INTRODUCTION

Whether it is news that ships have been pirated off Somali and Sweden, or word that Scottish authorities have released a notorious prisoner on grounds of compassion, those interested in the practice of comparative criminology can find significant fodder for their investigations in various news sources. For example, The New York Times reported on a brazen bank robbery in Baghdad in which nine culprits made off with $4.3 million in two get away cars after executing eight bank guards (Nordland & Mohammed, 2009). The robbers neglected the presence of security cameras and the time of the rising sun, so they were caught on videotape and observed by witnesses as they fled the scene of the crime. After a brief trial, four of the defendants were convicted and sentenced to death while one defendant was acquitted. Four other defendants, the suspected ring leaders with ties to the Shiite political elite, are still on the run. Intrigue is added to the case since many of the robbers were also bodyguards to Iraq’s Vice President Adel Abdul Mahdi. News reporters Nordland and Mohammed (2009: A1) observed that the case “resonat[es] loudly for what it says about high-level corruption and the uneven application of law in Iraq.” For a comparative criminologist, other questions might also be raised by this story: How does the legitimacy of the judicial process affect the standing of the government in the eyes of the public? How are CCTV and other surveillance practices integrated into the ordinary police practices of various nations? How does social reaction to robbery vary between societies? Whatever questions they might ask, our primary contention in this chapter is that criminologists engaged in comparative inquiry employ particular methods in order to produce more defensible understandings of crime and justice.