"A major work of social and criminological analysis. . . . Garland's analysis of the profound social and
cultural shifts of recent decades is a tour de force."
--Robert Reiner, Times Literary Supplement
"An impressive new book. . . . Garland, one of the most important and sophisticated contemporary writers on
crime and punishment, provides a compelling and sobering perspective on what he calls our 'culture of control.'"
--Austin Sarat, American Prospect
"A fascinating and disturbing story that Garland tells brilliantly. He is wonderfully readable. . . . This
book is eloquent, impressive in its range, penetrating in its insights and convincing in its analysis. . . . Read
this book."
--John Adams, Times Higher Education Supplement
"Engrossing. . . . This sweeping yet finely detailed examination of law enforcement's drift towards punishment
and away from rehabilitation makes an important contribution."
--Publishers Weekly
University of Chicago Press Web Site, September, 2002
Summary
The past 30 years have seen vast changes in our attitudes toward crime. More and more of us live in gated communities;
prison populations have skyrocketed; and issues such as racial profiling, community policing, and "zero-tolerance"
policies dominate the headlines. How is it that our response to crime and our sense of criminal justice has come
to be so dramatically reconfigured? David Garland charts the changes in crime and criminal justice in America and
Britain over the past twenty-five years, showing how they have been shaped by two underlying social forces: the
distinctive social organization of late modernity and the neoconservative politics that came to dominate the United
States and the United Kingdom in the 1980s.
Garland explains how the new policies of crime and punishment, welfare and security--and the changing class, race,
and gender relations that underpin them--are linked to the fundamental problems of governing contemporary societies,
as states, corporations, and private citizens grapple with a volatile economy and a culture that combines expanded
personal freedom with relaxed social controls. It is the risky, unfixed character of modern life that underlies
our accelerating concern with control and crime control in particular. It is not just crime that has changed; society
has changed as well, and this transformation has reshaped criminological thought, public policy, and the cultural
meaning of crime and criminals. David Garland's The Culture of Control offers a brilliant guide to this process
and its still-reverberating consequences.