CRIMINLOGY educators from all over Asia are strongly pushing for the decoupling of their curriculum from the Western model.
Gerry Cano, president of the Asian Criminological Society and who hails from the Philippines, emphasized that the whole continent has sociological characteristics unique to its geography and culture which the traditional Western model of criminalistics is not applicable.
“We are not even referring to the whole continent yet. We’ll just be focusing on Southeast Asia, East Asia and West Asia in particular,” Cano said.
He pointed out that this whole subregion of Asia has a total population of 4.4 billion and already comprises more than half of the world’s inhabitants or around 54 percent.
Cano and criminology representatives from 40 countries including guests from Europe and the United States converged in Penang, Malaysia last July 15 to 18 to discuss this and other relevant topics during the 17th Asian Criminological Society Conference.
Hosted by the Universiti Sains Malaysia’s Centre for Policy Research, the conference atracted more than 200 delegates who gathered together to foster healthy debate and knowledge sharing in the fields of peace and order, national security, criminal justice, forensics science and more.
The delegates aimed to play a greater role in shaping global thinking on criminology, the social sciences and criminal justice.
The 18th Asian Criminological Society Conference will be held in Chongqing, China in June 2027.
