Against ethnocentrism: A cross-cultural perspective on criminal justice theories and policies

Culture is defined as the values, ideas, and behaviors that may be associated with one or more than one social or national group. The cross-cultural perspective developed in this paper involves the search for ideas from different cultures and their consideration in the context of our own culture. Examples from Latin American and Russian criminology are presented to illustrate the potential contribution of a cross-cultural perspective on criminal justice theories. The example of China is used to illustrate a cross-cultural perspective on responses to crime. The paper concludes with considerations on the significance of a cross-cultural perspective for criminal justice curricula.