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 studies the similarities and differences in structure, goals, punishment and emphasis on rights as well as the history and political stature of different systems.It is common to broadly categorize the functions of a criminal justice system into policing, adjudication (i.e.: courts), and corrections, although other categorization schemes exist. Comparativists study the four different types of societies, their methods of enforcement and their different types of punishment such as capital punishment, and imprisonment. Within these societies they study different types of legal tradition and analyze the issues they solve and create. They use their information in order to learn effective ways of enforcing laws, and to identify and solve problems that may arise within a system due to its methods.
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Famous quotes containing the words comparative, criminal and/or justice:
“The hill farmer ... always seems to make out somehow with his corn patch, his few vegetables, his rifle, and fishing rod. This self-contained economy creates in the hillman a comparative disinterest in the world’s affairs, along with a disdain of lowland ways. “I don’t go to question the good Lord in his wisdom,” runs the phrasing attributed to a typical mountaineer, “but I jest cain’t see why He put valleys in between the hills.””
—Administration in the State of Arka, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“Think of admitting the details of a single case of the criminal court into our thoughts, to stalk profanely through their very sanctum sanctorum for an hour, ay, for many hours! to make a very barroom of the mind’s inmost apartment, as if for so long the dust of the street had occupied us,—the very street itself, with all its travel, its bustle, and filth, had passed through our thoughts’ shrine! Would it not be an intellectual and moral suicide?”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The values by which we are to survive are not rules for just and unjust conduct, but are those deeper illuminations in whose light justice and injustice, good and evil, means and ends are seen in fearful sharpness of outline.”
—Jacob Bronowski (1908–1974)