ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the very different context of criminal justice research in many parts of Africa, Asia, and Latin America. It lays out some of the key theoretical concerns these differences raise for the development of criminological scholarship. The chapter also discusses the role of qualitative methods in gaining access to data, analyzing data, and developing good comparisons across varied cases. Many political scientists and criminologists employ data gathered from a large number of countries to make arguments about wide trends and to compare political or criminal justice institutions in many places. The chapter explores the experience conducting research in Brazil and the utility of qualitative methods in developing an understanding of criminological phenomena in these locales. In Latin America, a region where states generally have more capacity than those that operate in much of Africa, violence often diffuses into the hands of criminal actors.
