ABSTRACT
Without a broader set of cultural perspectives and an influx of data from both the social sciences and the global humanities, North Americans, police, analysts, agents, and citizens lose in the long run. Quite simply stated, we all lose because we need all the knowledge we can get about our major Asian trading partners with whom we are learning to live more closely on our shrinking planet. If criminology and in-service training programs restrict themselves solely to social science, the world of law enforcement loses. Moreover, the pragmatic value of criminal justice research and its training products would be considerably enhanced if its paradigms were expanded and if it were to join forces with the rest of the world’s various traditions of knowledge and skills which focus upon the criminal and cross-cultural (XC) aspects of Asian and Asian-American peoples. While not all relevant cultural knowledge should be integrated in training programs, it is desirable that relevant information should not be excluded from consideration because of academic or agency subcultural prejudices or narrow ethnocentrism. This is particularly so when the breadth and seriousness of acute Asian crime problems demand a revision of our assumptions about what is relevant for police who must struggle with cultural differences in language, social relations, and thought processes.
