Fewer than 20 percent of countries have prohibited corporal punishment, while 35 percent retain the death penalty. Prison is still a universal punishment, regardless of culture or legal system. But what are the best ways to deter crime, while still recognizing civil rights? What lessons are there in the ways in which justice is administered—or abused—around the world?
It is a subject as old as civil society, yet one that still fuels debate. Now the many and varied aspects of that subject are brought together in the four-volume Crime and Punishment around the World. This unprecedented work provides descriptions of crimes—and the justice systems that define and punish them—in more than 200 nations, principalities, and dependencies.
Each chapter examines the historical, political, and cultural background, as well as the basic organization of the subject state’s legal and criminal justice system. It also reports on the types and levels of crime, the processes leading to the finding of guilt, the rights of the accused, alternatives to going to trial, how suspects are prosecuted for their crimes, and the techniques and conditions of typical punishments employed. Comprising a study that is at once extraordinarily comprehensive and minutely detailed, the essays collected here showcase the variety and the universality of crime and punishment the world over.
