Comparative criminal justice is a subfield of the study of Criminal Justice

Criminal justice

Criminal Justice is the system of practices and institutions of governments directed at upholding social control, deterring and mitigating crime, or sanctioning those who violate laws with criminal penalties and rehabilitation efforts...

 that compares justice

Justice

Justice is a concept of moral rightness based on ethics, rationality, law, natural law, religion, or equity, along with the punishment of the breach of said ethics; justice is the act of being just and/or fair.-Concept of justice:...

 systems worldwide. Such study can take a descriptive, historical, or political approach. It studies the similarities and differences in structure, goals, punishment

Punishment

Punishment is the authoritative imposition of something negative or unpleasant on a person or animal in response to behavior deemed wrong by an individual or group....

 and emphasis on rights as well as the history and political stature of different systems.It is common to broadly categorize the functions of a criminal justice system into policing, adjudication (i.e.: courts), and corrections, although other categorization schemes exist. Comparativists study the four different types of societies, their methods of enforcement and their different types of punishment such as capital punishment, and imprisonment. Within these societies they study different types of legal tradition and analyze the issues they solve and create. They use their information in order to learn effective ways of enforcing laws, and to identify and solve problems that may arise within a system due to its methods.

Societies

Comparativists in criminal justice study four different kinds of societies: Folk-communal, Urban-commercial, Urban-industrial, and bureaucratic. Folk-communal societies are often seen as primitive and barbaric, they have little specialization among law

Law

Law is a system of rules and guidelines which are enforced through social institutions to govern behavior, wherever possible. It shapes politics, economics and society in numerous ways and serves as a social mediator of relations between people. Contract law regulates everything from buying a bus...

 enforcers, and let many problems go unpunished to avoid over-criminalization however, once tempers “boil over” and the situation becomes a larger issue, harsh and unusual punishment may be administered. Examples are African or Middle Eastern Tribes, or early puritan

Puritan

The Puritans were a significant grouping of English Protestants in the 16th and 17th centuries. Puritanism in this sense was founded by some Marian exiles from the clergy shortly after the accession of Elizabeth I of England in 1558, as an activist movement within the Church of England...

 settlements of America. Urban-commercial societies have few written laws and some specialized enforcement for religious or king’s law enforcement. Punishments are inconsistent and usually harsh. Urban-industrial societies enforce laws that prescribe good behavior and give incentives and disincentives for behavior and police are specialized in property crimes such as theft. Finally, bureaucratic societies are today’s modern society. They feature fully developed laws, lawyers, and police forces trained for multiple types of crime. Different “side effects” of these societies include over-criminalization, overcrowding, and even juvenile delinquency due to the extended age of adolescence these societies bring on.

Legal Traditions

Legal traditions play an important role in the development of international law

International law

Public international law concerns the structure and conduct of sovereign states; analogous entities, such as the Holy See; and intergovernmental organizations. To a lesser degree, international law also may affect multinational corporations and individuals, an impact increasingly evolving beyond...

 and justice. Comparativists for criminal justice study these traditions with the intent of finding a way to combine the views of different traditions towards a single view that allows for the successful development of international law. Many comparativists believe that the more states with similar legal views the more likely it is to be able to create international laws that please all.
Reichel (2005) identifies four major legal traditions that each have their own respective body of laws:

• Common law
  Common law
  Common law is law developed by judges through decisions of courts and similar tribunals rather than through legislative statutes or executive branch action...
  
   is found particularly in countries that are current or former members of the British Empire
  British Empire
  The British Empire comprised the dominions, colonies, protectorates, mandates and other territories ruled or administered by the United Kingdom. It originated with the overseas colonies and trading posts established by England in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. At its height, it was the...
  
  .
• Civil law
  Civil law (legal system)
  Civil law is a legal system inspired by Roman law and whose primary feature is that laws are codified into collections, as compared to common law systems that gives great precedential weight to common law on the principle that it is unfair to treat similar facts differently on different...
  
   countries include most of continental Europe and various states in South America and Africa.
• Socialist law
  Socialist law
  Socialist law denotes a general type of legal system which has been used in communist and formerly communist states. It is based on the civil law system, with major modifications and additions from Marxist-Leninist ideology. There is controversy as to whether socialist law ever constituted a...
  
   is essentially civil law with major modifications from Marxist-Leninist
  Marxism-Leninism
  Marxism–Leninism is a communist ideology, officially based upon the theories of Marxism and Vladimir Lenin, that promotes the development and creation of a international communist society through the leadership of a vanguard party over a revolutionary socialist state that represents a dictatorship...
  
   ideology. It is currently only used in China and a few other contemporary Communist
  Communism
  Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...
  
   states, but has had enormous influence on Russia
  Russia
  Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
  
   and the former USSR.
• Islamic law
  Sharia
  Sharia law, is the moral code and religious law of Islam. Sharia is derived from two primary sources of Islamic law: the precepts set forth in the Quran, and the example set by the Islamic prophet Muhammad in the Sunnah. Fiqh jurisprudence interprets and extends the application of sharia to...
  
   is religiously-inspired law used in Muslim
  Islam
  Islam . The most common are and .   : Arabic pronunciation varies regionally. The first vowel ranges from ~~. The second vowel ranges from ~~~...
  
   countries.

Punishment

People who study comparative criminal justice study different forms and use of punishment across societies, including capital punishment

Capital punishment

Capital punishment, the death penalty, or execution is the sentence of death upon a person by the state as a punishment for an offence. Crimes that can result in a death penalty are known as capital crimes or capital offences. The term capital originates from the Latin capitalis, literally...

. Fifty-nine countries retain the death penalty as reported in 2007. Comparativists study the different ways in which execution is carried out across the world including hanging, shooting, beheading, injection, electrocution, and even stoning. Comparativists find that in many developing countries such as Iran, Indonesia, Belarus, and many others, that violent methods of execution such as hanging beheading, shooting, and stoning are much more common ways of carrying out the death penalty, and in many cases the only ways. However in western culture as well as developed countries such as the United States less brutal execution such as lethal injection is utilized. Even prison sentences can come harshly. In many countries such as Burma a person can be sentenced to prison for merely disagreeing with the government. Presumably ridiculous sentences such as multiple life sentences or sentences of hundreds, even thousands of years are meant to prohibit the chance of parole in the future. Although it may seem preposterous, western cultures carry out the same type of sentencing.
Even though similar sentences are used across the globe leniency is varied widely between societies. Many governments such as the one metioned above in Burma provide swift and heavy punishment to assert their roles of power.