Although intended as a text for undergraduate students, this new work by two faculty members in the department of criminal justice will have appeal for anyone interested in the ways societies have chosen to punish those who step beyond approved boundaries.
The authors have taken their study beyond national boundaries to compare responses to crime and deviance in different regions of the world. From an "eye for an eye" and prison time to economic penalties and an emphasis on rewarding good behavior, the UNLV professors explore the effectiveness, or lack thereof, of different kinds of retribution.
"It has been increasingly clear to us that the study of crime and punishment is often based on the 'here-and-now' practices in the United States," Miethe says of the study. "We wrote this book to more fully explore the similarity and diversity of punishment practices across time and different legal systems. We were also concerned with getting our students to be less ethnocentric about their views about criminal punishments in other cultures."
Their research takes the reader from the U.S. to China to Saudi Arabia. The authors want readers to gain an appreciation for the diversity of methods of punishment and how they are used to improve the quality of life by controlling the actions of nonconformists.
Considerable discussion is given to capital punishment and contrasting American and Western European attitudes with those of Asia and the Middle East.
The book also describes efforts by prevailing political regimes to eliminate threats through death sentences, long-term incarceration, or banishment of groups who threaten to disrupt the status quo. "These goals of criminal punishment are used across different legal traditions such as Islamic law, common law, and civil law, and at different historical periods within a given society," Miethe says.
