Criminology is the scientific study of crime, including its causes, responses to it, and methods of prevention. The criminologist Dr Leon Moosavi recently noted that ‘like the rest of the social sciences, criminology is dominated by Western literature and perspectives.’ He went onto explain that this ‘is problematic because it unnecessarily excludes alternative accounts that may be useful for informing criminological scholarship.’

Taking this as a challenge, High Court Justice Lobzang Rinzin Yargay and GJG co-director Marcus Baltzer delve into the vast scriptures of Buddhism is search for examples of such alternative accounts. They specifically examine the case of Angulimala and a few related texts, seeking to identify reasoning that could possibly be relevant to criminological scholarship in Bhutan and other societies with Buddhist traditions.

The full article, published in the Bhutan Law Review, can be accessed here.