June 2024
Volume 1, Number 1
The Relationism Theory of Criminal Justice—A Paradigm Shift
On March 21, 2024, Jianhong Liu, a Distinguished Professor at the Faculty of Law of the University of Macau, was invited to give a keynote speech at the Institute of Criminology, Faculty of Law, University of Cambridge, on the topic of “The Relationism Theory of Criminal Justice — A Paradigm Shift”. His exciting speech attracted a diverse audience of scholars, researchers, policymakers, and practitioners from different disciplines. The following is the overview of Professor Liu’s keynote speech.
First, Professor Liu stated criminal justice research’s current context and status quo. In discussing the current state of criminal justice studies, he reviewed the theoretical contributions of Western theorists, particularly in the United States and Europe, but pointed out that a major deficiency of the discipline is the lack of a general criminal justice theory. He pointed out two significant difficulties in building a general criminal justice theory: (a) different from criminology theories, criminal justice produces multiple outcomes at different levels; (b) the scopes of existing theories largely originate from Western contexts and data, few including cross-cultural variation. Facing these two difficulties, constructing a general theory is generally deemed not possible, practical, or useful. However, he argues that dismissing the value of general causal theories would be a mistake. High-level general theory has a unique value: the level of maturity of a discipline is characteristically reflected in its degree of achievements in general causal theories. General causal theories provide information and perform many functions that specific theories cannot perform for the discipline; they reveal patterns and discover critical knowledge that specific theories do not discover.
By reviewing past literature, the Western research tradition has formulated important questions that guided many familiar lines of study. However, the approach commonly shared by criminal justice theorists does not consider seeking generalizability beyond specific areas, agencies, or topics across different institutions or levels of justice outcomes. The criminal justice literature to date has given up building a unified general explanation across different levels of criminal justice outcomes and cross-cultural variation. Given that current efforts do not address two primary challenges for building a truly general theory of criminal justice, it is important that a paradigm shift is necessary to encompass both insights from the West and non-West to make progress in seeking higher levels of generalization in criminal justice theory building.
Then, Professor Liu proposed a path for a paradigm shift, transforming from the current “monotonic paradigm” to a “comparison paradigm”. He summarizes the traditional monotonic paradigm that rooted in Western perspectives, primarily focuses on treating a single type of justice outcome as its dependent variable. It utilizes purportedly independent causal processes, or a series of predictors related to the justice outcome/dependent variable for modeling. This approach promises little to overcome the two major difficulties faced by efforts of building a general theory. He argues that a new cross-disciplinary approach, the reconceptualization of key concepts, and the development of new concepts will be necessary. The comparison paradigm shows multiple advantages in building a highly general theory that captures the cross-cultural variation, with a cross-national scope, explains multiple justice outcomes at different levels; has the potential to organize criminal justice research, and derives testable sub-theories and explanations for many specific criminal justice outcomes and topics. Under the new paradigm, the justice phenomena are better viewed as sets of contrasted paired causes and processes. Within the new paradigm, the theoretical building blocks are paired concepts and paired propositions for paired causal processes. Paired causes lead to paired consequences or paired justice outcomes.
The comparison paradigm provides a framework, direction, and guidance for the construction of relationism theory. Relationism theory has the capacity to capture the reality of cross-cultural variation and a cross-national scope, explains multiple justice outcomes at different levels, and has the potential to organize criminal justice research and to derive testable sub-theories and explanations for many specific criminal justice outcomes and topics. It adopts causes that have broad influences on multiple justice outcomes. Its construction utilizes a comparative framework applicable to both Eastern and Western cultures, capturing many comparative features in criminal justice research and practice. A multi-level structure expressive structure is applied to this theory, allowing hypothesis testing to be applied to many specific research scenarios and practices.
The central theme of the relational theory framework involves explaining a range of justice outcomes using a pair of explanatory variables– “relationist concept of justice” and “individualist concept of justice”. These concepts are further explained and predicted by “relationist culture” and “individualist culture,” which are held by “relationist populations” and “individualist populations.” Further, these populations are defined as aggregates of “relationist personality traits” and “individualist personality traits.” Concepts within the causal process can be grouped into three groups to reflect the three stages of the whole causal process. Since these concepts and processes span multiple disciplines, the theory possesses the capability to explain various justice outcomes across the system level, institutional level, and individual level, exhibiting scientific rigor at the logical level. (Relevant concepts were explained in the original paper.)
In the concluding section, Professor Liu summarizes the strengths and limitations of the comparison paradigm and the relationism theory. The relationism theory within the comparison paradigm logically encompasses the traditional monotonic paradigm. The new theory and paradigm offer a new perspective for criminal justice research, emphasizing the comparative aspects of crime and justice realities. They can also explain the differences in criminal justice across cultural and national boundaries. The comparison paradigm is a more general framework, with a special strength to suggest a broader range of questions. In addition, he offers suggestions for the further development of the general theory of construction in the future.
To sum up, Professor Liu’s innovative theory will provide new ideas for researching the criminal justice system and create a new analytical approach to understanding the processes and outcomes of criminal justice.
Jianhong Liu
Biographic Sketch
Jianhong Liu is a Distinguished Professor in the Faculty of Law at the University of Macau. Prof Liu has authored and co-authored more than 200 academic publications including 31 books. He has won many awards, including 2016 “Freda Adler Distinguished Scholar Award” from the International Division of the American Society of Criminology, 2018 “G. O.W. Mueller Award for Distinguished Scholar” of the International Section of the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences. His co-authored book has won the 2022 “Distinguished Book Award” from the Asian Criminological Society and the 2022 “Best Scholarly Publication Award from The Association of Chinese Professors of Social Sciences in the United States (ACPSS).” Professor Liu has served in numerous leadership roles in international academic organizations. He was the Elected Founding President and Honorary President of the Asian Criminological Society (2009 – 2015); he has been the Elected President of the Scientific Commission of the International Society for Criminology (since 2014), the Elected Chairman of the General Assembly of the Asian Criminological Society (since 2016), and a member of the Steering Committee of Campbell Collaboration’s Crime and Justice Group (since 2009); and the elected President of Macau Society of Criminology etc.
Professor Liu has actively served the academic profession. Prof Liu is the Editor-in-Chief of the Asian Journal of Criminology. He is the editor of “The Springer Series on Asian Criminology & Criminal Justice Research”. He is also a member of the editorial boards of more than 20 international academic journals, including the British Journal of Criminology, Journal of Experimental Criminology, etc. He has been appointed to take many prestigious roles, such as serving as an Expert Nominator for the Stockholm Prize in Criminology appointed by the Stockholm Prize in Criminology Foundation, a Grant Reviewer for the European Research Council, a Council member of the World Economic Forum for the Global Agenda Council; a consultant for United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime (UNODC) East Asia and Pacific Center; Advisor of Centre of Excellence for Statistics on Crime and Criminal Justice in Asia and the Pacific, UNODC; Senior Advisor of Chinese Society of Criminology etc. Professor Liu has been appointed by numerous prominent universities and research institutes as an honorary professor or research fellow. He has been invited to give numerous keynote speeches and seminars internationally.