nature of the crime problem and the form and character of criminal justice systems in countries; a comparative criminology provides crucial data and information necessary for refining an understanding of an evolving globalized context for crime and criminal justice, the core project of a global criminology.
• Transnational criminology is focused principally on transnational or cross border forms of crime and endeavors on various levels to control and respond effectively to such crime.
• International criminology focuses on international crime or crime that is widely recognized as crimes against humanity, and international law and the institutions of international law.
• Global criminology is best applied to the study of the evolving context within which crime and criminal justice now exist. A global criminology increasingly provides a crucial context within which the concerns of comparative criminology and also transnational and international criminology must be understood. In recent years, we have seen more texts that adopt a transnational, international, or global focus. The traditional criminological framework and focus is increasingly limited and inadequate for a rapidly changing twenty-first century world. To be relevant now, criminology must be increasingly comparative, international, and global.

Other commentators have proposed explanations that are broadly in accord with Friedrich’s analysis and have also identified where particular fields of study overlap or might link with others, revealing the impossibility of precisely fixing the boundaries between the fields of international, transnational, and global. For example, Pakes (2004, 141) points out that transnational crimes are offenses that involve more than one country in both their inception and effects (e.g., money laundering, drug trafficking, Internet crimes). Richard Bennett (2004, 6) explains that this field of study explores the way in which cultures and states deal with criminality that transcends borders rather than simply comparing the countries involved. Ben Bowling (2011, 363) sees transnational criminology as going beyond the boundaries of comparative analysis “to explore problems that do not belong exclusively in one place or another and can therefore only be understood by analyzing linkages between places” (italics in original). Michael Kearney (1995, 548) distinguishes transnationalism from globalization in terms of the former overlapping the latter but with a “more limited purview.” As he puts it, “Whereas global processes are largely decentered from specific national territories and take place in a global space, transnational processes are anchored in and transcend one or more nation states.”

Nelken (2011c, 198–99) suggests that international criminal justice encompasses a range of questions regarding international relations, human rights, truth commissions, restitutive justice, and transnational justice, but studies under one branch are linked to other branches; for example, internal human rights conventions have implications for issues such as corruption, terrorism, and immigration and also for the duration of ordinary criminal trials. Freda Adler (1996, 223) refers to international crime as being constituted by approximately twenty crimes recognized by international law, including genocide, violations of human rights, war crimes, and forms of terrorism. Ruth Jamieson and Kieran McEvoy (2005, 505) refer to “violations of human rights, humanitarian law, crimes against humanity and the related developments in international criminal and transitional justice in the last 20 years.”

Bowling (2011, 363) perceives global criminology as aspiring “to bring together transnational and comparative research from all regions of the world to build a globally inclusive and cosmopolitan discipline.” In addition, Bowling (2011, 365) suggests that the distinction between transnational and global criminology is one of scope. Thus, the global “speaks to the idea of processes that involve, or at least aspire to involve, the whole world considered in a planetary context” (italics in original).

This text adopts a classification of comparative, international, and transnational and global criminology. Attempting to differentiate the transnational from the global is problematic. For example, the topic of human trafficking across borders falls within both categories because it possesses both a bilateral and a multinational or global scope and is the subject of global action intended to counter it. There are numerous links between the topics in this text; for example, violence against women in armed conflicts links international criminology in the form of international humanitarian law with the globalism of women’s human rights. Terrorism involves elements of international criminal law through the various treaties that expressly sanction forms of terrorism but is also global in scope because it occurs in numerous states. One question is whether international processes on a topic, such as setting norms or standards or imposing duties on states in treaties, assign that topic to “the whole world” global criminology described by Bowling.

The categorization we have adopted should be seen as providing an organizational framework for a set of topics that link and overlap. We have indicated in each topic where there are links and connections to other topics that will enhance the knowledge and understanding of a particular topic.

Why Study Global Justice Issues?

It has been suggested that reasons for studying criminal justice comparatively include academic curiosity; preventing ethnocentrism; studying systems in neighboring countries to produce the practical benefit of enhancing levels of cooperation between those countries, such as in relation to cross border activities and fighting transnational crime; gaining benefit from simply learning from others’ experience, such as in the case of criminal justice policy initiatives that might be suited to other countries; studying the ways of other countries to illuminate the way we do things in our own country (Pakes 2010, 2–7).

Other scholars argue that comparing is essentially part of the process of critical thinking. In broad terms, comparing is a way of gaining understanding of our world. We compare to learn from the experience of others. Comparing confers benefits in the fight against transnational crime (Dammer and Fairchild 2006, 8).

Philip Reichel (2013, 3–5) points out that undertaking comparative studies extends a person’s knowledge beyond his or her own group because viewing the commonalities and divergences suggest how one’s own society can be improved. Studying the justice systems of other countries is important because the international perspective is newly discovered in the U.S. criminal justice curriculum and the utility of that study must be demonstrated. A comparative approach offers insights into the U.S. system and challenges assumptions and the status quo, for example, that the United States has the world’s best criminal justice system. In addition, comparing can generate new ideas for improvement of existing systems and substitute a global perspective for a local parochial one. Where criminal justice practitioners and professionals of one country are aware of policies and systems of practice elsewhere and internationally (e.g., the many treaties and conventions formulated under United Nations auspices that set norms and standards in the field of criminal justice), they are more easily able to interact with others and understand the elements and scope of the global justice environment. Bilateral and international cooperation in the field of criminal justice therefore benefits from adopting a global perspective.

Chrisje Brants (2011, 53), similar to Pakes, suggests that “pure intellectual curiosity” is one reason for the comparative approach and that another is to borrow ideas from other systems that seem more effective in policy terms or are more cost effective. Also, the need for harmonization of systems in the European Union makes comparison a necessity. However, Brants points out the most important reason is that comparison enables a greater understanding of ...