Beyond Western-centrism: Exploring Asian contributions in global comparative criminology

The Western-centric nature of comparative criminology has been widely acknowledged, promoting a growing call for increased attention to be given to Asia within the field. However, there is a lack of comprehensive quantitative assessments of the extent of Western domination and the contributions of Asian research material in existing literature. To fill this gap, this study conducts a quantitative literature review of English-written journal articles in the Social Sciences Citation Index Criminology & Penology category. The objective is to provide an overview of the degree of Western domination in global comparative criminology and to examine how Asia contributes to rectifying this domination. Additionally, the study explores the substantive contributions of Asia to helping to ease the over-centring on Western perspectives in this field. The findings reveal a prevailing Western domination and highlight the leading role of Asia among non-Western regions in comparative criminology. Based on these findings, the article concludes by discussing some implications for the development of global comparative criminology.