Comparative vs. International Criminal Justice

The criminal justice system consists of those agencies, courts, tribunals, and so forth that deal with criminal law and its enforcement in the various countries of the world (Barak, 2000). Criminal justice systems can be studied in a variety of ways. The purpose of this paper is to look at the differences in two approaches to criminal justice systems, namely the comparative criminal justice approach and the international criminal justice approach.

According to Terrill (2003), the field of comparative criminal justice and law is relatively new, only a few decades old. It's foundation is comparative criminology and its purpose is to discover more successful methods and policies of crime control as well as to test theories of crime and justice. However, its overarching goal is to remedy what is viewed as American ethnocentrism (the view that American ideas apply naturally to other parts of the world).

Terrill (2003) points out that the field of comparative Criminal Justice is one in which there is an examination of crime and control using an analytic framework or lens that assumes both crime and the justice system occur in countries with unique social, economic, and political structures. Thus, insight into both crime and the justice systems developed for controlling it, as well as for the remedy for American/Anglo ethnocentrism, is to be found using comparative methodologies. These methodologies often involv