“Considering the fact that the majority of previous studies in criminology and criminal justice were based on Western or American samples, it is not certain if the empirical findings from Western societies can be directly applied to non-Western Asian countries, which have different values, cultures, and social structures” (Joo, 2015:1).

Introduction

We are in an exciting time in criminology, as the scholarship is becoming more global, collaborative, and interdisciplinary, and the methods are becoming more intersectional and comprehensive. There is a growing recognition of the contributions of mixed methods within criminology study designs, such as incorporating both qualitative and quantitative data in the same study, and, similarly, jointly including individual- and aggregate-level data in research projects. Although less recognized, practitioner-researcher collaborative scholarship is also a powerful research design that can lead to findings that are more relevant and relatable to the criminal legal system practitioners who implement them. The phenomenal advances in communication technology that have allowed the globe to shrink, have resulted in the unprecedented sharing of publications and ideas, and international and comparative criminology scholarship, thereby linking criminologists and their work across the world, and far improved information-sharing between criminologists and practitioners

In his inspirational 2009 article in the Asian Journal of Criminology, “Asian Criminology—Challenges, Opportunities, and Directions,” Professor Jianhong Liu traced the development of criminology in Asia, identified the challenges for the continued development of criminology in Asia, and provided strategies and directions for advancing Asian criminology. Therein, Professor Liu identified North America and Europe as the locations of developing criminology “as a modern social science” and stressed the subsequent rapid growth of criminology in these geographic locations (2009:2). Asian criminology, he stated, was influenced by both a combination of Western criminology and by Asian scholars and policy makers facing rising crime rates in Asian countries (see also, Drissel 2006). Professor Liu lamented the lack of an “Asia-wide criminology organization,” and the challenges of studying crime and crime control practices among diverse Asian cultures and societies “with different languages, different legal systems, and diversity in crime and crime control systems and practices” (2009:4). Even among Asian countries, he conveyed that cross-national criminological research is plagued by “diverse definitions of crimes and laws and on diverse interpretations of meaning by different cultures” (2009:6).

I was invited to give a keynote address at the 7th annual conference of the Asian Society of Criminology in Hong Kong in June 2016, and this article is the research I conducted for my presentation. Simply reading the program for the 2016 conference, but also attending it, it was evident to see Professor Liu’s achievement of the Asia-wide criminology organization has been more than satisfied, and that it is growing. For the remainder of this article, I will attempt to document some of the significant contributions of Asian criminology, how it has grown between Professor Liu’s 2009 speech and June 2015, and some of the specific contributions of Asian criminology in the Asian Journal of Criminology. I hope to adequately reflect at least a portion of the potent contributions of Asian criminology and celebrate the profound success of the Asian Criminological Society.

Methods

In his powerful 2009 article on the future of Asian criminology, Liu promotes a paradigm that advances both basic and applied criminological research; and encourages extensive and appropriate methods dependent on the diverse contexts and situations studied, “including quantitative and qualitative, historical, comparative, cross-national, and case study methods” (p. 8). After reading the existing original articles in the Asian Journal of Criminology through June 2015, the contributions of Asian criminology scholarship and innovative crime control practices to the extant so-called “Western criminology” or “Criminology from the Global North,” is humbling. I would be naïve to propose that the research for my keynote address and this subsequent article on the abundant and highly diversified contributions of Asian criminology is in any form comprehensive, but I hope to encourage criminologists globally to pay attention to Asian criminology, and to push for inclusion of the Asian Journal of Criminology in the ISI web of Science.

My method for the speech and this article was twofold. First, I attempted to document the growth in Asian criminology after 2009 (2010 and later), which is the date of the publication in which Professor Liu called for more Asian criminology research. To do this, I conducted an ISI Web of Science search on Asian criminology articles published since 1900, further breaking this down to identify the Asian criminology articles published in or since 2010. Second, I carefully read all of the “original articles” to date in the Asian Journal of Criminology (2006 to Issue 2 [of 4] for 2015).

Method 1: Search of ISI Web of Science

In my efforts to document whether and how much Asian criminology has grown over time, and particularly after Professor Liu’s 2009 call for expansion in Asian criminology, I used the ISI Web of Science to search for articles published since 1900, with the string of topics: “crimes OR criminology OR ‘criminal justice’ OR ‘crime control’,” while sequentially controlling for various Asian countries. I refer to this search in Table 1 as “traditional criminology and crime control” or, more simply, TCCC, publications. As I was conducting these publication searches, I realized that many of the articles I have cited in my work on violence against women and girls, child abuse, and human- and sex-trafficking, were not being identified. Given that research in Asian countries has been such a significant part of this scholarship, I conducted a second search for the same years controlling sequentially for the same countries, with this string of topics: “‘violence against women’ OR ‘domestic violence’ OR ‘sexual assault’ OR ‘child abuse’ OR ‘sex trafficking’ OR ‘human trafficking’.” In Table 1, I refer to this second ISI Web of Science search as “violence against women and children and trafficking,” or more simply, VAWCT, publicationsFootnote 1. Certainly, the VAWCT scholarship should fall under the umbrella of criminology. There are likely other areas, as well, but this is the scope of the method for this current articleFootnote 2.

Table 1 Asian criminology articles published in the ISI Web of Science by country
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For both the TCCC and the VAWCT publication searches on the ISI Web of Science site, in addition to starting with the year 1900, under “research domains,” I selected “social science” and “science technology” and left “arts humanities” unchecked. Under “document types” I selected “article,” and left the remaining options unchecked (e.g., abstract, review, book, data set, meeting, reference material, and editorial). Clearly, an article could appear more than once in Table 1. For example, some of the same articles were included in both of the two search areas (TCCC and VAWCT). Also, some studies compared a number of Asian countries so that article would “count” for every country the article addressed in the author’s (or authors’) empirical or legal research. (For example, one TCCC study including Taiwan and China would be listed under both countries.). I did not include all Asian countries in the ISI Web of Science Search as can be seen in Table 1. More specifically, I typically omitted some of the countries with smaller populations and very limited criminology scholarship (e.g., Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Syria, and Yemen). Furthermore, although I started by including Afghanistan, Iraq, and Vietnam in the ISI Web of Science searches, I ultimately excluded these from Table 1 because so many of the studies were not actual Asian criminology, but rather studies of US military members/veterans who had fought in these countries, and the studies were addressing US military members’ drug use, violence, and so on. (This phenomenon was quite ironic and startling, given that the crimes addressed involved US soldiers who were sent to Asian countries for war/to attack, but it was their offending upon returning to the USA, believed to be due to their veteran status, that became the research focus.)

Although this method is not “perfect,” I believe it is a reasonable way of representing Asian criminology and examining how it has expanded over time. Furthermore, it is essential to note that of the thousands of articles listed in Table 1, none were published in the Asian Journal of Criminology. This is because, very unfortunately, this journal is not included in the ISI Web of Science.

Method 2: Review of Articles in the Asian Journal of Criminology

When I realized that the Asian Journal of Criminology scholarship was not included in the ISI Web of Science, I developed the second “method” which was to download all of the “original articles” (i.e., no book reviews, reports, and so on) in the Asian Journal of Criminology and read through them in an attempt to report some of these significant contributions of Asian criminology to the extant criminology scholarship. As I read each of these articles published in the Asian Journal of Criminology, I searched for theoretical contributions, particularly those that suggested Western-based criminology theories may not be as empirically meaningful, in whole or in part, in Asian criminology. I also attempted to identify some of the significant intersectional Asian criminology studies that focused on gender, class, race, and so on. In addition to these theoretical and intersectional contributions, I attempted to highlight some of the advancements provided by Asian criminology regarding both innovative methods and responses to crime. In terms of responses to crime, I focused on restorative justice and policing, but included some of the other criminal legal system response research. Clearly, this second “method” is not truly systematic, and perhaps another criminology scholar would identify contributions differently. I viewed this through the lens of my own research, not just the research I conducted, but far more in terms of the vast amount of criminology research I have read. It is impossible in this article to capture all of the contributions to Asian criminology that exist in the Asian Journal of Criminology, and even more difficult in all of the journals included in the ISI Web of Science. I apologize in advance for these limitations. Still, I hope readers will find the contributions I have found important and that most will agree with the conclusions I draw.

Findings

This section will report first on my findings by using the ISI Web of Science to document the levels of expansion in Asian criminology articles, and second on my determinations of some of the unique and significant contributions to criminology as a discipline, from research published in the Asian Journal of Criminology. This second “method” seemed particularly important given that the ISI Web of Science does not include the Asian Journal of Criminology.

Findings from Searching the ISI Web of Science

Table 1 includes the number of articles published since 1900 for each of the two main areas which I will refer to as “TCCC” (for “traditional criminology and crime control”) and “VAWCT” (for violence against women and children and human and sex trafficking), as noted in the methods portion of this article. For each of these two main areas, the next column is the number of articles published since 2010, and this is followed by the date of the first article published in that area about that country. The final column is the ratio of the number of VAWCT publications for each TCCC publication.

Dates of Asian Criminology Publications in the ISI Web of Science

For the TCCC articles, the average year of the earliest publication across the Asian countries, was 1970 and the earliest publication was in 1913 and on India (see Table 1). Now turning to the VAWCT articles, the average date of the earliest publication across the Asian countries was almost six decades later, 1986, and again, India was the first VAWCT article was on India, published in 1972. The country most frequently represented in TCCC Asian criminology publications was Japan, flowed closely by China, and then more distantly by India, Russia, Israel, South Korea, Hong Kong, and Turkey, respectively. The countries with the fewest Asian criminology TCCC publications were Saudi Arabia, Laos, Myanmar (Burma), Jordan, Nepal and Indonesia, respectively. The country most prevalent in Asian criminology VAWCT publications was India, with over 600 publications, and India was followed by China, Israel, Japan, Bangladesh, and Turkey, respectively, who all published between 200 and 252 articles in the time frame for the current study. The fewest VAWCT Asian criminology articles were published about Myanmar (Burma), Laos, and North Korea, respectively (see Table 1). The countries most represented in Asian Criminology TCCC articles published in 2010 and since were, in order, China, Japan, South Korea, India, and Russia. The countries most represented in Asian criminology VAWCT articles published 2010 and later were India, China, Bangladesh, Turkey, and Israel, respectively.

Now turning to the percent of articles published after 2009 (2010 and later), for the TCCC articles, the two countries with the highest percent (most represented in Asian criminology) were South Korea (70.7 %) and North Korea (67.4 %), followed by Malaysia, Iran, Cambodia, Indonesia, Turkey, China, Bangladesh, and Thailand, respectively, all of which had a 50 % or more of the criminology articles about their countries published in 2010 or later (see Table 1). Even among the countries least represented in post-2010 growth in Asian criminology TCCC research, all reported over 25 % of these publications occurred after 2009, with Israel at the lowest (28.8 %), followed by Singapore, Philippines, Nepal, and Russia, respectively, who all had about a third of their Asian criminology TCCC articles published after 2009. Thus, it is not surprising that for all of the countries included in Table 1, on average, 46.3 % of the TCCC articles were published in 2010 or later. Notably, this portion is only very slightly higher for the VAWCT articles, when averaged across all of the included countries, 48.1 % of these Asian criminology VAWCT articles were published after 2009. Among the VAWCT articles, North Korea (72.7 %) represented the most growth in articles published in 2010 or later, followed by Indonesia, Iran, Nepal, and South Korea, respectively. The lowest portion of VAWCT articles published after 2009 was Singapore (22.2 %), with the Philippines, Japan, Israel, Russia, and Hong Kong the next lowest, respectively (see Table 1). Still, these data indicate significant growth in all of the included countries in representation in Asian criminology for VAWCT and TCCC scholarship after 2010.

The final column in Table 1 is the ratio of VAWCT articles to TCCC articles (for a visual of this see Fig. 1). There were about four times as many VAWCT as TCCC articles published on both Bangladesh and Saudi Arabia, and about twice as many VAWCT than TCCC articles published on Jordan, Nepal, and Sri Lanka. There were about half again as many VAWCT than TCCC articles published on Pakistan and India, and about a third again as many VAWCT (relative to TCCC) articles published on the Philippines, and over a quarter again as many VAWCT than TCCC published on Turkey, and over a third as many published on the Philippines. The ratio of VAWCT to TCCC articles published was close to 1.00:1.00 for Iran, Thailand, Laos, Hong Kong, Lebanon, and Malaysia studies. TCCC scholarship was most dominant compared to VAWCT articles in North Korea, followed by Russia, South Korea, Japan, China, and Myanmar, Singapore, Taiwan, Indonesia, Cambodia, and Israel.

Fig. 1
figure 1

The ratio of TCCC:VAWCT publications by country 1.00:X.XX*

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A Summary of Some of the Advancements in Criminology Published in the Asian Journal of Criminology

“Approaches to understanding crime in different milieus tend to merely employ what is established in Western contexts to a non-Western one without initial understanding of how established criminological knowledge is framed within that particular non-Western context. Though this approach of applicability is important in understanding crime in different cultural contexts, it produces ad-hoc explanations for perceived differences and similarities, and does little to merge both the context and established criminological literature together” (Bui, 2014:171).

Although I cannot begin to capture the enormous contributions of original articles on Asian criminology in the Asian Journal of Criminology (AJC), I attempt to highlight contributions in some areas which I have categorized into three sections: (1) theoretical, (2) methodological and framing, and (3) innovative responses to crime. The last area, innovative responses to crime, is further subdivided into “restorative justice” and “policing.” Certainly, I cannot include all of the AJC original articles in this article, and some of the articles I include in this section, could also be included in another section (e.g., methodological and theoretical, methodological and diverse lenses, etc.), but this article is an attempt to provide what I found the most profound advancements to criminology, specifically using Asian criminology (I did not include any articles that did not include research of an Asian country) in the Asian Journal of Criminology.

Advancements to Criminology Theory

Appropriately, Jiang and Lambert (2012:102) ask “can criminological theories that were formulated in the West be applied to Asian societies?” Although some Asian criminology supports the application of Western-based theories in Asia (e.g., Hwang and Akers 2006), others highlight the caution necessary in simply transplanting such theories to Asian countries, and to recognize nuances and more obvious problems in simply transferring these theoretical applications. Jo and Zhang’s (2012) test of Gottfredson and Hirschi’s general theory of crime in South Korean found, consistent with US-based studies, relative stability in self-control trajectories for attitudinal measures among youth. “On the other hand, the existence of ‘high-decrease’ and ‘low-increase’ groups, especially using behavioral measures, rejects both the absolute and relative stability assertion in the social context of South Korea” (Jo and Zhang 2012:188). Joo and Jo’s (2015) impressive study used event history analysis on a sample of almost 10,000 South Korean youthful offenders to study how family, school, delinquent peers, demographic, and criminal behavior characteristics influenced the timing of recidivism. Similar to Western studies, educational variables (e.g., GPA, school absences) were related to recidivism in the expected direction. “Unlike the previous findings in Western society, however, family and peer-related variables were not found significant” in this South Korean sample (Joo and Jo, 2015:99). Jiang et al.’s (2013:220) study of social control theory in China found that consistent with Western studies, collective efficacy “was related to perceived neighborhood property crime.” However, semi-formal controls were inversely related to property crimes indicating that “social organization theory needs to be modified when it is applied to China” (2013:220). Takagi and Kawachi’s (2014) study of social disorganization/social capital in Japan was consistent with Western studies regarding the influence of strong friendship social ties on crime control, but inconsistent with Western studies, they did not find that neighborhood-level social ties impacted crime or the fear of it. Indeed, Jiang and colleagues (2013) warn that borrowing theories from the USA should be done with caution. “Before adopting them, China needs to consider its cultural and other characteristics and conduct its own empirical research” (2013:220).

Similarly, Lin’s (2012:50) application of general strain theory (GST) to Taiwanese youth using a longitudinal, panel design, suggested that “whereas depression may play a central role in the GST in the East, anger may be the focal emotion in the West.” Similar to other Asian criminologists, Lin stresses that countries in the East that are considered “developed” (such as Taiwan), “still conserves some deep-rooted cultural heritages, such as the Confucian ethos and a collectivist view of the world (2012:49–50), and this is important when applying Western criminology theories and empirical work to Asian countries.

(Some of the) Methodological and Framing Expansion

Hillary Potter (2013, 2015) is at the forefront of intersectional criminology, particularly with her recently published book Intersectionality and Criminology: Disrupting and Revolutionizing Studies of Crime. Potter has cogently established the necessity of a broad range of scholars (lenses) to study crime and responses to victimization and offending, as well the need for examining a multitude of oppressions including racism, sexism, classism, nationalism, and homophobia. Many articles in the Asian Journal of Criminology showcase intersectional criminology. Most often, conducting intersectional research and research of the most marginalized in society—who are very often victims and offenders, and sometimes both at the same time or over the course of their lives—requires more cautious ethical planning and oversight, and caution not to “other.” The Asian Journal of Criminology has a strong record of publishing criminology and justice studies that have used cutting edge statistical analyses and heroic efforts to collect data. Regarding the latter, Chin’s (2007:88) study of the opium and heroin drug trade in The Golden Triangle—a very mountainous region where Myanmar, Laos, and Thailand meet—is a truly herculean methodological accomplishment. This field research required illegal entry to and exit of the research site in “an extremely remote area controlled by an armed group considered by the U.S. government to be one of the largest drug trafficking organizations in the world” (Chin 2007:88).

Benini et al.’s (2008) Cambodian study provides an inclusive and advanced methodological (Bayesian spatial model) design to research the impacts of a wide variety of socio-economic conditions (e.g., US bombing, adult literacy, school enrollment, safe water, poverty, population density) on the disposition of violence/conflicts measured as domestic violence,Footnote 3 land conflicts, and serious crime in Cambodia from 2002 to 2004. This remarkable study found “lingering war effects” (2015:152). Notably, the “explosive remnants of war are linear across its magnitudes and on all conflicts,” but strongest regarding land conflicts. However, US bombing varied in impact: “Communes that were never bombarded reported lower domestic violence and serious crime whereas land conflicts have responded at the high end” (2008:153). Two findings that emphasize the need for “dedicated” governmental and aid interventions are that (1) the communities with “intermediate levels of service provision tend to have higher levels of conflict than those barely provided for,” and (2) four-fifths of the communities “were below the range where our governance indicators are associated with significantly lower domestic violence and land conflict. This suggests that major threats such as homicide, rape and fights over land need to be reduced through dedicated interventions” (2008:156).

Lo and Jiang’s (2006) article on the rising social and economic inequality in post-reform China, amidst an otherwise booming economy, highlights the rise of the “floaters,” the migrant peasant laborers who moved from rural to urban China. The floaters are only hired into low-income jobs that are unwanted by the urban residents, at the same time that they are not allowed welfare benefits. Furthermore, the floating population is itself very diverse in terms of province of origin, customs, values, and language dialects, so there is rarely a cohesive culture among the floaters (2006:113). All of these marginalizing factors place the floaters at increased risk of offending. Quraishi’s (2008:159) comparative, ethnographic, and community research of the racial construction of urban spaces of South Asian Muslims in Karachi, Pakistan and Lancashire, UK examines “the dynamic relationships between urban space, racial identity and victimization.”Footnote 4 In this work, Quraishi (2008:162) identified no-go zones for the Muslim residents, which for the Muslims in both of his research sites constituted “a physical space avoided for the perceived significant likelihood of becoming a victim of crime whilst frequenting the area.” In Karachi, the Muslims described these no-go zones as “fueled by ethnic sectarianism and politically motivated violence,” such as a false arrest during a police raid of political activists in these locations (2008:165). In the British site, the Muslims, often youth, avoided no-go zones primarily to “reduce the risk of racially motivated conflict.” Quraishi’s article provides very violent recounting by Muslims of walking to their local mosques and White men in the “White spaces” in front of pubs, assaulting them (2008:167).

Park’s (2015) zero-inflated negative binominal regression modeling using the Korean Crime Victim Survey data indicates the importance of collaborative crime prevention efforts, more specifically, cooperating with neighbors, in reducing household victimizations in South Korea. Yun and colleagues’ (2015) study of South Korean policemen (the sample was all men), found that unlike Western police officer scholarship, job satisfaction was not one of the most salient factors predicting job turnover, but rather, in this all-male South Korean sample, work-family conflict was the most salient and the only direct effect of stressors related to police turnover.

Huang’s (2009) article significantly reframes the women and girls “missing” in China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan since 1900. The popular belief is that these women and girls are “abandoned or abducted,” whereas Huang (2009) argues for a classification system based on the women’s/girls’ personal choice versus slavery, and the sociological locus (impacting the likelihood of reunification with family). Huang and Lin’s (2014) study of victim-, perpetrator-, and incident-related factors’ impact on whether Taiwanese police file protection orders for women victims of intimate partner violence (IPV), found “frequent discrepancies between ‘law on the books’ and ‘law in action’,” similar to US IPV studies (e.g., Erez and Belknap 1998; Ferraro 1989). This study found that the police were significantly less likely to have police-initiated emergency protection orders for “the victim falling in the foreigner category, but not the aboriginal and Mainlander Chinese categories….suggesting that victim disadvantages owing to newcomer status and language barriers were likely taken into consideration by the police” (Huang and Lin 2014:315).

Similar to research in the USA documenting women’s increasing incarceration rates outpacing those of men (see Belknap, 2015a), Jeffries’s (2014) account of the imprisonment of women in Southeast Asia reported the same gendered pattern (most of the data are from the mid-1990s through 2012), with the exception of Myanmar who had high overall incarceration of women, but little growth in it. Among the remaining countries (other than Myanmar), Cambodia and Indonesia had “especially high” growth in women’s incarceration, while Thailand, Vietnam, Singapore, and the Philippines were also ranked high in this growth, and Malaysia had the least growth. Although, similar to the USA, Jeffries could trace some of this increase in women’s imprisonment to harsher drug laws, in Cambodia, the “ironic twist” in anti-trafficking legislation in 1996 has resulted in more women’s incarceration. Anti-immigration legislation has also contributed to women’s increased incarceration in Thailand, Cambodia, and Malaysia. Chen’s (2009) study of women prisoners in Israel provides an important contribution to pathways (to offending) scholarship, examining sexual abuse, drug use, and crimes against persons (e.g., DeHart et al. 2014; Gaarder and Belknap 2004; McDaniels-Wilson and Belknap 2008). Sexual abuse placed the women at greater risk of early onset of drug use and of poly drug use, and poly drug use was related to more crimes against persons. Chen convincingly discusses the “self-medication” aspect of drugs by sexual abuse survivors, and how abstinence from drugs “exposes victims of sexual abuse to traumatic recurring memories,” and thus the drug abstinence increases their anxiety levels (2009:48).

Chan’s (2007) work on homicide-suicides advances our understanding of these offenders who suicide in general, and acknowledging the cultural and unique phenomena of this in Hong Kong. Chan (2007:16) emphasizes that homicide-suicide research is based on Western societies, yet his research found that the retaliation explanation in filicides (in terms of custody and intimate partner abuse) that is predominant in Western research is significantly different in Hong Kong where such “violent and abusive histories” are far less common.

(Some of the) Innovative Responses to Crime in Asia in the Asian Journal of Criminology

In the United States, where President Barack Obama has repeatedly been criticized for being a “socialist,” particularly concerning equality and cost-effectiveness of healthcare, it is vitalizing to find that “In 2007, China officially set its goal of judicial reform as to “establish a Socialist Judicial System with fairness, efficiency and authority” (Zhang and Zheng 2014:103). Similarly, Gideon and Hsiao’s (2012:310) study finding “overwhelming public support” for Taiwan’s 1976 Rehabilitation and Protection Act (RPA)— that proposes training programs and help establishing “their own legitimate social networks” for ex-inmates, and facilitating “the community’s willingness to accept released offenders”— is incredibly encouraging from my Western perspective. The 1976 RPA is highly consistent with the far more current “community reentry” focus of inmates leaving prisons and jails in the USA (see Belknap 2015b). Similarly, Chui and Cheng’s (2013) study of prison volunteers in Hong Kong as an avenue to assist positive changes in inmates’ lives, is promising for using this largely untapped source. Finally, Japan’s crime prevention activities implemented after the “triple disaster” of the earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disaster in March 2011, are a model worthy of replicating as crime decreased after these three disasters (Herber 2014).

Ngoc and Wyatt’s (2013:129) “green criminology”—also known as environmental criminology—provides a detailed account of illegal wildlife trafficking in Vietnam, while offering “new and innovative strategies addressing the convergent factors” that could deter wildlife trafficking and other green crimes. Johnson (2013) offers a fascinating account of the political and prosecutorial practice changes in Singapore resulting in a dramatic decrease in capital punishment since the mid-1990s. Zhang and Zheng’s (2014:103) call for an improved evidence system in China is closely aligned with Bryan Stevenson’s (2014) book Just Mercy in the United States. They reported

“….the main reason for issues of judicial unfairness and corruption in current China is due to neglect of the construction of evidence system, and the current evidence rules contain too many problems, and the aforementioned problems have become a bottleneck for China’s judicial reform and an important reason for China to reconstruct the whole evidence system.”

The remainder of this set of findings on innovative responses to crime control in Asia focuses on restorative justice and policing, as these constituted the largest areas of crime control efforts published in the Journal of Asian Criminology.

“Restorative justice is a new lens through which justice can be viewed. It evolved in response to criticism that state justice and retributive justice had neglected, replaced, or misrepresented voices and interests of victims, offenders, and communities. In contrast to the weaknesses of state justice and retributive justice that characterize the criminal justice system, restorative justice is proposed as a process that enables the needs of most affected parties (including victims, offenders, and communities) to be satisfied” (Huang and Chang 2013:288).

Liu (2007; Liu, 2009) notes that while restorative justice (RJ) evolved over the past few decades in the West in response to the ineffectiveness of traditional courts, many aspects of RJ have existed in Asian countries for centuries, and continue to be part of many contemporary Asian responses to offenders. Latha and Thilagaraj (2013:309) identify RJ as consistent with how kings historically ruled parts of India and certainly with “Gandhian philosophy and practice.” “Restorative justice has gained significant recognition in recent years and become one of the most discussed concepts of criminal justice” (Huang and Chang 2013:287). Mok and Wong (2013:335) identify RJ’s introduction to China in 2000, and link it “to the notion and practices of tiaojie (mediation) in China.” Chan (2013:2) describes RJ as flourishing in popularity and growth in Asia, reporting that Singapore since 1997 and the Philippines since 2006, adopted utilizing exclusively RJ with juvenile offenders. Chan also summarizes other scholars’ work on how RJ is very consistent with some Islamic law in terms of resolving monetary compensation for homicide and personal injury crimes.

Chan’s study of “family conferencing” RJ with juveniles in Singapore supports deterred recidivism, improving relationships with parents/family, and helping the youth realize the seriousness of their offenses. Boriboonthana and Sangbuangamlum’s (2013) quasi-experimental study of RJ in Thailand did not find that RJ-processed offenders were any less likely to recidivate, but they did find that both victims and offenders in the RJ process reported higher satisfaction with almost all outcome measures than their equivalents in the traditional process. Moreover, compared to higher income victims and victims who did not know the offenders, the low income and known-offender victims reported more satisfaction with RJ. Xiang’s (2013:255) research on mediation in mainland China carefully analyzes the nuances of how this type of RJ has been incorporated into Chinese law, yet the discretionary power of public authorities also constrains “the amount of compensation settled by the private parties.” Furthermore, as Xiang (2013:255) poignantly summarizes:

“These practices are noted as having weakened the characteristics and underpinning values of restorative justice and criminal mediation as a new solution for crimes, found to be effective in so many jurisdictions. That said, the practices have found traction within China’s legal bureaucracy and are perhaps more likely to have been developed to complement the strict legal codes of China’s criminal justice system. This developing path within China’s criminal law agencies indicates an important feature of the Chinese criminal justice system, that is, strong control of the discretionary power of the public authority that may be abused.”

Huang et al. (2012) conducted a large, comparative study of public support for restorative justice (RJ) in Japan and Australia, distinguishing the citizens into RJ supporters versus ‘just desert” supporters. They found that citizens in both groups “expressed concern that victims’ voices be heard and amends made,” emphasizing support among both camps required institutional arrangements that meet victims’ needs.

Now turning to innovative responses to crime control that fall under “policing” that have been published in the Asian Journal of Criminology, Gingerich and Chu’s (2006) study comparing Taiwanese and US police officers’ opinions of community-oriented policing (COP) found that the Taiwanese officers were more open than US officers to using COP outcomes in evaluations, whereas US officers were more involved in devising COP strategies and more receptive to community involvement than Taiwanese officers. Jiao’s (2010:41) fascinating comparative study of mechanisms to address police misconduct in the Hong Kong Police Force (HKPF) and the New York Police Department (NYPD) found “dramatically different approaches” and “vastly different perspectives.” Hong Kong implemented the Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC)—“an effective independent agency for investigating [police] corruption,” while New York implemented the Commission to Combat Police Corruption (CCPC)—“a viable independent body for investigating police complaints.” Thus, Jiao (2010:41) advocates that Hong Kong’s ICAC be empowered to investigate complaints and that New York’s CCPC “be given real resources and expertise for investigating corruption.” Dai and Gao’s (2014) article on therapeutic treatment-involved drug users in Kunming, China, found that unlike many Western studies, these drug users reported overall high satisfaction with drug control by the police. Unlike police drug-control studies in the USA, Dai and Gao (2014:217) found the drug users’ evaluations of the police in drug control were not related to perceptions about neighborhood problems, “suggesting that Chinese citizens may have different views about police functions in society from their Western counterparts.”

Huang and Lin’s (2014) study on policing of intimate partner violence (IPV) cited previously in this article, addressed Taiwan’s 1998 Domestic Violence Prevention Law (DVPL). The design of this multiagency system includes the police, courts, public education, and health, welfare and household arms of the government, similar in some ways with the coordinated community response to IPV in the USA (see DePrince et al. 2012). One aspect of Taiwan’s DVPL that is particularly exciting is the encouragement of police to initiate and help with victims’ of violated protective orders (Huang and Lin 2014:303). Zhao and Liu’s (2011) article on the Macao, China’s remarkably low crime rate while it is one of the most densely populated cities in the world. They describe the unique “police warning” strategy used by the Public Security Police in Macao, when a first-time juvenile offender commits a minor offense. These “police warnings” are “a non-judiciary measure to divert delinquent juveniles aged 12 to 16 years…” and “a measure of prevention in that it educates delinquent juveniles about the negative result of their wrongdoings in a solemn and just manner” (Zhao and Liu 2011:217). Perhaps particularly intriguing is Macao’s devotion to prevent youth offending through the police-formed Youth Concern Group “which consists of one inspector, two investigators, and two social workers…..[who] are responsible for studying juvenile crime patterns and consequently developing appropriate proposals for juvenile crime prevention,” and it develops “close relationship with schools and youth associations” (2011:221).

Conclusions

When I was asked to provide a keynote address at the 7th annual conference of the Asian Society of Criminology, I was thrilled to accept. But when I was subsequently asked to focus my speech on Asian criminology, an understandable request, I was intimidated to think that someone from the USA, with an unavoidable Western lens could do this successfully or should even try. I can only hope that my efforts to document the expansion of Asian criminology, and my profound respect for the contributions of the scholarship published in the Asian Journal of Criminology, including the extensive theoretical, methodological, and practical responses to crime, does not appear to be condescending or ignorant. Western (or Global North) criminology has a lot to learn from Asian criminology. And this is very difficult when journals such as the Asian Journal of Criminology are not included in the ISI Web of Science.

Regarding my efforts to examine the growth of Asian criminology using the ISI Web of Science, however, indicates that Professor Liu’s goal has been achieved and will likely continue to expand at unprecedented rates. Using the ISI Web of Science to locate Asian criminology research indicates that almost half of this scholarship has been published after 2009 in terms of both TCCC and VAWCT articles. Certainly the representation of Asian countries in criminology scholarship varies significantly across Asian countries and by the type of crime studied (i.e., TCCC versus VAWCT research, as can be seen in Table 1 and Fig. 1).

But again, although the data from the ISI Web of Science is fruitful as a means of documenting the growth and types of criminology research in Asia, it is disheartening to recognize that a peer-reviewed journal with so much excellent and unique scholarship, the Asian Journal of Criminology, is not included in the ISI Web of Science. One wonders how many other journals from the Global South are also missing from the ISI Web of Science, with the resulting bias for Western or Global North criminology. This also damages scholars in these countries whose peer-reviewed journal articles are difficult to find, and thus face pressure to publish in the Western/Global North journals to be cited more often and recieve tenure. The second method used in this article was a careful reading of Asian Journal of Criminology articles in an attempt to highlight some of the many significant theoretical, methodological, and practical (responses to crimes) contributions that are provided in many of these articles.

Although it is impossible for the current article to adequately capture the expansion of Asian criminology by simply using the ISI Web of Science, and it is perhaps even more difficult to sufficiently represent some of many the unique and powerful contributions of scholarship published in the Asian Journal of Criminology, I hope that I have paved the road to obtaining ISI Web of Science status for the Asian Journal of Criminology because it is such a global loss for criminologists, practitioners, and others to miss this scholarship. Again, Western/Global North criminology has a lot to learn from Asian criminology.