Claire Hamilton and David Nelken
With the growing entwinement of the local and global, traditional criminology has increasingly faced accusations of a tendency towards theoretical and methodological nationalism. Global processes, unlike domestic activities or even transnational 'flows', are largely decentered from specific national territories and take place in a global space.The challenge, as Katja Franko explains in her seminal text on Globalization and Crime (2019: 220), is that 'one can no longer study, for example, Italy by simply looking at what happens inside its territory, but rather need to acknowledge the effects that distant conflicts and developments have on national crime and security concerns and vice versa'.
With comparative criminology, however, this charge bites particularly hard, as a sub-discipline predominantly concerned with differences between nation states. As long ago as 2000, Gregg Barak speculated that 'before comparative criminology gets its act together we will have moved on to doing international and transnational criminology' (Barak, 2000: 8), prompting Pakes (2010: 19). to worry about 'comparative criminology being abandoned as if it were a ghost town after the gold rush'.
Yet, talk of comparative criminology's demise is more than likely premature. Recent developments with respect to globalisation go some way to supporting the position of those who argue that we should be cautious about assuming that transnational change is unidirectional or irreversible. We are now witnessing for example, efforts to reassert political sovereignty, as in Trump's slogan of 'America first' or in the UK's Brexit, or the way Poland and Hungary are stretching the bonds of the European Union. Moreover, even those who worry that the 'spectre of populism' is once again haunting Europe and the US, must acknowledge that radical right populist parties often succeed through appeals to popular common symbols from national culture, religion and history.
All of this suggests that the comparative method will remain a useful tool in inquiries involving transnationalisation, globalisation, crime and control, both on its own terms and alongside global criminology. Not least because, as Beirne (2008: ix) has argued, 'the question of how globalisation and transnational crime affect different societies − similarly or differently, both similarly or differently at the same time, or somewhere in between − is first and foremost a comparative one'.
So quo vadis for comparative criminology? This is a question we seek to answer in a new Research Handbook on Comparative Criminology (available here) which outlines an agenda for dealing with these challenges beyond the established disciplinary approaches to comparative criminal justice. Drawing on the work of leading experts in the field, the point of the book is to reconsider the theories, assumptions, values and methods of comparative criminal justice in light of the challenges and opportunities posed by globalisation.
Part I of the Handbook therefore takes a fresh look at the traditional objects of comparative inquiry, such as families of law and the systems of trial, through the lens of globalisation. It considers the implications for global justice and fairness flowing from trends such as an increased emphasis on efficiency and cost-saving and the growth of 'administratisation' or trial avoidance mechanisms. As many of the authors demonstrate, comparative criminology provides crucial data towards refining an understanding of an evolving globalised context for crime and criminal justice. This is achieved through classifying, describing, interpreting, explaining and, ultimately, evaluating these developments as they manifest themselves at state, regional and local levels. While there remain deeply felt internal debates both in comparative law and in the social sciences, as one of us has noted elsewhere, comparative criminology does not shy away from making judgments according to cosmopolitan as well as local criteria (Nelken, 2009).
Of course, a more global outlook also requires criminologists to adopt a useful position on the perennial 'definition of crime' issue. Part II of the Handbook turns the spotlight on the unwanted or unexpected consequences of global 'flows' of people and goods, what may be termed the 'dark side' of globalisation. What is striking is that so many of these crimes or social problems – cybercrime, genocide, 'bordering' practices and so on − hold implications for the boundaries of comparative criminal justice as an academic subject. Already famously a 'rendez-vous' discipline, if (comparative) criminology is to play a role in exposing new means of harm production and how these play out in different contexts it will inevitably have to assume a broader, more interdisciplinary and more flexible character.
For many, the shift in subject matter should be accompanied by a more reflexive approach. Part III of our book provides insights into the universal, or supposedly universal, remedies for the problems posed by globalisation such as human rights, global standards and social indicators such as the United Nation's Sustainability Development Goals. The powerful pull exerted by these indicators and their 'policing' and 'self-policing' effects raises questions about the social effects wrought by comparative criminal justice itself. Perhaps an even greater challenge is the effort to decolonize comparative criminology, with calls to reconsider the fixity of the nation state; to reassess units of time and measurement; and to rethink established methodologies.
All of the above goes to the very core of the comparative project and in many ways represents an invitation to transform the discipline. Challenging as this may be for comparative criminologists and the broader discipline, the stakes are too high for inaction. After all, as Richard Vogler observes in his chapter, 'Our subject matter is one of huge importance to millions of people … one which has important implications for the future of a civilised global society'.
References
Barak, G. (2000) 'Comparative criminology: A global view', The Critical Criminologist, 10, 2.
Beirne P. (2008) 'Preface' to Larsen, N. and Smandych, R. (2008) Global Criminology and Criminal Justice: Current Issues and Perspectives. Buffalo, New York: Broadview Press
Franko, K. (2019) Globalization and Crime. Los Angeles: Sage.
Nelken, D. (2009). 'Comparative criminal justice: Beyond enthocentrism and relativism', European Journal of Criminology, 6(4): 291–311.
Pakes, F. (2010) 'The Comparative Method in Globalised Criminology' ANZJOC 43(1): 17-30.
About the authors
Claire Hamilton is Professor of Criminology and Head of Criminology in the School of Law and Criminology, Maynooth University, Ireland. Her research interests coalesce around the comparative politics of crime and security, spanning criminal procedure reforms, counter-terrorism and penology..
David Nelken PHD, LLD (Cambridge) is Professor of Comparative and Transnational Law, and, former Vice Dean and Head of Research, at the Dickson Poon School of Law, King's College London. His work in comparative law draws mainly on sociology of law, comparative criminal justice and social and legal theory.
Contact
claire.hamilton@mu.ie
@crimsec_MU
www.maynoothuniversity.ie/people/claire-hamilton
david.nelken@kcl.ac.uk
@KingsCollegeLon
www.kcl.ac.uk/people/professor-david-nelken
This article gives the views of the authors, not the position of the British Society of Criminology or the institution they work for.
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