Culture and Criminal Justice: A Theory of Relational Justice

Abstract

A central scholarly aim has been to achieve a universal understanding of criminal justice systems, its nature, its objectives, its various properties, and patterns of criminal justice systems‘behavior, and why they form and behaves in its particular ways. Universality is by nature is an aim of scientific understanding in any field of science, including criminology and criminal justice. Throughout the history of studies on criminal justice, since the times of classical scholars such as Cesare Beccaria (1738-1794). Beccaria’s vision is that criminal justice systems should be based on rationality, humanity, efficiency and reason. These features of criminal justice systems were considered universally important for all mankind. Many theories have been developed in criminology, but only very few contemporary theories have been proposed about criminal justice systems. The existing few theories tends to be simple classifications, not well developed to perform the substantive functionals theories. There is a large gap in criminal justice theory development. Criminal justice institutions are built in specific settings of various cultural and social contexts, thus the particularly prominent challenge for developing a universalistic theory of criminal justice is cultural variations. There are 195 countries and vast many different cultures around the world across time and space. Each criminal justice system is built in a specific cultural, political, economic and social setting. Cultural influence is central in criminal justice systems and their behaviors. Important contemporary social theories and much empirical evidence have well informed the vast variations in cultures and social systems, which have important impacts on the forms and behavior of criminal justice systems.