ABSTRACT
Part Four examines some of the issues and policy developments addressed in Part Three by placing them in a comparative perspective. Some time ago Nelken (1994) argued that the future of criminology (and by implication here, victimology) lay with the importance of comparative research. The essence of his argument was that with the increasing importance of transnational crime more needed to be known about how different countries operated legally, politically and culturally, before any strategy to prevent this kind of crime could be implemented. Of course, alongside the increase in transnational crime there has been a rise in the number of victims of such crime, the most telling of which have arguably been those who died and have since suffered as a result of the events in Bhopal in 1984, and more recently those who have suffered as a result of terrorist activity. While events such as these stand out both in their impact and in the memories that they conjure, individuals can also be victimised in different countries in the same way that they are at home, that is from the more routine and mundane events like car crime and street robbery. However, comparisons are not problem-free and can be summarised in one question: what are we comparing? Do we compare concepts of justice; systems of justice; cultures of justice; to name just a few of the possible comparisons that can be made. These difficulties notwithstanding, it is evidently the case, as demonstrated by the contributions in Part Three, that policies, and research methodologies, relating to victims of crime have travelled from country to country, with very little detailed consideration as to the efficacy of those policies in the different legal, social, and political contexts in which they are being operationalised. The authors here endeavour to put some of that detail in place for us.
