Crime and Punishment in Asia

• Author: Narayanan Ganapathy,Lavanya Balachandran
• Published date: 01 August 2016
• Date: 01 August 2016
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/1043986216656672
• Subject Matter: Introduction

Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice

2016, Vol. 32(3) 196 –204

© The Author(s) 2016

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DOI: 10.1177/1043986216656672

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Introduction

Crime and Punishment

in Asia

Narayanan Ganapathy1 and Lavanya Balachandran1

Abstract

The dominance of Western models of crime and criminal justice and the

nascent emergence of “borderless” criminological insights precipitated by forces

of globalization and transnationalization raises serious questions about their

universal applicability to explain crime across time and space. Amidst the dearth of

criminological work on Asia, this introduction to the Special Issue on “Crime and

Punishment in Asia” commits itself to developing and honing the frontiers of an

“Asian criminology” by drawing scholarly attention to the empirical and contextual

specificities of the region. Such an effort is not directed towards demarcating “Asia”

as a socially and culturally distinct geopolitical entity from the “West”. Rather, it is

to critically reflect upon the alleged and actual variances between Asian and Western

societies including the broader differences in social orientation – collectivism vs

individualism and duty-based moral obligations vs rights-based beliefs respectively

as well as documenting the heterogeneity and particularities within Asia. To that

end, crime in South Asian and Southeast Asian contexts and political and economic

changes which have given rise to novel “strains” of crime and newer criminal

opportunities, remain under theorized. Ultimately, the advancement of an Asian

criminological discourse in this special issue is not to merely acknowledge scholarly

attempts that transpose current Anglo-Saxon models onto Asian empirical contexts

or reject them, but transform existing theories and develop regional alternatives

that are validated by and arise from particular empirical investigations into crime and

criminal justice across Asia.

Keywords

crime, process, punishment, criminological theories, Asia

1National University of Singapore, Singapore

Corresponding Author:

Narayanan Ganapathy, Department of Sociology, National University of Singapore, AS1 11 Arts Link,

04-22, 117570, Singapore.

Email: socng@nus.edu.sg

656672CCJXXX10.1177/1043986216656672Journal of Contemporary Criminal JusticeGanapathy and Balachandran

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