Comparative Criminal Justice As A Social Practice

Comparative Criminal Justice As A Social Practice Presented by: Prof. Nelken Date: Oktober 10, 2022 Outline - Why should Southernizing Criminology be interested in global social indicators? - Comparison as a social practice - Comparison and commensuration - The role of social indicators - Three types of indicators - Understanding global social indicators - Two case- studies of standardizing indicators - Comparison, commensuration and target setting - Comparison, commensuration and social control - Implications for Southernizing Criminology Global Social Indicators And Southernising Criminology - Just an Overlap or Colliding projects? • Are global social indicators part of the problem -or the solution? (How) can they empower? • Parallel issues or exactly the issue? • How come some of the same authors (e.g. Blaustein; Barbered) are involved both in promoting indicators and writing about Southernizing Criminology? What Is At Stake? - 'De-contextualizing'- specification - Governing - empowering - Universalizing- relativizing - Epistemic ide- promoting debate - New colonialism- Revealing colonialism Comparison As A Social Practice - What makes a good comparison? What is comparison good for? - 'First order' and 'second order' comparisons - Distinguishing comparison and commensuration: - Comparing 'like with like'- and 'making alike' - Comparison requires knowing as much as possible about the matters being compared, thereby to highlight both the similarities and differences Comparing Like With Like' - Don't Compare Apples And Pears? Why Not? - Whereas- Successful commensuration deliberately compares the incomparable • It seeks to apply the same standard and to make alike and equivalent • It does not matter that Sweden is very different from Somalia in many matters other than corruption. That only makes the ranking more plausible • Comparison is judgmental - not 'fair'. What matters is its usefulness. • Query- useful for what and for whom? Can it really be useful if we don't understand differences in context? The Roles Of Social Indicators - a) Explanatory, - b) Policy - c) and Ranking/standardizing Debating Global Social Indicators: Truth Effects And Governance Effects - Comparison versus commensuration: The paradox of Global Indicators • Looking for both similarities and differences, versus judging by the same standards and making alike. • What are we doing when we use global indicators to rank, say, Sweden and Somalia in terms of levels of corruption? • If we are applying and spreading a standard, whose standard is it? • What happens to comparison in the process? • A paradox? 'in order to be globally commensurate, they (indicators) cannot be rooted in local contexts, but in order to accurately reflect local situations, they need to be' (Merry and Wood, 2015) Two Case Studies Of Global Social Indicators - Comparison, commensuration- and target setting UN DEVELOPMENT - Comparison, commensuration -and social control. COVID INDICATORS - The following examples show how ranking indicators combine comparison and commensuration as part of schemes of governance Blaustein On Un Indicators - … 'provides the best available framework for balancing local development and security needs with global priorities of criminological concern, including the protection of human rights and environmental justice' (Blaustein, 2018, p.769). Barbered Agrees - 'Too much privileging of context can be dangerous. 'For many years, female genital mutilation, child marriage, and other practices that the UN now calls, 'harmful cultural practices' were not taken seriously because governments (largely from the Global South) argued that these practices were custom or tradition and therefore not subject to international human rights obligations.' We should 'always be skeptical of counting schemes in order to ensure they do not reify harmful categorizing', But 'precisely because 'counting' decontextualizes as well as visibilizes, it can be more convincing than qualitative case studies done in context.... along with qualitative data, quantitative and comparable data are important to hold criminal justice systems accountable to women's needs.' (Barbered, 2021) Nelken On Covid Indicators - Covid indicators played a variety of roles in explaining different rates of infections and death, documenting best practices, justifying different policy choices, and judging and ranking performance. - Whilst some indicators were mainly concerned with the progress of the epidemic, others focused on the success of policies in dealing with it. - They sought both to make comparisons (by understanding similarities and differences) and to achieve commensuration (aiming to make policies globally align with supposed best practices - Those compiling and disseminating Covid indicators were not worried about comparing like with like because the main interest of the consumers of such communications was to know which places were doing better (and were therefore safer), not necessarily why this was so. - But even if indicators were mainly concerned to report what was happening, they could hardly do this job well without prior standardization of the definitions and practices used for defining Covid in each country. Implications For Southernizing Criminology - Back to contrasting the projects... • 'De-contextualizing'- specification • Governing – empowering • Universalizing- relativizing • Epistemic ide- promoting debate • New colonialism- Revealing colonialism Depends On Which Indicator? - Need indicators to measure outcomes - whatever you are trying to achieve? - Should our judgement vary by indicator? - Not all indicators favor the North e.g. see Corruption and Rule of law