Comparative criminal justice
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Comparative Criminal Justice is a subfield of the study of Criminal Justice that compares justice systems worldwide. Such study can take a descriptive, historical, or political approach.
It is common to broadly categorize the functions of a criminal justice system into policing, adjudication (ie: courts), and corrections, although other categorization schemes exist.
[edit] Legal Traditions
Reichel (2005) identifies four major legal traditions that each have their own respective body of laws:
- Common law is found particularly in countries that are current or former members of the British Empire.
- Civil law countries include most of continental Europe and various states in South America and Africa.
- Socialist law is essentially civil law with major modifications from Marxist-Leninist ideology. It is currently only used in China and a few other contemporary Communist states, but has had enormous influence on Russia and the former USSR.
- Islamic law is religiously-inspired law used in Muslim countries.
Other scholars have used different categorization schemes.
[edit] Sources
Philip L. Reichel. (2005). Comparative Criminal Justice Systems (4th Ed.). Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Pearson. ISBN 0-13-113159-1
