ABSTRACT
Going abroad has universal appeal. Travelling has been regarded as one of life’s formative endeavours for centuries. Seeing different cultures broadens one’s horizons and yields a fresh perspective on local affairs. For upper-class Britons in the eighteenth century, embarking on the so-called Grand Tour of the European continent in order to appreciate the cultural splendour of France or Italy was particularly in vogue (Chard, 1999). Comparative criminal justice is arguably one of its contemporary academic counterparts but we must emphasise that comparative should not be nor should it be perceived to be ‘an excuse for international travel’ or ‘an exotic frill’, or even ‘a luxury that serious social scientists leave to dilettantes’ (Bayley, 1999: 241). The fact that comparative research is open to such suspicions makes it all the more important to explain both the ‘why’ and the ‘how’ of comparative research in detail.
