SPOCs & surveys: A novel way of conducting comparative research into criminal justice systems

Abstract

Criminal justice researchers are increasingly confronted with research questions that require them to use ‘foreign information’ in their analyses. Though it is generally accepted that working with foreign information is challenging, several authors pointed to the lack of serious recent work on comparative methodology. Many researchers therefore avoid comparative research. Based on a literature review and practical experience, the challenges of comparative criminal justice research are uncovered, the strenghts and weaknesses of existing methods identified and a novel method developped. The so-called ‘SPOCs & survey’-method consists of nominating a SPOC (short for a single point of contact) for the countries to be included in the comparative analysis and asking them to fill out a multiple choice based survey, complemented with free text fields and the option to request documents to be attached. To assess the merit of the method, the paper elaborates (1) on the different degrees to which the method can be integrated in various types of research and (2) the extent to which the method is better tailored than existing methods to successfully overcome the challenges of comparative research referred to in literature. Though the method depends on the access to knowledgeable SPOCs, the weakness is counterbalanced by the strengths of its swiftness, reliability and validity.