International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology

Although comparative criminology has made significant development during the past decade or so, systematic empirical research has only developed along a few topics. Comparative criminology has never occupied a central position in criminology. This article analyzes the major theoretical and methodological impediments in the development of comparative criminology. It stresses a need to shift methodology from a conventional primary approach that uses the nation as the unit of analysis to an in-depth case study method as a primary methodological approach. The article maintains that case study method can overcome the limitation of its descriptive tradition and become a promising methodological approach for comparative criminology.

Using a sample of 615 middle- and high-school students from rural and urban areas of the People’s Republic of China, this study tests the effects of coping strategies predicted by Agnew’s (1992) general strain theory (GST), in which the impact of strain on delinquency is conditioned by adolescents’ social and personal resources. Results provide support for the coping strategies hypotheses posited by GST, in a non-Western culture. Social supports in the three major domains of family, school, and peer group have cross-domain and within-domain buffering effects on the relationships between juvenile delinquency and interpersonal problems in these domains, and moral beliefs have all-domain buffering effects. Girls are more likely to use cross-domain support resources in managing interpersonal problems, whereas boys are more susceptible to delinquent peers in their adaptation to interpersonal strain in all domains. The implications of the findings to intervention were discussed.

Using data extracted from 29 provincial laws on the protection of women in China promulgated during the 1980s, this study tests Black’s (1976) proposition that the quantity of law varies with stratification, morphology, culture, organization, and social control. Analyses yielded little support for Black’s propositions except significant direct relationships between morphology and the quantity of five types of provincial laws. The article concludes with a discussion of alternative explanations for the observed findings and the implications of this research for further studies on the development of law.

The current study explored the value change as manifested in the sense of anomie during the 1990s and sources of anomie in contemporary China. The multiple regression analysis found that employment, having children, and satisfaction in life were significantly related to anomie; however, the effect of education was related to anomie in the direction that was inconsistent with what was known in the Western literature. Age had no significant effect on anomie. It is concluded that the crime rates remain relatively low even after many years of dramatic increase, and that China may not be able to maintain its tight control over politics forever.

This article describes a community crime prevention program in China, set against a background of rapid economic development, large internal population migration, and increasing crime rates. Traditional social control in China has been transformed to adapt to the new reform era, yet some mechanisms remain intact. Crime prevention measures and strategies resemble those adopted in the West; however, the differences, constituting the so-called Chinese characteristics with community crime prevention are significant.

Since Hong Kong’s return to the People’s Republic of China (PRC) there has been a significant rise in the number of Chinese visitors to Hong Kong, including women crossing the border to engage in sex work. Sex work itself is not a crime in Hong Kong, but related activities, like soliciting, are prohibited. Sex work is treated as work for immigration purposes, and visitors who engage in work without an employment visa are breaching their conditions of stay. More than 10,000 mainland Chinese women have been arrested, prosecuted, and sentenced in recent years, causing the correctional population to expand beyond capacity. The authors examine the experiences of 58 incarcerated women in their encounters with the Hong Kong criminal justice system and find that women are processed in a highly routinized bureaucratic manner. They consider the purpose served by the largely bureaucratic form of justice that has emerged in response to migrant sex workers in Hong Kong.

There is a lack of research on attitudes toward capital punishment in China, and there is even less research on cross-national comparisons of capital punishment views. Using data recently collected from college students in the United States and China, this study finds that U.S. and Chinese students have differences in their views on the death penalty and its functions of deterrence, rehabilitation, and incapacitation. This study also reveals that the respondents’ perspectives of deterrence, rehabilitation, retribution, and incapacitation all affect their attitudes toward the death penalty in the United States, whereas only the first three views affect attitudes toward capital punishment in China. Furthermore, retribution is the strongest predictor in the United States, whereas deterrence is the strongest predictor in China.

Drug crime in China is on an overall rising trend. Major drug crime cases are becoming more common, the types of drugs being trafficked are more diverse, and the smuggling and trafficking of drugs into the country and the smuggling of precursor chemicals out of the country have formed a bidirectional cycle. Drug crimes in China have also begun to show a conspicuous trend of internationalization. China’s main countermeasures against drug crimes have been to pass new laws and regulations against drugs, to increase the efforts to eradicate cultivation, to establish and expand “drug-free communities” programs, and to strengthen international cooperation in antidrug campaigns. The existing problems demand prompt solutions, which include a shortage of funding and lack of accurate knowledge about prevalence of drug abuse and related data for scientifically studying the drug problems.

This article discusses research experience gained from a large-scale survey of criminal victimization recently conducted in Tianjin, China. The authors review some of the more important challenges that arose in the research, their responses to these challenges, and lessons learned that might be beneficial to other scholars who are interested in conducting criminological research in China. Their experience underscores the importance of understanding the Chinese political, cultural, and academic context, and the utility of collaborating with experienced and knowledgeable colleagues “on site.” Although there are some special difficulties and barriers, their project demonstrates the feasibility of original criminological data collection in China.