Source: umagazine

Mankind has been struggling to find social order and justice since the earliest times. Throughout human history, philosophers have contemplated the best ways to build safe and just social and political systems. However, the study of crime and justice did not become an independent academic discipline until the middle of the last century. In the last three to four decades, criminology and criminal justice has been one of the most rapidly developing academic disciplines in social sciences around the world. Today, these programmes are offered at many leading universities, including the University of Cambridge, the University of Oxford, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Toronto. The rapid growth of criminology and criminal justice is driven by students’ strong interest in issues of crime, justice, law, public safety, and forensic science. It also reflects growing employment opportunities in law enforcement, corrections, courts, and security industries.

It was against this backdrop that the University of Macau (UM) established a postgraduate programme in criminology in 2009. In less than five years, the programme has become one of the best and largest in Asia. It now has more than 40 master’s students and 12 PhD students. The programme has assembled a distinctive group of faculty members with strong publication records in leading academic journals in criminology and criminal justice. The faculty has assumed leadership roles in several key areas in Asia. For example, the headquarters of the Asian Criminological Society and the Asian Association for Substance Abuse Research are both located in the programme. The editorial office of the top journal of criminology in Asia, Asian Journal of Criminology, is also located here.

Research is an area of strength of the criminology programme at UM. The staff and students in the programme focus on two types of research. One is scientific research designed to advance knowledge and understanding of the distribution and causes of crime and deviant behaviour. The other is policy-related research aimed at promoting social order and justice in Macao, mainland China, and the rest of the world. Being an interdisciplinary field of study, criminology draws theories and methods from many different academic disciplines, including sociology, psychology, law, economics, education, public health, public administration, and neurology. Criminological research at UM, be it academic or applied, reflects these diverse perspectives. The following are some of the research projects conducted by the academic staff in the criminology programme at UM that exemplify this multidisciplinary approach.

Two of the criminological issues studied currently by Prof. Spencer Li De are related to sociology, psychology, law, and education. The first one is the influence of parenting styles on child development outcomes including juvenile delinquency. Through in-depth interviews with 30 middle school students, their parents, and head teachers in a major city in China, Prof. Li found that the Western typology of parenting styles that classifies parenting practices into four distinctive categories, including authoritarian, authoritative, permissive, and neglectful styles of parenting, does not fit neatly with how Chinese parents raise their children. Nevertheless, he found that permissive and neglectful styles of parenting significantly increase negative child developmental outcomes, including antisocial attitudes, delinquency, and poor school performance. While authoritative parenting reduces behavioural problems among Chinese youth, its influence tends to be modified by other family dynamics, especially parent-child relationship. To further examine these issues, Prof. Li has collected survey data from a representative sample of more than 3,100 middle and high school students living in the same city. He is analysing the data to determine if the survey data corroborate the findings generated from the personal interviews.

Another project that Prof. Li currently conducts is mass murder in China. Using the popular software NVivo, Prof. Li analysed case reports of nearly 600 homicides involving two or more deaths that occurred in China from 2000 to 2011. His research refutes the conventional wisdom that mass murderers are all crazy lunatics. Despite a high prevalence of antisocial personality among the perpetrators, mass murder is typically non-random and actually makes strong “sense” to the murderers. Prof. Li found two social factors contributing significantly to mass murder in China. One is the culture of honour and revenge. The notion of “an eye for an eye” is deeply rooted in the Chinese principles of justice and retribution. People tend to believe that if someone wronged them, they have the right to retaliate. Actually, not doing so would be seen as a sign of cowardice and dishonour. In the family context, failure to defend family honour through revenge is seen as betrayal. For many of these people, the ultimate form of revenge is not only to kill the person who caused the wrong but also his or her entire family, including all of the women and children, so that no one in that family will be left to retaliate at some future time. The other social factor contributing to mass murder in China, according to Prof. Li, is the failure of political and justice systems to protect the basic rights of the marginalised groups in the population. Nowadays, many citizens of China strongly believe that their rights are violated. Yet, they do not have a fair chance to receive justice through legal proceedings or administrative processes. The anger that built up inside over time may eventually erupt into extreme violence, such as mass killings of a large number of strangers. Prof. Li predicts that mass murder will occur more frequently in China if the society does not address the root causes of the violent behaviour.

Prof. Liu Jianhong has been working on several projects in the last two years with a unified objective to build an “Asian Paradigm Theory.” His work in this area compares the Western criminal justice system with Asian systems to focus on variations at the conceptual level and argues that these conceptual differences still deeply influence the operations of the criminal justice system. He contends that Asian wisdom can contribute to positive directions of criminal justice reforms. The Asian paradigm theory points out that the Western concept of crime and justice is an “individualistic concept”—individuals are the unit of the examination. However, Asian concepts implicitly or explicitly reflect a collective orientation: they are “relational concepts”. The target of Western criminal justice and crime control is the crime, while the target of Asian crime control concerns human relations. In the Western paradigm, crime is defined as an act of individuals in violation of state criminal laws. The concept of crime is “state centred”. This concept of crime views crime as a conflict between the state and the offender. Therefore, the issue is that the state must identify and punish the offender. In contrast with the conflict approach adopted in the Western criminal procedure, the Asian paradigm desires a non-conflict approach. It stresses working out a solution. The offenders in the processes are encouraged to confess the truth, express remorse and receive forgiveness. The solution is backed up by formal and informal punishment. An integrated system is suggested to draw wisdom from both West and East to inform future criminal justice reforms.

The research project that Dr. Zhao Ruohui is currently working on aims to explore juvenile delinquency and juvenile attitude toward the police in a less-developed western city of China. The survey she administered to a random sample of more than 2,000 students in 22 high schools in China collected information on important research questions that have been studied in many Western societies. The objective of the survey was to find out the differences and similarities in juvenile delinquency and victimisation between China and its Western counterparts. In addition to assessing juvenile delinquency, the study explored the youth-police relationship in China. Dr. Zhao is analysing the survey data and evidence supports the following hypotheses: first, police officers tend to pay close attention to youths who seem unsupervised or “disoriented” in street corners or some known crime hotspots since their presence tends to elevate the levels of fear among local residents; second, adolescents’ perceptions of the police are likely to become fixed, producing an enduring effect carrying over well into adulthood.

One of the issues studied by Dr. Kuo Shih-Ya in her current research is domestic violence, a serious epidemic among college students in the United States. To understand what factors contribute to such a phenomenon, Dr. Kuo conducted an empirical study to identify risk factors for domestic violence victimisation and perpetration among American college students; that is, why some students were more likely to experience victimisation of domestic violence or abuse their partners than other students. The data was collected at a mid-size university in the United States between 2011 and 2012. The results revealed that abusers’ habitual substance use was an important risk factor related to students’ victimisation of domestic violence. Childhood victimisation was a strong predictor to future violence on intimate partners; those who experienced abuse in childhood tended to abuse their intimate partners compared to those who did not have such childhood victimisation experience. The results indicated that effective substance treatment and the prevention of child abuse in early childhood programmes should be available to those who are in need.

The research interests of Dr. Cai Tianji centres on two areas: social mechanism of how biological and social factors influence behaviours, and developing quantitative research methods. Specifically, he is interested in the integration of sociology with biological factors in the studies of sociological issues such as social and health behaviour, stratification, and social network. For example, he has found that the effect of certain genotypes (DAT1, DRD2 and MAOA) on adolescent delinquent behaviour depend on social processes, such as family dynamics, peer relations, and school-experiences. Positive social influences tend to reduce the delinquency-increasing effect of a genetic variant, whereas the absence of social controls may amplify the effect of these genetic variants. He also found that friend behaviour might be a particularly important environmental moderator of the expression of genetic disposition (DAT1) for adolescent drug use, smoking, dietary habits, and risky sexual behaviour.

Dr. Liu Haiyan conducted a comparative study of the criminal enforcement of intellectual property rights (IPR) in the United States and China, focusing on the targets, roles, consequences, and influence factors of criminal enforcement of IPR. Analysis reveals the unique justifications, roles, and unexpected consequences of the protection of IPR transplanted to China at the criminal enforcement stage. Above all, macro-level cultural, economic, political, and legal factors result in a general lack of IPR consciousness as natural and inalienable private property rights among Chinese. Specifics of criminal enforcement in the United States and China have been influenced by several mid-level and situational factors. In particular, substantial similarities across the foci of criminal enforcement in the two countries indicate that economic conditions are determinant forces in criminal enforcement. Political factors also influence the targets of criminal enforcement of IPR in China. These factors include state interference to protect tax interests in tobacco and alcohol industries; public policies to fight against counterfeits that pose health and safety threats; and other political goals, such as control of the media and importation restrictions on publications. After considering various public policy, social justice, and current development points, Dr. Liu concludes that the root solutions for China are to develop IP-related industries, cultivate the IPR consciousness of citizens and companies, to establish respect for rights and rules in general, to encourage the claiming and mobilisation of private rights by private entities, to allow citizen supervision of governmental activities, and to move from proactive administrative and criminal enforcement to more reactive civil enforcement.

The recent research of Dr. Xu Jianhua focuses on the modern version of Rickshaw Boys (luotuo xiangzi) in China, known as “dakezai” , who drive motorcycles, bicycles, tricycles or electric bicycles as taxis in modern-day Guangzhou. Through extensive interviews with the police, rickshaw drivers as well as participant observation about police work and rickshaw drivers’ daily work over the past several years, Dr. Xu finds that rickshaw driving, as a moral economy, has particular meaning for migrant workers to make a living when they suffer from multidimensional social exclusion in urban China. Every year, Guangzhou police will confiscate over 250,000 rickshaws, which means around 250- 500 million yuan economic loss for poor migrant workers. Undoubtedly, the confiscation creates a huge tension between migrant workers and the police. Although most of the time rickshaw drivers have to passively accept their fates as their tools for making a living are confiscated, some desperate drivers resort to various forms of violence, including self-immolation, suicide, attacks on police or innocent bystanders and even rioting, to protest and express their frustration and desperation. Dr. Xu argues that multidimensional social exclusion is the macro-structural reason behind migrant violence towards the police. This research provides much insight into how violence is socially produced in China’s rapid process of urbanisation as well as how social exclusion can lead to the risk of a violent society in a broad context.

In sum, these examples illustrate that it is difficult to categorise criminological research using traditional typologies. Frequently, the issue under study is related to more than one disciplinary concern. It could be a legal issue, a sociological conundrum, a psychological riddle, or an administrative dilemma, but more often than not it is some combination of two or more of these elements. To understand criminological problems thoroughly and to find solutions to the problems, we often need to study them with an integrative approach that incorporates several perspectives. Criminology is truly a science that transcends traditional academic boundaries. Further, criminology is not just about scientific research. It is also about policies and practices-, the collective endeavours to build an orderly and just society. Academic research provides scientific discoveries. It then takes the policy analysis in criminology to translate the discoveries into evidence-based social policies and practices to improve individual rights and wellbeing as well as social order. These are what make criminology both an academic and applied field of interdisciplinary study.

 

About Author

Prof. Spencer Li De is the head of the Department of Sociology at the University of Macau. He also serves as the president of the Asian Association for Substance Abuse Research. Previously, he held assistant professor positions in criminology and criminal justice at the University of Maryland and Florida State University. Before joining UM, he worked as a statistician and project director at the US Department of Justice.