The theory of penal legitimacy has long revolved around the "just desert" principle, which holds that offenders deserve punishment commensurate with their moral wrongdoing. However, in practice, punishment systems centered on just desertespecially in highly punitive institutional environmentshave not only failed to effectively reduce recidivism rates but also been accompanied by severe human rights issues and social exclusion effects. This reality raises a fundamental normative question: Can, and in what sense can, criminal punishment treat offenders in a manner that goes beyond their strict just desert? This paper argues that the just desert principle should not be understood as a baseline that punishment must meet, but rather redefined as the moral upper bound of penal legitimacy. Drawing on the well-established penal philosophy framework of "Limiting Retributivism," this paper demonstrates that, on the premise of not violating the principles of responsibility and proportionality, institutionally adopting lenient and rehabilitative measures for offenders that are below their maximum just desert is morally legitimate and socially beneficial. Furthermore, by integrating empirical research in comparative criminal justice, the paper illustrates the systematic failure of pure retributive punishment systems in practice. It also introduces the normative concept of restorative justice to show how the punishment model of "beyond just desert" can simultaneously promote responsibility-taking, social integration, and public safety. By repositioning just desert as the restrictive boundary of punishment, this paper provides a theoretical path for contemporary penal reform that balances moral seriousness with humanitarian care.

This narrative review explores contemporary challenges and reform trends in comparative criminal justice systems, emphasizing the interaction between retributive and restorative approaches and the integration of digital technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI). The study aimed to identify effective reform strategies and the systemic factors influencing their success. A comprehensive literature search was conducted across Scopus, Google Scholar, and other academic databases using Boolean operators to locate studies published in the last ten years, with inclusion criteria focusing on relevance, methodology, and language. Selected studies included qualitative, quantitative, and mixed-method research examining judicial systems in civil and common law countries. Results reveal that reform efforts are significantly shaped by institutional transparency, civic engagement, and corruption control. Countries like Rwanda and Germany demonstrated progress through inclusive reforms, whereas developing nations such as Indonesia face obstacles due to institutional limitations. Retributive models, particularly in the United States, contribute to high recidivism and neglect victims' needs. In contrast, restorative practices in Canada and New Zealand show enhanced outcomes in offender rehabilitation and victim satisfaction. Moreover, the use of AI in judicial systems, while improving efficiency, raises ethical concerns regarding algorithmic fairness and data governance. The findings highlight the urgent need for balanced policy frameworks that promote restorative justice, community engagement, and ethical integration of technology. Future research should examine adaptive models of justice reform suited to varying socio-political environments to enhance justice delivery globally.

This essay explores Michael Tonry’s treatment of sentencing law and policy within the U.S. as an inherently comparative project. The essay draws from Tonry’s “early period” in comparative sentencing from the late 1970s to the middle 1990s, when his writing was largely U.S.-centric, focued on quickly changing conditions in dozens of states and the federal system. Tonry classified the several models of “sentencing reform” that were being tried across the country, drew contrasts in the legal architectures of the new systems, collected data and evaluation research for as many states as possible, and treated the reform-active states as “laboratories” whose experiments could be evaluated for the benefit of other jurisdictions. The essay examines the importance of this body of work and illustrates the impact it has had on research and policy communities over several decades. In addition, the essay suggests that “Tonry’s blueprint” holds great value for future researchers in comparative criminal justice policy.

Learning While Doing: Mock Trials as Active Learning Strategies in Comparative Criminal Justice Courses

While traditional, teacher-centered teaching has been a staple of college teaching, active learning has gained popularity. This article describes mock trials, a form of active learning. We utilize a quasi-experimental design to assess the effects of student participation in mock trials on their self-perceived learning and their actual learning of class materials. Based on pre- and post-trial surveys of 288 students, we analyze student views about their learning. Our results demonstrate that participation in mock trials not only increases students’ perceptions of learning but also increases their familiarity with the criminal procedural rules used in different countries. While our study is housed within the context of a comparative criminal justice class, our approach can easily be adjusted to other criminal justice classes, including those focused on the court system or criminal procedure.

The centennial of the International Association of Penal Law (Association Internationale de Droit Pénal / International Association of Penal Law, AIDP/IAPL) is the topic of this article. The anniversary was celebrated in Paris during the 21st Congress of the Association, held from June 25 to 28, 2024. This event became a pivotal moment in the history of the AIDP, marking a century of the organization's contributions to the advancement of national and international criminal law frameworks, while also fostering broader opportunities for academic, diplomatic, and legal collaboration on a global scale. The author scrutinizes the primary moments and symbolism of the celebrations and focuses on exploring the significance of the Association's contribution to shaping legal standards and approaches in the field of criminal justice policy, as well as its role in supporting legal institutions in the global arena. Honoring the Association's history and its connection with the traditions of the International Union of Penal Law, the author outlines the historical factors, characteristics, and key stages of the Association's evolution. The analysis points out its influence on the advancement of international criminal law, the promotion of the rule of law, efforts to combat international crimes, the protection of human rights, and explores the prospects for its future growth. Through an analysis of initiatives carried out within the organization and its structural network, which includes individual, collective, and national membership, the article emphasizes the importance of the diversity of legal systems and visions and the significance of international cooperation in criminal law science and practice. Drawing on the study of the Association’s achievements and scholarly biographies of its Presidents, the author underscores the importance of influential figures who laid the foundations for the development of criminal law in both comparative and international contexts. These figures played active roles in humanizing criminal justice policy, supported and promoted the creation of the international criminal justice system, contributed to the development of important international conventions and other mechanisms for human rights protection, worked on expanding institutions and strengthening the role of AIDP, advanced interdisciplinary approaches in legal scholarship, and enriched international cooperation among associations in the field of criminal sciences. An examination of the key areas of the Association's work – such as criminal justice policy, comparative criminal justice, international criminal law, and human rights in criminal justice administration – demonstrates that the Association’s congresses and other platforms have become vital spaces for exchanging ideas. These forums play a crucial role in shaping and refining criminal justice policies at various levels, fostering the development of more substantiated, inclusive, and effective approaches. As a result, they contribute to enhancing legal education, advancing legal science, and improving legal practice. AIDP continues to serve as an organization of strategic importance for addressing challenges such as the marginalization of international criminal law, jurisdictional conflicts, and global, climate, and digital issues of the modern world, contributing to the foundation of legal ideas that may eventually lead to significant social transformations.

Report on the First International Conference of the Münster Centre for Transnational and Comparative Criminal Justice on “Current Challenges for European and International Criminal Policy” (14 – 15 October 2022, University of Münster)

A Brief Review of the Amendments to Taiwan's Criminal Law on Custodial Protection- A Study of Comparative Criminal Justice with German Law

This article presents a qualitative study that examines the reasons why women want to be a police officer in the mainland of the People’s Republic of China. It aims to explore females’ entry into the police organization, policewomen’s occupational roles and positions, the perceived nature of policing and, to a lesser extent, local police culture. The article argues that China does not need a creative strategy to attract females to join the police. Instead, if structural changes are not possible for now, it needs to change mindset, to scrap the quota that restricts women’s entry and allow female officers more choices and to be more actively engaged in mainstream policing if they so wish. Through the case study, the article accentuates variations in different social environments in comparative criminal justice studies and gender policing in particular. It thus also promotes Southern criminology and Southern Theory for contributions to knowledge production.

We, the Editor and Publisher of Women & Criminal Justice, have retracted the following article: Mark H. Heirigs and Matthew D. Moore “The Facets of Gender Inequality and Homicide: A Cross-National Examination”, Women & Criminal Justice, DOI: 10.1080/08974454.2019.1632773, published online on 16 July, 2019. The above article has been retracted as a result of the Editor and the Publisher determining, through post-publication review, that there is significant overlap in the underlying dataset and in the text, with a previously published article by the same authors, Mark H. Heirigs & Matthew D. Moore (2018) Gender inequality and homicide: a cross-national examination, International Journal of Comparative and Applied Criminal Justice, 42:4, 273–285, DOI: 10.1080/01924036.2017.1322112. We have been informed in our decision-making by our policy on publishing ethics and integrity and the COPE guidelines on retractions. The authors of the article have been informed of our decision. The retracted article will remain online to maintain the scholarly record, but it will be digitally watermarked on each page as “Retracted”.

Over the past several decades, American penal exceptionalism—the tendency for U.S. penal policies and practices to proudly diverge from those of other Western countries—has severely limited the development of comparative criminal justice research from a U.S. perspective. However, in recent years, a growing consensus that America’s criminal justice policies and practices are too expensive, ineffective, excessively punitive, and often inhumane has laid the ground for a new phase of soul-searching. This article argues for an explicit rediscovering of comparative criminal justice policy in America, which would prove extremely helpful in providing bold yet practicable solutions in the current commendable but unimaginative era of criminal justice reform. We first contend that American exceptionalism is not as embedded in U.S. penal policy and culture as the past few decades might seem to suggest. Second, we discuss the main causes of the gradual demise of the comparative criminal justice enterprise in America. Finally, we discuss two areas of U.S. criminal justice reform suggesting mechanisms of comparative criminal justice policy that should be nurtured: (1) new prison reform initiatives pointing to renewed openness to comparative insights and (2) the growing chorus calling for prosecutorial reform, showing how many of the reform ideas proffered tap into characteristics found in continental systems.

ABSTRACT Émile Durkheim known among other things for his pioneering sociology of criminal law was also a corporatist theorist and can be interpreted as a predecessor for an institutionalist approach that has recently gained popularity in comparative criminal justice. Durkheim suggested an inverse relationship between the intensities of ‘repressive’ regulation and ‘restitutive’ welfare state regulation. Contemporary institutionalist research has arrived at the same conclusion, but the connection between Durkheim’s theory and the empirical observations of modern comparative research has gone largely unnoticed in both legal scholarship and sociology. Correcting this omission might prove useful for substantive theory: Apart from welfare state strength, neo-institutionalist research has also associated lenient criminal law with corporatist political economy and consensus democracy. Durkheim’s political sociology proposes an answer for the interrelationship between these factors. Durkheim considered social corporatism a democratic institution and as such a precondition for a democracy capable of building the collective restitutive regulation that could alleviate society’s reliance on punitive justice as a basis for social cohesion.

ABSTRACTThe Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program has been delivered at 2 prisons in Victoria, Australia, Dame Phyllis Frost Centre and Marngoneet Correctional Centre, since 2015. Selected university (outside) students and prisoners (inside) engage in a collaborative learning environment, studying Comparative Criminal Justice Systems. Students critique complex criminal justice material and undertake university standard assessments. The programme was evaluated through pre-test and post-test surveys and focus groups. This paper outlines this evaluation, including the similarities and differences between inside and outside students’ experience, their knowledge of the criminal justice system, the stereotypes and the values, and challenges of the Inside-Out programme. Student views of the criminal justice system and each other were challenged and changed, often in unexpected ways. The knowledge from this evaluation will contribute to the improvement of Inside-Out processes and outcomes, nationally and internationally.

Established more than 40 years ago, the International Journal of Comparative and Applied Criminal Justice (IJCACJ) has been a leading voice and a source for bringing together research contributions...

ABSTRACTThe purpose of the article is to provide an overview to the trends in crime and crime control in Finland and Sweden during the past 150 years, systematically comparing the two countries. The secondary objective of the study is to introduce a Nordic data collection project aiming to compile coherent comparative criminal justice time series from the early nineteenth century to the present, and to present the first collection of data, the Finnish justice statistics 1842–2015. The study examines the long-term development of homicide, assault, rape, defamation, prison population, and penal severity. Historical statistics provide opportunities to examine the crime trends and the society’s responses to them keeping in mind that the statistics do not necessarily reflect changes in total criminality. As such, the study does not provide conclusive explanations on the development of crime and punishment but rather opens new questions to be answered in future research.

Despite being the final procedural barrier separating life and death in capital cases, executive clemency has traditionally not received the attention it deserves from comparative law and comparative criminal justice scholars, including those writing about Southeast Asia. This article aims to build upon previous empirical scholarship on death penalty clemency in Southeast Asia in two ways: by focusing on the ‘who’ question in clemency awards in the region rather than on ‘how many’ prisoners benefit, and also by updating previous findings in light of any new clemency data available since 2013. After relaying the contemporary and possible future clemency practice of each ‘actively retentionist’ Southeast Asian nation, this article concludes by reflecting on what this regional use of clemency might mean for Vietnam’s future clemency policy in death penalty cases.

In compliance with the tendencies expressed in the most important regional documents and comparative criminal justice systems, in accordance with the 2012 Law on Amendments and Additions to the Criminal Code, the Republic of Serbia rejects the previously accepted approach to the treatment of terrorism as a criminal offense from Chapter XXVIII of the criminal offenses against constitutional order and security of Serbia and transfers it to Chapter XXXIV of the crimes against humanity and international law, leaving at the same time narrow, and in contemporary conditions unacceptable, approach to distinguishing between the criminal offense of terrorism aimed at a national state and international terrorism. The new approach to defining the criminal offenses of terrorism is characterized by three dominant features: the first, which deals with a single criminal justice offense of terrorism, regardless of its orientation against a national state, a foreign state or an international organization, the second, which formally takes away the character of a political criminal offense from the criminal offense of terrorism by changing the chapter in which it is systematized within a special part of the Criminal Code and, the third, which introduces even five new offenses in accordance with the solutions accepted in international documents and comparative law. The paper analyzes new criminal offenses from the subgroup of the criminal offenses of terrorism under Chapter XXXIV of the crimes against humanity and international law, which is the main task of the criminal law science in the field of special part of criminal law, as well as the assessment of the compatibility of the national corpus of criminal justice provisions with the relevant documents accepted at the level of the European Union, with an emphasis on the importance of harmonizing criminal justice solutions related to terrorism for its effective prevention and suppression. However, the focus is on the view that the criminal justice response in this area is justified and necessary, but only as ultimate ratio in the fight against terrorism, as one of the severe forms of crime.

US law is often cast as a notable outlier in two prominent fields of comparative studies. Among comparative constitutional lawyers, the US Supreme Court is famous for its apparent reluctance to embrace the kind of proportionality reasoning seemingly so familiar in Western Europe and in other liberal jurisdictions. And for scholars of comparative criminal justice, the United States stands out, as it has for the past 40 years or so, in terms of the numbers of individuals sent to prison, and in the harshness of the treatment meted out to offenders. Could these two phenomena be connected? By way of an indirect - and incomplete - answer to this question, this paper develops three lines of argument on the punitiveness-proportionality relationship. First, at least some of the factors that help explain cross-country variations in punitiveness, seem relevant also to an understanding of similarities and differences in relation to proportionality reasoning in constitutional jurisprudence. The paper discusses what comparative constitutional lawyers might take from leading work in this area by David Garland, Nicola Lacey, Michael Tonry, James Q. Whitman and others. Second, the comparative punitiveness literature shows how a more substantive understanding of ‘proportionateness’ could be developed, to move beyond the more formal, doctrinal preoccupations of much comparative constitutional law scholarship on proportionality. And third, the paper suggests that penal moderation and proportionality reasoning appear connected in terms of a deeper, underlying sensibility framed here as an ‘intolerance for wrong outcomes’. The paper proposes that future comparative work should aim to engage more directly with this underlying intolerance and its opposites.

This article considers aspects of lay participation in the Irish justice system, focusing on some political dimensions of the trial jury in the nineteenth century. It then identifies some broad themes common to systems of lay participation generally, and particularly nineteenth-century European systems. These include perceptions of legitimacy, State involvement and interference with jury trials, and issues around representativeness. The traditional lack of scholarship in the area of comparative criminal justice history has meant that many of the commonalities between different jury systems have been hitherto unexplored. It is hoped that this paper will contribute to a wider discussion of the various commonalities and differences in the development of lay participation in justice systems.

This article considers aspects of lay participation in the Irish justice system, focusing on some political dimensions of the trial jury in the nineteenth century. It then identifies some broad themes common to systems of lay participation generally, and particularly nineteenth-century European systems. These include perceptions of legitimacy, state involvement and interference with jury trials, and issues around representativeness. The traditional lack of scholarship in the area of comparative criminal justice history has meant that many of the commonalities between different jury systems have been hitherto unexplored. It is hoped that this paper will contribute to a wider discussion of the various commonalities and differences in the development of lay participation in justice systems.