Comparative Criminal Justice: Making Sense of the Difference
Comparative criminal justice: Making sense of difference
The task of comparative criminal justice, most scholars would agree, is to com pare and contrast our ways of responding to crime with those practiced else where. It also often involves, even if it does not necessarily have to do so, borrowing from, or at least trying to learn from, what is done in other places. It would seem obvious therefore that, if it is to be at all helpful, comparison requires understanding and interpreting what those in other places are actually trying to do. What I want to show in this paper is that the implications of this apparently banal point are not always straightforward. The reason for this is that it can be difficult not to fall foul of two opposing dangers. On the one hand, there is the risk of being ethnocentric – assuming that what we do, our way of thinking about and responding to crime, is universally shared or, at least, that it would be right for everyone else. On the other hand, there is the temptation of relativism, the view that we will never really be able to grasp what others are doing and that we can have no basis for evaluating whether what they do is right. To get beyond these alternatives requires a careful mix of explanatory and interpretative strategies (Nelken1994).1 We need to recognize that, although criminal justice practices gain their sense from the setting that shapes them and the conditions with which they have to deal, they can also be understood by outsiders and need to be evaluated according to cosmopolitan and not only local criteria. But this is easier said than done. It is inevitable that our perception of others will be coloured to some extent by our own cultural starting points– even when we say that what we are doing is trying to learn from them. And criminologists do also have their own shared cultural common-sense. We tend to argue that the rise in crime rates is exaggerated by the media and the politicians, that we should avoid
The task of comparative criminal justice, most scholars would agree, is to com pare and contrast our ways of responding to crime with those practiced else where. It also often involves, even if it does not necessarily have to do so, borrowing from, or at least trying to learn from, what is done in other places. It would seem obvious therefore that, if it is to be at all helpful, comparison requires understanding and interpreting what those in other places are actually trying to do. What I want to show in this paper is that the implications of this apparently banal point are not always straightforward. The reason for this is that it can be difficult not to fall foul of two opposing dangers. On the one hand, there is the risk of being ethnocentric – assuming that what we do, our way of thinking about and responding to crime, is universally shared or, at least, that it would be right for everyone else. On the other hand, there is the temptation of relativism, the view that we will never really be able to grasp what others are doing and that we can have no basis for evaluating whether what they do is right. To get beyond these alternatives requires a careful mix of explanatory and interpretative strategies (Nelken1994).1 We need to recognize that, although criminal justice practices gain their sense from the setting that shapes them and the conditions with which they have to deal, they can also be understood by outsiders and need to be evaluated according to cosmopolitan and not only local criteria. But this is easier said than done. It is inevitable that our perception of others will be coloured to some extent by our own cultural starting points– even when we say that what we are doing is trying to learn from them. And criminologists do also have their own shared cultural common-sense. We tend to argue that the rise in crime rates is exaggerated by the media and the politicians, that we should avoid