The comparative method in globalised criminology.

• Jurisdiction: Australia
• Date: 01 April 2010
• Author: Pakes, Francis

Traditional comparative criminology has predominantly focused on the comparison of isolated and self-contained cultures and arrangements. However, globalisation has altered states of isolation and self-containment to produce spheres of interrelation. That provides a challenge to the comparative method. This article will argue that comparative criminology needs to come to terms with novel objects in new conceptual and organisational layers, both above the state and below the city. Such enquiry requires agility. Rather than identifying and crossing new frontiers, globalised comparative criminology should concern itself with the complex interplay between global, national, city and subcity levels. This approach is illustrated by an examination of contrasts in community safety between the rival Dutch cities of Amsterdam and Rotterdam.

Keywords: comparative criminology, methodology, globalisation, Amsterdam, Rotterdam

**********

Is Comparative Criminology Passe?

The status of comparative criminology seems subject to uncertainty. The 'why' of comparative research is regularly viewed with suspicion. Bayley, for instance, referred to it as 'an excuse for international travel; a luxury that serious social scientists leave to dilettantes' (Bayley, 1996, p. 241). However, deeper than such superficial jibes runs the argument that comparative criminology is in the process of losing its relevance. Simply put, the reasoning is that the world has changed and comparative criminology has insufficiently changed with it. The charge against comparative criminology is that it tends to compare and contrast phenomena in distinct cultures or jurisdictions and that, by doing so, diffuse interrelations and complications brought about by globalisation are ignored or understated. This is a serious accusation that we should examine.

Many commentators have argued that globalisation has been given insufficient attention within the field of comparative criminology. That includes Hardie-Bick, Sheptycki and Wardak (2005), who argue that criminology has not, or at least not until recently, taken much note of global developments and Moore and Fields (2005) who say that criminology has remained parochial and slow in recognising an international dimension to its work. Earlier, McDonald (1997, p. 7) had noted that 'comparative and international criminological studies foster the process of globalization, but do not examine it'. Globalisation is frequently discussed as an afterthought contained in a separate chapter at the end of a comparative criminological text. McDonald therefore advocated a global criminology in which patterns of globalisation are the focal point of comparative work. Global criminology would then supersede the field of what we currently think of as 'classic' comparative criminology. Hardie-Bick et al. (2005) argue that that process has already started. They say that criminologists are beginning to move away from comparative concerns per se. Barak (2000, p. 8) even goes further to state that: 'before comparative criminology gets its act together [...] we will have moved on to doing international and transnational criminology'.

Is comparative criminology 'old school'? Is it time to move on? It is a truism to say that the world has changed, but it is probably true that the nature of such changes may not fit well with particular modes of comparative research. Ethnographic comparative criminological research, in particular, thrives on contrast (Zedner, 1995). It highlights diversity and emphasises uniqueness in cultures and criminal justice arrangements. In doing so, it can highlight false assumptions regarding criminology's so-called laws of nature, for instance the relation between age and crime. Cain (2000) challenged that oft-assumed 'universal' relation by demonstrating that it does not apply in Trinidad. Apart from contrast, classic anthropological research thrives on isolation. Isolation breeds difference, so it seems, and difference is the metanarrative of much ethnographic work. With its emphasis on the local, the distinct and the particular, has comparative criminology clung on to anachronistic imagery of societies as isolated, communities as self-contained and cultures as fixed in time and place? This probably is an overstated charge, but Sheptycki (2005) makes the point cogently when he argues that our world of 'diffusely intermingled cultural difference' challenges the comparative criminology of, as it were, pure difference. That makes, as Aas (2007) has argued, comparative research more difficult. When Mannheim wrote his classic Comparative Criminology in 1965 he argued that the aim of the project should be the identification of generally applicable knowledge. That certainly has not become any easier with new objects and relations between objects to consider. After all, globalisation has not turned out to be the great leveller, but instead brought about highly localised responses (Pales, 2010).

We must define our terms. It is quite common for the terms comparative criminology, international criminology, transnational criminology and global criminology to be used more or less interchangeably. They are not necessarily the same. 'Comparative' primarily refers to method: any criminology that compares will fit the category of comparative research. Beirne and Nelken (1997, p. xv) define comparative criminology as 'the systematic and theoretically informed comparison of crime in two or more cultures', which indeed seems to refer to method.

In contrast, 'international' and 'transnational' refer to objects of study. These criminologies focus on international and transnational boundaries and transgressions, and discourses and responses related to that. Classic transnational criminology would involve studies of the trafficking of illegal goods, for example. The study of cross-border policing is equally typical of this area of enquiry. Any distinction between transnational and international criminology is probably one of gradation. The key point is that they refer to the what of enquiry, not to the how. Global criminology seems similarly subject to conceptual confusion. 'Strong' global criminology should probably take the world as its unit of analysis. It might address questions such as the relation between climate change and civil unrest, transgressions and control. Here, 'global' denotes object. In contrast, globalised criminology frequently refers to relations: those who advocate it frequently argue that we need to take the interconnectedness of the world into account.

I believe that some of the confusion of the state of comparative or international criminology stems from a confusion of what they denote. Comparative is about method; whereas transnational, international and global is about object or subject matter. From that perspective, Barak's vision of comparative criminology being abandoned as if it were a ghost town after the gold rush need not worry us unduly. The comparative method will remain an influential tool in inquiries involving transnationalisation, globalisation, crime and control. That, however, does not mean that the comparative method does not need to cope with the new objects of enquiry.

When conceived of as a method, comparative criminology is a broad church that can encompass a wide variety of types of enquiry in which the Netherlands has frequently featured: it probably has an optimum blend of similarity and difference to most English-speaking researchers, at once exotic and familiar: sufficiently different to excite the researcher yet reassuringly accessible and familiar. The field is characterised by in-depth single case studies such as by Pakes (2004) and Van Swaaningen (2005) on their home country, the former from an expatriate, the latter from a lived experience perspective in which the focus is on a single locus. Although Beirne and Nelken (1997) do not seem to include case studies as truly comparative, in my view such studies do have a comparative orientation and serve to further comparative research. At the very least they are proto-comparative; more likely they are an integral part of the comparative project. It has, of course, been argued that all research is, in essence, comparative: we inevitably seek to understand something in terms of something else. Durkheim (1895) made that point about sociology well over a century ago.

Comparing Above the State and Below the City

We need to concern ourselves with the question of how a shrinking and interconnected world has changed the way in which comparative criminological research is to be carried out. Heidensohn (2007) mentions globalisation and international crime as major changes in background. There is no denying this but Hardie-Bick, Sheptycki and Wardak (2005) do seem to differ. To them the processes of globalisation are the very topic of study, as Hardie-Bick et al. (2005 p. 4) say, 'how criminology's global context encourages the transgression of boundaries: national, cultural and theoretical'. This is not the backdrop, but rather the stuff to zoom in on. Edwards and Hughes (2005) propose a critical realist comparative criminology. They argue that globalisation has presented criminology with new objects in the realm of governance. There are new loci of governance, new layers of governance and new relationships between these layers. Globalisation has brought supernational nodes of governance, such as the European Union and the United Nations. But at the same time subnational nodes of governance have become increasingly important. That is particularly acute in the area of community safety where the major city represents an important layer of governance. In addition, key developments are experienced below the level of the city, at borough or area level. The world is getting smaller and the units of comparative analysis have both grown beyond the nation state and shrunk to subcity proportions.

These developments require comparative...