This comprehensive, detailed account explores crime and punishment throughout the world through the eyes of leading experts, local authors and scholars, and government officials.

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.









Four volumes covering Africa, the Americas, Asia/Pacific, and Europe



More than 200 essays written by academics, government officials, and independent experts



Four world maps and sixteen regional maps depicting distribution of murder rates, prison, corporal punishment, and death penalty rates



A "Learn More" section in each chapter that lists 4–6 recommended readings



Quick reference information at the start of each entry providing at a glance a country's type of legal system, use or prohibition of capital and corporal punishment, and levels of serious crimes such as murder and human trafficking