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Comparative research in practice
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Having sketched out some of the main contours and methodological questions relat- ing to comparative work, this chapter will next turn to examine how such research methodologies can be utilized in practice. The chapter will look at studies from the three subject areas of victimology, policing and crime as examples, although the pur- pose of doing so is to illustrate the pitfalls and benefits of comparative study against a backdrop of the much wider bodies of enquiry undertaken by criminologists as a whole.
In the first case, I will draw on work by Brienen and Hoegen (2000) who set out to analyse criminal justice reform agendas ostensibly aimed at victims of crime in 22 European countries. The authors analysed provisions for victims across European jurisdictions based on a combination of survey and interview data carried out across all the countries. In Nelken’s terms, this methodology
represented a broad mix of being ‘virtually there’ and ‘researching there’. Genuinely comparative research on victim issues is rare (Hall, 2010). The work thus remains a substantial achievement and required reading for any researcher interested in the development of victim initiatives internationally. What is par- ticularly interesting about Brienen and Hoegen’s project is that it allows comparisons to be drawn between inquisitorial and adversarial justice systems. There has long been a recurring assertion in the literature in this field that crim- inal justice systems following the more adversarial, combative model may be inherently less accommodating to victims of crime, especially those who find themselves subject to cross-examination as witnesses (see Ellison, 2001). Thus, by engaging in comparative work the authors of this study were able to shed new light on an old question. In fact, on this point, the authors conclude that neither system has an inherent advantage in terms of victims’ experience of the criminal justice system. Instead, they ascribe greater importance to the practical imple- mentation of relevant measures in either system.
Of course, like all comparative (and other) research, the Brienen and Hoegen find-
ings come with health warnings. The research was restricted to Europe, was largely descriptive of legislation and programmes and, although covering a large number of countries, was not focused on the policy-making process and context behind victim measures specifically. Work from several jurisdictions implies that a very detailed understanding of the nuances of policy making and policy networks is highly relevant to understanding criminal justice reform (Atkinson and Coleman, 1992), and thus subtleties may well have been missed in each jurisdiction under review. In line with broader notions of governance, policy networks imply horizontal connections between a wide body of relevant stakeholders as contributing to the production of public policy, as opposed to a more top-down ‘government-led’ understanding of how policies are developed and refined. That said, the literature exemplifies the importance of comparative work in the victimization area: something which is becoming more significant as many jurisdictions are turning more attention to trans- national sources of victimization, such as internet crime (Taylor et al., 2014) and people trafficking (Lee, 2007).
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Policing is another area that has benefited from comparative study, albeit as Jones
and Newburn wrote in 2006: ‘Despite the burgeoning academic interest in policing there remains a dearth of rigorous academic international comparative analysis in this field’ (2006: 5).
Indeed, although these authors made this assertion in an edited collection entitled Plural Policing: A Comparative Perspective, it is notable that even this book mainly relies on individual chapters detailing different jurisdictional contexts of policing positioned ‘side by side’, with varying degrees of direct comparative analysis within or between each chapter. In practice, this is often how a lot of comparative work is presented, leaving the reader to effectively note the similarities and differences between jurisdictions and to draw their own conclusions. The same criticism could be applied to much of Brienen and Hoegen’s (2000) project.
One recent study that tries to take a more directly comparative route is that of Chu and Song (2015) who set out to examine the perceptions Chinese immigrants in New York City (NYC) and in Toronto had of the police. With the assistance of the Chinese Cultural Center of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in NYC and Toronto, the authors were able to identify the primary service agencies and commu- nity organizations that provided cultural services for Chinese immigrants in both cities. Through such services and organizations, the researchers then conducted a survey of said populations, eliciting 151 respondents from NYC and 293 from Toronto. The researchers appear to have followed what Nelken (2007) would call a ‘researching there’ method. They describe spending roughly three months focusing on each location, during which time they made several trips to the research sites to visit local community service providers. Both authors were based in the USA: one in Buffalo, New York State and the other in Jonesboro, Arkansas.
The authors spend some time in their paper setting the respective scenes in each jurisdiction: expanding widely on the different demographics of the two research sites, as well as the different factors at play in Canada and the USA which, they argue (based on previous research studies), are predictive of public perceptions of the police in each country. In the USA, the most common such variables are said to be race and age. Citing Mosher (1996: 423), the authors then note that ‘in Canada there are comparatively sparse studies regarding public perceptions of the police’, but, in that jurisdiction, previous research by O’Connor (2008) found that predictors of public perceptions of the police in Canada were consistent with the findings of most research conducted in the USA. The authors also expand on the different legal and social contexts influencing policing in Canada and the USA. In the latter case, for example, they note ‘one of the characteristics that distinguishes Canadians from other people from the world is their tolerance with people with different backgrounds and cultures (Graves, 1997)’ (p. 409). The extended comparative points made by the authors here are cited at length in Box 20. 4 by way of illustration of how such work can lead to meaningful conclusions.
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But this sort of aggressive police style can be seen as producing conformity rather than respecting civil liberties (Davis et al., 2004; Human Rights Watch, 1998). Since the passage of the USA PATRIOT Act, the use of counterterrorism tactics and the increase of law enforcement powers have raised concern among liberals, racial/ethnic minorities, and immigrants (Brown, 2007). The multicultural approach to policing in Toronto is also worth mentioning, where an emphasis on community policing might have eased racial tensions inherent in the police– immigrant interactions. (pp. 409–10)
From these comparative points, the authors are able to derive a hypothesis:
In view of the different policing styles in NYC and Toronto, it is reasonable to assume that Chinese immigrants in NYC and Toronto would hold different perceptions of the police. The multiculturalism embraced by the Canadian society and community policing initiatives advocated by the TPD would pos- sibly make immigrants feel more welcome and assimilated to the criminal justice system. However, because of the histories of some incidents of mis- treatment of minorities by law enforcement officers in the United States (e. g., the beating of Rodney King by the Los Angeles Police) and the comparatively more aggressive policing approach engaged by the NYPD, immigrants might feel more distant from the police and thus hold less favourable attitudes toward the police. Consequently, we hypothesize that Chinese immigrants in Toronto will hold more positive overall perceptions of the police. (p. 410)
The authors later purport to confirm these hypotheses by multivariate analysis of the two sets of results, which also indicated that Chinese immigrants in New York City were more likely to perceive a slower response from the police to their complaints than those immigrants residing in Toronto. From this analysis, the authors are able to draw the following overall comparative conclusion:
The differential overall perceptions between Toronto and NYC may be attrib- uted to the different policing styles. While the Toronto police have advocated community policing and embraced the philosophy of multiculturalism, immi- grants may feel less alienated from the law enforcement officials. However, in response to a high crime rate and the post-9/11 effect, the aggressive policing approach adopted in NYC may somehow affect the police–Chinese commu- nity relationship. (p. 420)
This example demonstrates how comparative work can produce meaningful results which help us develop knowledge of different criminal justice solutions and their potential impacts. Of course, the study laid out above can also be criticized in the
(Continued)
In terms of understanding crime itself and comparing crime rates between jurisdictions, another major comparative project has been the establishment of the International Crime Victimisation Survey (ICVS), which has been carried out in some 54 countries (van Dijk et al., 2007). The ICVS began in 1989 and grew out of a perceived need for reliable crime statistics that could be used for inter- national comparisons. Police-recorded crime statistics are notoriously under-representative of the so-called ‘dark figure’ of crime in all jurisdictions owing to low reporting rates. At the level of international comparisons, such figures become even more problematic to work with given that reporting rates can differ for different crimes between countries, depending on local cultural sensitivities, practicalities and basic trust in the local police (as confirmed by the Chu and Song (2015) study discussed above). Furthermore, police statistics can- not be used easily for comparative purposes because, as we have already noted above in the work of Mawby (1998), the legal definitions of crimes differ across countries to greater and lesser extents. Recording practices and counting rules of the police also vary greatly.
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Certainly, results from nation-specific crime victim surveys have become the
preferred source of information on levels of crime in many developed countries in recent years; however, surveys such as the National Crime Victim Survey in the USA and the Crime Survey for England & Wales differ greatly in terms of their questions and methodology. By contrast, the International Crime Victim Survey (ICVS) employs standardized questionnaires and other design elements. Nevertheless, the limits of the ICVS must also be recognized. Full standardiza- tion of all design aspects has proven to be unattainable, especially if surveys in developing countries are included. Although there are no reasons to assume that
comparability has in any way been systematically compromised, divergent design features such as the mode of interviewing and the period in which the fieldwork was done, may have affected the results of individual countries in unknown ways. Also, since the samples interviewed are relatively small (2000 in most countries and 800 in most cities), all estimates are subject to sampling error. Nevertheless, the ICVS not only adds greatly to our comparative knowledge of crime figures, but is also used as a tool of victimology to ascertain international trends on issues such as victim satisfaction with the criminal justice system, access to information, and so on, in the same way that national criminal vic- timization surveys do.
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