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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