ABSTRACT

With all that it takes to organize and carry out ambitious endeavors in comparative criminology, it is o en tempting to put the most basic questions to one side. What are we trying to achieve? What is the best way to achieve it? How do we grasp “di erence,” and what do we do with it when we have found it? [Nelken, 2010] ere are, of course, any number of reasons for studying comparative criminology and comparative criminal justice, and these may in uence the priority given to classifying, describing, explaining, or interpreting di erent social and cultural responses to deviance. On the one hand (or at one stage of enquiry), what is sought may have more to do with the sheer intellectual excitement of discovering what others do, or have done, about uncovering deviance and making social order. On the other hand (or at another stage), our goals may have more to do with practical purposes geared to learning from, borrowing, or imitating other approaches-or spreading our own practices elsewhere.