t that while Saudi Arabia is traditional in its constitution, legislation, and penal code, Kuwait is more secular in its legal system; thus the study will allow for interpretation of data in terms of crime rate differences as a function of differences in the practice of Shariah law.
Second, the study will examine only offense categories that are comparably defined in the two countries. Third, all comparisons will be for the same periods of time. Fourth, only data that has been recorded by the same or similar recording systems will be included in the study. While it is not feasible to control the effects of demographic and social factors in the two countries, if statistical breakdowns of crime by demographic or social factors are available, these variables will be compared across countries to see whether they contribute to differences in crime rates.
One other point needs to be noted regarding existing studies of Saudi crime. This is that all of these studies analyzed statistical data collected no later than 1981. Clearly an update of these figures is in order. Not only will updated figures provide a look at the current level of crime in both countries, if compared to crime levels observed for previous years, these data will allow for an analysis of whether crime rates have changed or remained the same (for both countries) during the last decade. If changes are noted, these could be addressed in terms of contributive factors such as the differences in the two countries in the practice of Shariah law.
Low crime rates in Saudi Arabia are often attributed to the fact that this country has implemented the Shariah as its penal code (Adler, 1983, Soural, 1988). However, Ali (1985) has challenged the findings of the research on Saudi crime arguing that much of this work suffers from methodological defects. The purpose of this review will be to briefly summarize the somewhat contradictory interpretations of crime rates and t...