Tonry, Michael. "Is cross-national and comparative research on the criminal justice system useful?". European Journal of Criminology, Vol.12, No.4 (2015): 505‐516.

Tonry, Michael. "Is cross-national and comparative research on the criminal justice system useful?". European Journal of Criminology, Vol.12, No.4 (2015): 505‐516.

• The overt reasons for pursuing cross national research in criminal justice are increasing knowledge of alternative solutions to the same problems, to provide models for constructing new criminal justice techniques, and to expose scholars to outside perspectives on their own nation's policies (507).
• The development of many modern innovations in criminal justice came about as a result on transnational research, with Americans in the early 1800s coming to learn about the new professional police force in London and Europeans in the 1840s traveling to the USA to see its model prisons. These techniques were then adapted for use at home (508).
• Although the transfer of actual technologies between law enforcement agencies occurs quickly, countries often resist implementing operation or systemic innovations observed abroad. Even when initially popular, foreign criminal justice techniques often fall of favor if they do not fit with the preexisting culture of that criminal justice system (510‐511)