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Challenges Facing Comparative Criminal Justice Research

A Comprehensive Analysis of the Difficulties and Rewards of International Research

Martin Duffy

Criminal Justice MA Program

State University of NY at Albany

March 23, 2010

 Challenges Facing Comparative CJ Research 1

Challenges Facing Comparative Criminal Justice Research

A Comprehensive Analysis of the Difficulties and Rewards of International Research

Criminal Justice systems are an inseparable feature of human civilization. And as the 21st

century has moved into its second decade, and as globalization has inexorably brought the

community of nations closer together, comparing and contrasting the world’s various criminal

justice systems has emerged as a critical task for modern criminal justice researchers. It is all the

more critical because, as Bayley and Shearing said regarding the future of policing specifically,

Modern democratic countries like the United States, Britain, and Canada have reached a

watershed in the evolution of their systems of crime control and law enforcement. [...]

Two developments define the change -- the pluralizing of policing [by the private sector

and community volunteers] and the search by the public police for an appropriate role.

(1996, p. 585).

Across the world, change is on the horizon for criminal justice agencies, and perhaps for

the entire institution of public criminal justice agencies altogether. Whereas the emergence of

“the nation-state” as a legal entity is acknowledged as the catalyst for the creation of modern

criminal justice systems across all nations (Maguire & Howard, 1998, p. 31), new technology

and global convergence may serve as an impetus for the further sharing of ideas and mutual

cooperation among the world’s law-enforcement, correctional, and adjudication professionals.

Additionally, this area of research offers a much needed platform for accountability in

international relations. On this, Maguire, Howard, and Newman said that, “an unbiased

assessment for criminal justice performance could be a useful tool for holding nations

accountable for the decisions they make concerning the criminal justice systems” (31). For

criminal justice researchers themselves the trend is beneficial, as well. Frey described this when
 Challenges Facing Comparative CJ Research 2

he said (regarding social science survey researchers) that, “the great utility of cross-cultural

research is that it dramatically expands the range of variation in the natural setting from which

the researchers draw [their] case” (181). In light of all this, it is imperative for comparative

criminal justice researchers to take on the daunting challenge that their area of expertise presents

them.

Comparing criminal justice systems, particularly police, across international borders is a

very difficult proposition. Even just studying crime comparatively presents enormous

methodological and epistemological difficulties (Beirne, 1983). Putting aside those

epistemological issues for a moment (for the sake of clarity), let us first consider the fundamental

problem of gathering crime data. Bayley addressed this when he wrote that, “assuming that

crime-fighting is the key feature of police performance, information about it cannot be trusted”

(1990, p. 18). The reason that information cannot be trusted is due to both cultural and systemic

factors. Explaining the poor data from developing countries due to particularly major systemic

problems, Clinard said that, “These countries frequently have inefficient record systems and

inadequate crime reporting methods. Improvements are difficult because of the scarcity of

trained personnel or [due to] the difficulty of providing nationwide coverage with limited

resources” (1978, p. 223). Indeed, many countries cannot maintain or manage elaborate,

comprehensive systems for accounting for most social data; much less for data related to crime

or criminal justice performance measures. And even beyond capability, the tracking of criminal

justice data is nevertheless inaccurate or inaccessible in countries that are capable of acquiring

such data. Hinton, for example, wrote that, “In Brazil, where decentralization is higher, [he]

came across significant discrepancies when comparing social and financial data provided by the

federal government, states, and municipalities on identical issues” (2006, p. 204). He went on to
 Challenges Facing Comparative CJ Research 3

say that, “this is still a nascent issue in both Argentina and Brazil, owing not so much to

technological barriers as to reluctance to relinquish control of potentially damaging data” (204).

The scrupulous gathering and dissemination of criminal justice data can be “damaging” even in

societies where crime is not (impressionistically speaking) a major problem. Police agencies in

the United States confront this frustrating fact because, as one explanation puts it, “active and

attentive police work can have the paradoxical effect of raising rather than lowering reported

crime” (Bayley, 1990, p. 18). Crime data, then, is difficult to gather for many simultaneous

reasons: a country’s technological and social capacity to do so may be inadequate, to do so is

expensive and time-consuming, and the statistics resulting from the data can be a political

liability, thus deterring the effort all together.

These problems with crime data, however, are only the ones that are immediately

apparent. Even in countries where criminal justice data are diligently collected to provide

transparency, the means of measurement are various. “Some countries count crimes according to

police reports of ‘offenses known’; other countries keep a crime count according to judicial

statistics of the number of persons brought to trial and convicted” (Wolfgang, 1967, p. 65).

Even if only police or law enforcement data are considered, there are still major differences,

because “police forces, in particular, have different rules for when an event should be recorded

as a crime and when it should not” (Van Dijk, 2000, p. 35). The administrative efficiency of

police systems also varies, and so even if data is collected -- the quality and accuracy of the

collection process can be troublesome. A remedy to this problematic situation can be found in

Hinton’s study of Brazil and Argentina, on which he says that, “[regarding] statistical data, one

of the most important needs was the capacity to compare and triangulate official statistics with

information obtained from other sources” (2006, p. 203-204). One example of a commonly used
 Challenges Facing Comparative CJ Research 4

information source to this end is victimization surveys. Victimization surveys are far more

reliable than officially recorded data. As Cook and Khmilevska explained, crime victimization

survey numbers and official statistics “often differ dramatically not only in level but also in

trend” (2005, p. 331) which will be discussed later in further detail.

So far, this paper has examined how systemic complications make crime data unreliable

as a criminal justice system performance measure, but there is another realm of complication for

crime data in comparative criminal justice: culture. Cultural differences between countries have

a huge impact on how crime is defined, enforced, and catalogued. Different legal codes can have

– at the very least – subtle impacts on how crimes are defined, and so what even constitutes a

“crime” in one country maybe be a perfectly legal, non-deviant act in another country. This is

even the case in extremely similar countries with shared history. The Spanish Empire, for

example, treated money lenders who issued high interest rates as deviants (usurers) and stagnated

because of their policy, while other European colonial powers and neighboring countries like

England and the United Provinces allowed the practice (much to the benefit of their exploration

and trade). Observing and accounting for cultural variation is an enormous – perhaps

insurmountable – enterprise. Frey clearly addressed the problem when he said that,

The fundamental difficulty in the concept of culture is vagueness, especially in its

broadest anthropological usages […] Cross-cultural research essentially refers to research

in social units that differ to some usually unspecified degree in shared patterns of

behavior and orientation. A nasty problem in this connection is that of designation the

amount of sharing and the specific kinds of behaviors and orientations that need to be

examined… (1970, p. 178-179).

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Frey addressed the fundamental problem comparative researchers face: an extraordinary amount

of nuance and context is necessary in order for one to be able to compare anything – even

something as intuitively “simple” as crime rate; “simple” because crime rates are a convenient,

but far from complete or comprehensive means for one to use in order to evaluate police

performance in comparative studies.

There are other measures, such as aforementioned victimization surveys, which are

acknowledged by many as a way of getting around the majority of the problems inherit with

measures like crime rate or case clearance rate. The victimization approach was first attempted

in Denmark in 1720 as a part of a household review to discover “actual” crime volume in the city

of Aarhus (Clinard, 1978, p. 222). Modern crime victimization surveys began to be developed

and conducted, however, in the 1960’s; Bayley conducted a limited victimization survey in

India as a part of a study of police in that country, and Clinard says that “the first comprehensive

victimization survey in a developing country” was carried out in 1974 in Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire

(1978, p. 223). Modern surveys such as these have made it much easier to compare crime rates

in different countries, since previous attempts had been virtually impossible using official crime

statistics (or lack thereof) alone.

Victimization surveys, while certainly preferable over official crime statistics, are

nonetheless flawed as comparative research tools. Bayley says that, “victimization surveys get

around some of the problems with reported crime statistics, but they have difficulties of their

own, notably the faulty recall of respondents” (1990, p. 18). To elaborate further, there are

several different dimensions within which to categorize the faults of these surveys: respondent

choice, sampling problems, respondent perspective on crime, the age of victimization,

questionnaire construction, and interviewing difficulties.

 Challenges Facing Comparative CJ Research 6

Regarding the matter of respondent choice, according to Clinard, “some more recent

studies in the United States have shown that household respondents tend to under-report

victimization of other household members” (1978, p. 225). This is relevant because different

victimization surveys in different countries have approached respondent choice differently. For

example, the U.S. LEAA-Census surveys used individual respondents as a measure while Zurich,

Switzerland used heads of households, and while Stuttgart, Germany used both individuals and

heads of households for their surveys (and the latter two achieved greater accuracy as a result).

The cost for surveying both individuals and heads of house hold or for interviewing only heads

of households is significantly higher than surveying individuals alone, though, and “not only

because of the interview time, but also the larger number of return visits necessitated by the more

specific type of respondent” (Clinard, 1978, p. 226).

Sampling presents another challenge in using victimization surveys in comparative

studies, primarily because data on an entire nation-state has less meaning than of a particular city

or homogeneous region. Consider the fact that an entire country is going to be differentiated and

variable in crime levels depending on regional factors (affluence, rural/urban, etc.), and it

becomes clear why this is so. Funding compound the issue yet further then, as few nations have

the wealth, means, or motivation at the ready to pay for numerous, city or region-scale surveys

throughout their entire territory. The United States and other developed nations have this luxury,

but cannot easily compare themselves to less developed nations even using victimization

surveys, since the comprehensiveness of every nations’ victimization surveys are simply too

diverse.

The respondents’ perspectives on what does or does not constitute a “crime” complicate

crime victimization surveys dramatically. Is what the “victim” supposes to be a crime actually a
 Challenges Facing Comparative CJ Research 7

crime? If someone takes a short-cut through a property owner’s back yard, for example, how

many house owners will skew numbers by claiming that the intruder was committing an

“attempted robbery” or the like? This is all the more complicated by the fact that comparative

criminal justice examines so many macro-level social entities like diverse nation-states. Findlay

echoes this sentiment when he says that,

With no shared (if not common) morality and a resultant relativity in justice as a

justification for violent response, the violent struggle regresses to issues of guilt and

innocence […] it is the guilt of [the offender] more than any deep empathy for the

victim’s situation which will motivate a violent penal response (2008, p. 101).

In light of this, does the victim’s perception of what did or did not transpire actually even matter?

If one feels guilty for a crime which did not offend the sensibilities of another or vice-versa

(flirting versus sexual harassment/lewd behavior, as an example), how can a victimization survey

reveal the true nature of crime across a society where opinions naturally ebb and flow? And

what about the plethora of minor crimes that go unnoticed, or even serious crimes like

kidnapping or murder which – when they occur in the developing world, especially – may also

go largely unnoticed?

Survey victim age compounds the problem of perspectives on crime. Great variation is

found in the age of individuals surveyed by crime victimization surveys. Minimum ages range

from as young as 12 to as old as 18. Some countries see victimization information from young

teenagers as important because of possible unfolding major trends this information might reveal;

for example, if we see a rash of stolen bicycles, this might indicate that youth may be subject to

an increase theft or robbery in countries where younger people can work (as newspaper carriers,

grocery store baggers, etc.) (Clinard, 1978, p. 226). Younger ages aren’t usually considered
 Challenges Facing Comparative CJ Research 8

worth interviewing by some countries, while setting the minimum age at 18 is seen as too high in

other countries because “most criminal offenses are committed by someone under that age, and

many of their victims, presumably, are also under this age” (Clinard, 1978, p. 226-227). Age

also compounds the aforementioned issue (regarding crime-perception), because inter-

generational perspectives on deviance dramatically differ with regard to certain laws such as

drug or alcohol use.

The construction of a crime victimization questionnaire is advantageous in that it

simplifies the often complicated and unclearly defined legal terms that human societies use to

classify crime. However, in comparative victimization surveys, this is both advantageous and

disadvantageous. The challenge a survey designer must meet is that his or her questions “must

be constructed so that terminologies for specific crimes can be equally well understood by

respondents in all countries” (Clinard, 1978, p. 227). Questions must – for participants reading

in multiple languages – hone in on simply phrased yet simultaneously descriptive crime-types.

Frey put it well when he said, “The basic tools of social science are not alternative instruments

but supplementary and complimentary instruments. Thus, the competent survey researcher

welcomes and depends upon insightful impressionistic analyses or penetrating case studied,

particularly in a cross-cultural project” (1970, p. 176). Frey is absolutely right in this instance,

because cross-cultural survey research depends on other sorts of research in order to give

linguistic and cultural parity between victimization surveys. As was said earlier, even countries

with shared cultural and historical bonds nonetheless lack clear comparability. Regarding

comparative studies using crime victimization surveys between 1981 and 199, Farrington and

Jolliffe said that,

 Challenges Facing Comparative CJ Research 9

serious assault was not very comparable. Burglary and vehicle theft were not explicitly

distinguished from other types of theft in the criminal codes of the Netherlands and

Switzerland, rapes included male victims in the Netherlands, and there were no

convictions of persons under age eighteen in Switzerland (2005, p. 377).

Keep in mind all of the countries surveyed by Farrington and Jolliffe (the United States,

England, Wales, the Netherlands, and Switzerland) have a great deal in common with one

another: England and Wales have been in union for centuries; the United States was colonized

and settled by explorers from England and the Netherlands; the English crown was usurped by

Dutch protestants in the Glorious Revolution. Even Switzerland shares a great deal with its

continental and trans-Atlantic counter-parts that are examined in Farrington and Jolliffe’s survey:

all of these countries are predominantly western, Christian, capitalist societies with Judeo-

Christian and classical influences informing their laws and societal mores. The point here is that

despite enormous similarity among these developed, modern, western nations, comparison

between their collected data is still remarkably challenging.

Lastly on the issue of crime victimization surveys, interviews with respondents can be a

source of complication. Interviews are important in victimization survey research in order to

probe reluctant respondents in order to overcome victim reluctance. Skilled interviewing is also

necessary in order to prevent a survey’s results from over-reporting victimization. Good

interviewers, like police, do not just accept alleged victims’ accusations at face value, and probe

to discover whether or not a crime actually occurred.

Problems resulting from internal inconsistencies (both systemic and cultural) are not the

primary problem with utilizing crime or victimization data to conduct comparative research,

though. There is an even greater epistemological problem with the entire concept. The use of
 Challenges Facing Comparative CJ Research 10

crime data as a base for comparison in comparative studies is an old idea dating back to the first

national (1825 in France) and international (1829) system of criminal statistics (Thorsten, 1967,

p. 2), but it is deeply flawed nonetheless because it measures criminal justice system outputs

rather than actual achievements. Bayley recognized this when he said, regarding police, that,

Efficacy measures such as clearance rates, usually meaning the ratio of arrests to the

number of reported crimes, are wholly spurious. Not only are they based on unreliable

reported crime figures, but they measure what police do – making arrests – rather than

what police achieve – preventing crime (1990, p. 18)

Crime rates cannot even tell a researcher what crime has been or is being prevented due to police

action. This is because there is no one-to-one relationship between the functions of law

enforcement and the quantity of crime. Crime is a phenomenon, and it is one “which comes in a

variety of forms, has been attributed to many factors having nothing to do with police activity –

age, sex, race, income, employment, industrialization, urbanization, community cohesiveness,

values, psychological disorganization, and opportunity” (Bayley, 1990, p. 18). This point applies

to other criminal justice actors besides the police, as well. Courts and the adjudication system as

a whole are considered responsible for out-of-control crime rates in the media. Additionally,

servants/policy makers and even civil servants involved with the criminal justice system are all

critiqued by what is seen and not by what is prevented.

Perhaps most concerning of all the problems with regard to comparative study is: how

exactly do we determine what actors/agencies/systems should even be compared? Bayley’s

Patterns of Policing discusses this matter in depth where he is concerned with forms of police.

He wrote that, “In order to study the police, one must be able to recognize them in their historical

diversity throughout the world” (1990, p. 7). Recognizing other countries’ historical diversity is
 Challenges Facing Comparative CJ Research 11

in and of itself a useful research goal in comparative studies, and is research that is being

conducted actively. In their article “The Legal Cultures of Europe”, Gibson and Caldeira said

that, “Ultimately, our purpose is to document cross-national difference in legal cultures and to

take some tentative steps toward explaining the origins of these differences” (1996, p. 55).

Though their research was not focused on policing, which Bayley addressed, it is nonetheless an

example of the sort of beneficial analysis that can help make countries’ criminal justice systems

and police agencies more comparable. They further said that,

We are interested in the structure of the values held by ordinary citizens on important

issues concerning the nature and operation of law. These broad values are important

because they structure more specific opinions and expectations toward legal institutions,

including the willingness to turn to legal institutions for the management of essentially

private conflicts (p. 59).

But without understanding these broad values, without understanding these opinions and

expectations, a comparative researchers’ ability to understand the composition and purpose of

criminal justice agencies and actors in a foreign country is severely limited.

In understanding how differentiated societies can be, Bayley’s analysis of police/law

enforcement is extremely useful. Bayley wrote that,

Police come in a bewildering variety of forms, from the New York City Police

Department to the “People’s Police” (Druzinikii) of the Soviet Union, from the French

Gendarmerie to the Provincial Armed Constabulary in India, from the American county

sheriff to the Norwegian rural Lensman. Moreover, many agencies that are not thought

of as police nonetheless possess “police” powers. The Coast Guard in the United States,
 Challenges Facing Comparative CJ Research 12

for example, along with the Customs Service and the Immigration and Naturalization

Service, are authorized to arrest and detain (1990, p. 7).

In order to conduct effective comparison, Bayley broadens his definition of “police” to be those

authorized by groups to hold others accountable for their actions and interpersonal activities by

using physical force (p. 7). “Groups” as opposed to “governments” functions as a keyword. This

keyword highlights the fact that the private individual, companies, tribes, even religious orders

and many other organizations all have a capacity to “police” themselves or those within their

property. Moreover, in most developing countries around the world, police are considered only

“dubiously professional” (p. 6), and non-industrialized countries, “generally have lower crime

rates than industrialized nations. These lower crime rates may result from the non-industrialized

countries’ frequent use of informal criminal justice” (Ebbe, 2000, p. 5). In the case of both

developing and non-industrialized countries, then, comparative researchers clearly face a

daunting challenge: how does one easily compare the achievements of unprofessional police

with professional police? How does one compare informal social control and highly localized

(and perhaps even non-codified) criminal justice with the highly complex and professionalized

systems of the richer, more developed nation-states? And what can account for the dynamic

nature of criminal justice agencies themselves in this context? As Cohen notes,

Just when Western crime control rhetoric is talking about “community” and extolling the

virtues of mediation, conciliation and informal dispute resolution, so the Third World

appears to be abandoning such methods and moving toward centralized, bureaucratized

and professional criminal justice systems (1982, p. 124-125).

These issues all draw attention to the fact that macro-scale and longitudinal examinations of

criminal justice system components are greatly jeopardized by intuitive assumptions about the
 Challenges Facing Comparative CJ Research 13

form the criminal justice system components themselves even take (much less operate or

perform).

Much of this paper has addressed the many seemingly insurmountable difficulties in

comparing criminal justice systems internationally. This is not meant to discount the merit of the

field of study or to contend that it is impossible to effectively compare anything between

countries’ criminal justice systems. It simply demonstrates that the rewards of comparative

study depend on a less generalized approach with careful consideration and accounting for

cultural and systemic differences, and respect to the actual form and function of other countries’

criminal justice systems. The aforementioned definition of “police” used by Bayley, for

instance, is an example of how careful consideration can allow comparisons of criminal justice

actors/agencies to operate with internal logic among the various countries that are being

compared. Bayley wrote that his definition of police, “deliberately errs on the side of

inclusiveness. The advantage is that it allows comparative study of a wide variety of institutions

of forceful constraint in society” (p. 8). And although “institutions of forceful constraint” may

not intuitively fit the schema of what “police departments” are (even in the United States, where

agents such as motor carrier investigators, peace officers, Coast Guard sailors, etc. all have

capacities for law enforcement), these institutions are nevertheless the desired “specimens” for

comparative study: they are the system.

Comparative criminal justice researchers have attempted to overcome the challenges their

field presents them in a variety of ways. In their article Measuring the Performance of National

Criminal Justice Systems, Maguire, Howard, and Newman said that, “If the various parts of

criminal justice are to work as a system, then there must be some way to assess their

performance as an operational unit” (1998, p. 35). They proposed an attempt which – for the
 Challenges Facing Comparative CJ Research 14

first time – would index criminal justice performance in a comprehensive manner, cross-

culturally. They said that, “The index measures the performance of national criminal justice

systems in three areas: equality, effectiveness, and efficiency” (p. 31). The ideas that inform the

index the three researchers wish to create are exactly the kind of approach comparative criminal

justice studies calls for. Take for example, the matter of ‘efficiency’. On this subject, they write

that, “Prior performance measures tended to ignore the central notion that performance is a

multidimensional concept. It isn’t just about crime; it’s also about fairness and resource

efficiency” (p. 37). What is interesting about this index approach is that it takes into account

crime, but it does not crutch on it. In a sense it is taking information obtainable from official

statistics (which are not designed or collected for research purposes) or victimization surveys,

and it is applying the information rather than relying on it.

The component parts of what could be used in a comprehensive measure of criminal

justice agencies (such as crime rate) can also be improved. New methods to account for

variations in crime rate, for example, have been proposed and put into effect. Victimization

surveys are an example of this (despite their own drawbacks), but there are others as well.

Marvin E. Wolfgang, for example, proposed a method for collecting international statistics

where “seriousness scores” for deviant behavior throughout various countries would be taken

into account. He wrote that,

Among several main features of this system is the elimination of legal labels for

measurement purposes. Thus, as noted, rape, robbery, burglary, larceny, homicide, etc.,

are replaced by requests for information about the type of physical injury, the pecuniary

value of property theft or damage. To these items are added information regarding the
 Challenges Facing Comparative CJ Research 15

existence of forcible sex relations, the existence of intimidation and by what method, and

the presence of a forcible entry (p. 66).

Whether or not the method is valid or practical is not so much the point as is the idea that the

researcher acknowledges that something other than subjective legal definitions is necessary in

order to approach comparable meaning to rates of offense internationally.

As societies continue to interweave, converge, and communicate in the 21st Century,

comparative criminal justice studies take on a unique role as a means to learning, improving, and

reconciling variations in criminal justice practice, form, and performance among the nation-

states and private entities of the world. Performance measures to evaluate different criminal

justice systems and system components comparatively are elusive. Though official sources such

as the crime rate have been tracked and catalogued by police and other agencies for a very long

time in different countries, the numbers simply have massive problems because they are not

designed for disinterested scientific research; they are designed for system purposes within a

cultural framework. Other methods to track crime like victimization surveys are far more useful,

but there are always flaw and shortcomings to be considered in any measuring tool. And though

the challenges are enormous and the prospects of accurate, contextually appropriate research and

analysis are limited, the pursuit of comparative study is worthy of effort. The knowledge,

context, inter-cultural fluency, and understanding desperately required in order to conduct

effective comparative research are all in and of themselves fostered and enhanced through

exploratory research that grant new opportunities to inspire creative research design by

subsequent researchers.
 Challenges Facing Comparative CJ Research 16

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