8 - Crime and Justice

Summary

The criminal justice system is a major component of the legal system in every country. Unlike criminology, law and society research does not seek to calculate crime rates or identify causes of crime but instead focuses on how criminal justice interacts with other elements of law and society, such as lawmaking, human rights, violence, and rule of law. Furthermore, law and society scholars consider justice a culturally sensitive concept, something socially constructed and politically embedded. As lawyers have been discussed in detail in earlier chapters, this chapter highlights the role of the police, prosecutors, and judges in the criminal process and examines the domestic and transnational forces that shape criminal justice reforms across Asia. The chapter also emphasizes the administration of criminal justice in everyday policing, including violence, torture, and other forms of power abuse affecting marginalized groups such as women, the poor, indigenous peoples, and ethnic and religious minorities. It further interrogates the cultural meanings and everyday manifestations of justice in criminal trials and other coercive systems of social control in different Asian countries.