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David Garland’s Law and Order Leviathan: On the Present and Future of the Punishment and Society Research Agenda
José A. Brandariz & Patricia Faraldo-Cabana*
Law and Order Leviathan and Its Different Readings
Back in midsummer 2025, pre-ordering David Garland’s most recent book, Law and Order Leviathan: America’s Extraordinary Regime of Policing and Punishment (hereinafter, L&O Leviathan), with the intention of reading it during the last sunny days of warm weather seemed like a good idea. At the time, a single customer comment greeted visitors on the book’s Amazon page. It was a very long comment: deeply judgmental, full of misleading perspectives, and clearly written by a non-academic reader.
This vignette reminds us that, like several of Garland’s previous books,[1] the impact of L&O Leviathan extends far beyond academic circles. This is unsurprising, especially if we consider the first chapter’s discussion of what might metaphorically be called the short summer of abolition in 2020—characterised by widespread Black Lives Matter and Defund the Police demonstrations—and the epilogue’s reflections on what has increasingly become a mainstream topic in US academia, namely, abolition and criminal justice reform.[2]
Evidently, L&O Leviathan may—and should—also be approached as a scholarly publication. There are different ways of doing so. One is to read it against the backdrop of Garland’s previous contributions, highlighting the continuities and discontinuities with, among other works, pivotal papers published over the last fifteen years or so[3] and his landmark monograph The Culture of Control.
The Punishment and Society Research Agenda
Relatedly, L&O Leviathan may also be considered from the perspective of its contribution to the further development of punishment and society studies. Admittedly, to task Garland’s monograph with giving a boost to an entire body of knowledge or academic subfield sounds unfair. This is the case even though Garland himself critically contributed to the emergence of this subfield with the publication of his path-breaking book Punishment and Modern Society in 1990[4] and the launch of the Punishment and Society journal in 1999, of which he was the first editor-in-chief.
Still, adopting this lens to think about L&O Leviathan makes particular sense in a book forum sponsored by the Modern Criminal Law Review. Being radically interdisciplinary, punishment and society studies significantly contribute to overcoming the limitations of the legal-formalist way of exploring penal policy that German academia calls ‘Kriminalpolitik’—which is widespread among legal scholars in continental Europe and South America and has been insightfully challenged by Markus Dubber.[5] Conceptualizing and treating punishment as a social institution, the punishment and society gaze enables an analysis of penality that goes far beyond narrow legal definitions. In addition, it places criminal law forms of state coercion within the broader sphere of (state and non-state) social control (see e.g. L&O Leviathan, pp. 18-21). By doing so, punishment and society studies may help bridge the considerable gap between the legal formalism tradition that is prevalent in Europe and the more empirically sensitive legacies of legal realism and the socio-legal approach that have been firmly established within US—and, more broadly, Anglo-American—academia. Indeed, considering L&O Leviathan through this lens lays bare the strengths and weaknesses of Garland’s pivotal contribution.
In this respect, L&O Leviathan both epitomises the best that punishment and society studies have offered academic conversations on penality over the last two to three decades, and crucially contributes to advancing the punishment and society agenda, as considered from the perspective of the recommendations made by Garland and other leading scholars in this field.[6] Among other achievements, Garland’s book avoids the risks of grand theorising and ethnocentrism that have long affected the sociology of punishment.[7] In stark contrast to turn-of-the-century over-encompassing theories, L&O Leviathan makes clear that the US penal state does not constitute any master pattern or universal rule, but rather an extraordinary national case (e.g. pp. 19, 56). Although the book devotes less attention to specific penal arrangements than Garland’s previous monographs (see, though, Chapter 3), it examines the punitive turn and mass incarceration, two penal phenomena that have been critical for the development of punishment and society studies.[8] In addition, L&O Leviathan insightfully develops the thesis of the relative autonomy of crime and punishment, scrutinising a topic that has been repeatedly addressed by this literature.[9] As a vital contribution to the political economy of punishment (see Chapter 2), the book epitomises the kind of thick, historically and sociologically informed account required to fully grasp penality and penal change in a given jurisdiction.[10] It connects background causes and proximate causes by convincingly examining the intermediating factors that have enabled the development of the Leviathan—that is, the gargantuan US penal state—including the rise in social disorganisation and criminal violence; the institutional framework that favoured punitive measures and collateral consequences over social welfare measures; and the social—and racialised—sources of indifference towards the consequences of the punitive turn (see, especially, Chapters 5 to 8).
All these are critical achievements that help refine the punishment and society toolkit, opening new avenues for reflection that other scholars may follow by exploring penal arrangements outside the US in both core and peripheral jurisdictions, thereby expanding the sociology of punishment beyond the Global North and the English-speaking heartlands in which it has largely developed so far.[11] However, when one considers both what L&O Leviathan explores and what it overlooks, the book nevertheless reminds us that, if this research agenda is to be furthered, some analytical tasks remain pending.
Towards a Future Research Agenda?
Being a perfect manifestation of the punishment and society research agenda, L&O Leviathan leaves unaddressed dimensions of the penal field that are rarely examined by this literature. In stark contrast to class and especially race, gender is entirely overlooked in this important monograph. In addition, L&O Leviathan shares the prison-centric (or, even, mass incarceration-centric[12]) viewpoint that characterises punishment and society studies (but see pp. 33-36, 41-43).
Certainly, Garland’s book has no encyclopaedic ambition and therefore cannot be expected to address all aspects of the penal field. Consequently, we aim to focus our gaze on reflecting on the extent to which L&O Leviathan contributes to developing a future research agenda in the field of punishment and society.
The dominant description in the literature of turn-of-the-century penal phenomena such as penal populism, the punitive turn, and mass incarceration has shown resilience and long-term stability.[13] However, what Todd Clear and Natasha Frost have called ‘the punishment imperative’[14] has shown signs of fatigue in many countries,[15] notably the US, which has witnessed a substantial decline in incarceration rates nationwide,[16] particularly in liberal Pacific and Northeastern states such as California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and New York.
This shift challenges any pretence of decades-long stability in the penal and political economy of punishment, revealing instead different phases of penal change taking place over the last quarter century. Indeed, the shift gained particular traction in the 2010s, a decade that opened with the anti-austerity Occupy movement and closed with the passage of the First Step Act by the Trump administration[17] and the short summer of abolition. L&O Leviathan somewhat downplays these developments—although it concludes by recognising their significance in its hopeful last section, entitled ‘A Bandwidth of Possibility’ (pp. 133-136). We contend that punishment and society research should more thoroughly consider these developments in the US and elsewhere. In other words, further exploration is required not only of the conditions of possibility of the emergence and consolidation of the punitive turn, but also of the conditions of possibility of its potential crisis.
In addition, without indulging in any sort of misleading pioneerism, the punishment and society literature ought to examine whether the penal agenda championed by radical right leaders of the 2020s constitutes merely an acceleration of long-standing penal phenomena[18]—a sort of penal populism on steroids. Despite some eye-catching developments, such as the consolidation of a colossal penal state in authoritarian El Salvador, there are reasons to be doubtful about this.[19] Recent changes suggest that a new shift is currently unfolding, awaiting examination. We propose thoroughly considering three interrelated aspects that are critical to understanding penal populism and the penal agenda of radical right and authoritarian forces in the 2020s, namely: (a) the momentum gained by symbolic politics agendas; (b) the overt use of penal policies to wage culture wars, including the promotion of antifeminist platforms; and (c) the increasingly vital role played by bordered penality in ensuring social cohesion, securing electoral support, and validating racial resentment.
We expect these topics to feature prominently in punishment and society debates in the coming years. By analysing recent developments in the penal field in a critical jurisdiction such as the US, Garland provides us with innovative epistemic, methodological, and theoretical tools to address the research challenges of this ominous third decade of the century.
* University of A Coruna, Spain.
[1] Arguably, at least, David Garland, The Culture of Control: Crime and Social Order in Contemporary Society (2001); David Garland, Peculiar Institution: America’s Death Penalty in an Age of Abolition (2010); and David Garland, The Welfare State: A Very Short Introduction (2016).
[2] See, among many others, Angela Y. Davis, Gina Dent, Erica R. Meiners, & Beth E. Richie, Abolition. Feminism. Now. (2022); Tommie Shelby, The Idea of Prison Abolition (2022); Löic Wacquant, Rethinking the Penal State (2026).
[3] See, among others, David Garland, Penality and the Penal State, 51 Criminology 475–517 (2013); David Garland, Theoretical Advances and Problems in the Sociology of Punishment, 20 Punish. & Soc. 8–33 (2018); David Garland, Penal Controls and Social Controls: Toward a Theory of American Penal Exceptionalism, 22 Punish. & Soc. 321–352 (2020); David Garland, The Current Crisis of American Criminal Justice: A Structural Analysis, 6 Annual Rev. Crim. 43–63 (2023).
[4] See David Garland, Punishment and Modern Society: A Study in Social Theory (1990).
[5] See Markus Dubber, The Promise of German Criminal Law: A Science of Crime and Punishment, 6 German L. J. 1049-1071 (2005); Markus Dubber, The Dual Penal State: The Crisis of Criminal Law in Comparative-Historical Perspective (2018).
[6] See David Garland, Theoretical Advances and Problems in the Sociology of Punishment, 20 Punish. & Soc. 8–33 (2018); Jonathan Simon & Richard Sparks eds., The SAGE Handbook of Punishment and Society (2013). More generally, see the contributions gathered in the twentieth anniversary issue of Punishment and Society (2018).
[7] See Tom Daems, Making Sense of Penal Change (2008); Máximo Sozzo, ¿Más allá de la cultura del control? Interrogantes, aportes y perspectivas, in ¿Más allá de la cultura del control?: Debates sobre delito, pena y orden social con David Garland 405-444 (Máximo Sozzo ed., 2018).
[8] See Garland, supra note 6, at 9; Jonathan Simon & Richard Sparks, Introduction. Punishment and Society: The Emergence of an Academic Field, in The SAGE Handbook of Punishment and Society 14 (Jonathan Simon & Richard Sparks eds., 2013).
[9] See Garland, Penality and the Penal State, supra note 3, at 487; Garland, supra note 6, at 15-16.
[10] See Garland, Penality and the Penal State, supra note 3, at 489-491.
[11] See Luiz Dal Santo & Máximo Sozzo, Introduction: Punishment in Latin America: Explorations from the Margins, in Punishment in Latin America: Explorations from the Margins 1-16 (Luiz Dal Santo & Máximo Sozzo eds., 2024).
[12] See Part II of the 2013 Punishment and Society Handbook (supra note 8).
[13] Conspicuously, see chapter 2 of Wacquant, supra note 2.
[14] See Todd R. Clear & Natasha A. Frost, The Punishment Imperative: The Rise and Failure of Mass Incarceration in America (2014). Interestingly, Garland uses the notion of ‘control imperative’ in L&O Leviathan (see Chapter 4, especially pp. 49-52).
[15] See José Ángel Brandariz, Decarceration in Southern Europe: Notes on Climate Change in the Penal Field, 5 Internat. Crim. 352–363 (2024).
[16] The US incarceration rate declined by 28.3 per cent between 2007 and 2023 (from 756 prisoners per 100,000 inhabitants to 542 prisoners per 100,000 inhabitants). Source: Bureau of Justice Statistics, World Prison Brief.
[17] See Colleen P. Eren, Reform Nation: The First Step Act and the Movement to End Mass Incarceration (2023).
[18] See Claire Hamilton, Radical Right Populism and the Sociology of Punishment: Towards a Research Agenda, 25 Punish. & Soc. 888–908 (2023).
[19] Contra, John Pratt, Populism, Punishment and the Threat to Democratic Order: The Return of the Strong Men (2023).
Suggested Citation: José A. Brandariz & Patricia Faraldo-Cabana, “David Garland’s Law and Order Leviathan: On the Present and Future of the Punishment and Society Research Agenda,” MCLR+ (crimlrev.net) (Aug. 24, 2026) (https://crimlrev.net/2026/08/24/david-garlands-law-and-order-leviathan-on-the-present-and-future-of-the-punishment-and-society-research-agenda-jose-a-brandariz-patricia-faraldo-cabana/)