Tubex, H. (2013). Pitfalls of comparative (penological) research and how to overcome them. In K. Beyens, J. Christiaens, B. Claes, S. De Ridder, H. Tournel & H. Tubex (Eds.), The Pains of Doing Criminological Research. Brussel: VUBPress. 12 Pitfalls of comparative (penological) research and how to overcome them Hilde Tubex Abstract Over the last two decades, the widespread growth of prison populations has led to various analyses examining possible explanations for differences in imprisonment rates. In this contribution, we discuss the learning from the wealth of comparative penological research available nowadays. Based on the literature and our own experiences with comparative research, we discuss common pitfalls and try to offer advice on how to address them. We illustrate the more methodological and theoretical discussion with leading works in this area, demonstrating the major findings over the last decades. We conclude that, regardless the various pains that one still has to face in doing comparative research, significant progress has been made in contributing to answer one of the most compelling penological questions, as how to best deal with crime in a society. Introduction One of the most compelling penological questions is how to best deal with crime in a society. One way of setting out to answer that question is to examine practice and experience in a variety of jurisdictions, analysing punishment and exploring the consequences of differing levels of punitiveness. This research forms part of comparative criminology, an area that is currently experiencing a revival demonstrated in numerous publications. However, the current interest in comparative criminology might lead us to forget that it is actually a relatively young discipline. While Downes (2011) rightly points out that criminology was born comparative, with historical contributions from such people as John Howard and Alexis de Tocqueville, this comparative focus seemed to have faded until the late twentieth century. Downes sees several reasons for this abeyance, amongst which are the impact of positivism