Podcast Summary

Podcast: New Books Network
Episode: David Garland, "Law and Order Leviathan: America’s Extraordinary Regime of Policing and Punishment"
Host: Schneer Zalman Neufeld
Guest: David Garland
Published: November 14, 2025

Overview

In this episode, Schneer Zalman Neufeld interviews David Garland, NYU Professor of Law and Sociology, about his new book, Law and Order Leviathan: America’s Extraordinary Regime of Policing and Punishment. Garland revisits the roots and evolution of American mass incarceration, explores the country’s unique political economy, and contends with the paradox of American liberty coexisting with extreme penal control. Drawing on history and recent events, including the Black Lives Matter movement and the legacy of the New Deal, Garland offers a nuanced diagnosis of America’s criminal justice system, the ideologies that drive it, and the realistic range for reform.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

David Garland’s Background and Motivation

• Garland has a background in law, criminology, and sociology, teaching at NYU.
• He shifted focus from criminology to welfare state history, but the events of 2020 (George Floyd protests) pulled him back to address new, radical questions about the criminal justice system.
• Goal: To explain why the U.S. system is so extraordinary and persistent, addressing both left and right political anxieties, and engaging with abolitionist and law and order viewpoints.

  "I wanted to engage with the new questions, the radical questions about can we abolish the prison? Can we abolish police?" – Garland [02:54]

The Tocqueville Paradox

• Alexis de Tocqueville, a 19th-century French observer, identified the paradox of America as both the land of liberty and the land of despotic punishment.
• Garland updates this: U.S. liberty and democracy coexist with unparalleled rates of incarceration, violent policing, and systemic racism.

  "America is this land of the most extended liberty... but if you visit America's prisons, it's a spectacle of the most complete despotism." – Garland [04:18]

The “Law and Order Covenant”

• Framed via Hobbes’ “Leviathan”: Americans made an implicit compact with the state to prioritize security, leading to empowerment of law enforcement and the penal system.
• This shift is explained as a popular response to extraordinarily high crime rates, especially from the 1960s-90s, complemented by political opportunism, racial politics, and the decline of the welfare state.

  "The consistent and repeated vote by majorities of the American electorate for law and order candidates was really a response to this concern about insecurity and physical safety and criminal violence." – Garland [09:13]

Why So Much American Violence?

• Not an “intrinsically” violent people, but shaped by history:
  • Decentralized, privatized violence (frontier, slavery, labor suppression, etc.)
  • Guns: more firearms than citizens, rooted in history and culture.
  • Lack of a European-style monopoly on legitimate violence/disarmament after the Civil War.
  • Economic deprivation and exclusion, concentrated poverty, illegal economies (drugs).

  "The USA is remarkable in terms of its gun culture. In this country we have more guns than people." – Garland [12:05]

Race, Class, and Crime

• Heritage of slavery and Jim Crow amplifies policing and punishment, but underlying drivers are more about class than race.
• Racial disparities reflect disproportionate poverty among Black Americans—removing Black offenders from statistics wouldn’t reduce overall U.S. violence to European levels.

  "Our crime problem looks, as it were, disproportionately black, but only because our poverty problem is disproportionately black." – Garland [17:06]

The Era of Mass Incarceration: 1960s–1990s

• Marked by rising crime, but also retreat from New Deal welfare, increasing inequality, and increasingly punitive state responses.
• U.S. incarceration rate leaps from 200 per 100,000 (double Europe’s) to 750 per 100,000 (7–10x Europe’s).

  "That’s really a phenomenon from the 70s onwards that was most pronounced in the 80s and 1990s." – Garland [21:29]

The “Control Imperative”

• U.S. criminal justice is less about rehabilitation, more about incapacitation and control: long sentences, probation, stringent restrictions.
• Welfare support is minimized; focus is on keeping offenders “off the streets.”

  "It’s about making sure that people, once they're identified as offenders, are kept off the streets and behind bars." – Garland [23:19]

Shifts in Penal Ideology

• Early penitentiary/prison models and probation emphasized penitence, redemption, and later, rehabilitation.
• From the 1970s, faith in reform waned; research suggested “nothing works,” shifting focus to permanent control/incapacitation.

  "That was definitely the case...the leading edge ideology...was to make their inmates redeem themselves, to be penitent, to become reformed through incarceration." – Garland [25:26]

The Decline of Religious Influence

• The reform and rehabilitation ethos, once rooted in religion, became secular and treatment-oriented in the 20th century.
• By late 20th century, religious sentiment retreated to the margins in penal practice, replaced by skeptical pragmatism.

  "Religion with regard to the penal system is in the background rather than the foreground of this story." – Garland [33:21]

Deindustrialization, Social Abandonment, and Community Breakdown

• Economic restructuring left many urban communities, especially Black and working-class neighborhoods, in concentrated poverty, with few public investments.
• Criminal activity and violence became concentrated, with the drug trade fueling further violence and policing.
• The only solutions offered: incarceration and policing—not investment or welfare support.

  "These communities became not just worthless, but also became dangerous and became a site of illegal economies." – Garland [37:12]

Insights from Michelle Alexander & James Forman

• Both see race as central, but Forman, especially, highlights how even Black political leadership wound up endorsing penal solutions in the absence of real alternatives.
• Mass incarceration doesn’t solve the underlying issues; it simply punishes those affected by them.

Social Distance, Segregation, and Lack of Solidarity

• America’s diversity and fragmentation mean that “the rest of us” can ignore the suffering of the incarcerated; intense “othering” and demonization make mass incarceration politically sustainable.

  "We don't think that these people are our kids...We think, no, these are aliens, these are others, and we can simply remove them and demonize them." – Garland [44:30]

Black Lives Matter & Political Change

• The murder of George Floyd and the resulting BLM protests briefly brought criminal justice reform into the mainstream.
• However, fear of rising crime soon led to the reassertion of law-and-order politics; radical reform faded from electoral viability, though some grassroots changes endured.

  "It did not take long for us to forget about them, because...the law and order message reasserted itself very forcefully and very effectively..." – Garland [50:05]

Pathways for Reform

• Profound structural change (like greater economic equality and secure welfare) is unlikely soon, so scope for full transformation is limited.
• Yet, substantial reforms are possible within existing “American bandwidth”:
  • Reduce police killings with training/accountability
  • Lower incarceration rates without increasing crime (e.g., NY State)
  • End felon disenfranchisement
  • Lower juvenile detention rates
• There is “a great deal of possibility…that stop[s] short of being radical change, but still affect[s] thousands and even millions.”

  "Within the range of possibilities that the social structure currently enables, much reform is available." – Garland [58:09]

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the “law and order covenant”:
  "The primary compact was between Americans who were concerned about their physical safety and law and order politics extended police powers, more people sent to prison. And that's indeed what we got in the end." – Garland [09:31]

• On America’s violent legacy:
  "The USA has always been a remarkably violent country in which the government, the state, has actually enabled and delegated and permitted the use of violence by private actors." – Garland [11:17]

• On mass incarceration’s recency:
  "The kind of law and order Leviathan, the massive use of incarceration and police power...that's really a phenomenon from the 70s onwards." – Garland [21:29]

• On the “control imperative”:
  "The idea is not to think about ways in which you can provide people with support...It's about making sure that people, once they're identified as offenders, are kept off the streets and behind bars." – Garland [23:19]

• On lack of solidarity:
  "We don't feel, by and large, solidarity with these groups...The language that accompanied the buildup of the prison...was a very othering language." – Garland [44:04]

• On the possibility of change:
  "Within the American bandwidth there's a possibility for states to move in the direction of becoming more like New Hampshire and Maine and less like Texas and Louisiana." – Garland [54:21]

Timestamps for Key Segments

• Background and Book Genesis [01:46–03:50]
• Tocqueville’s Paradox and American Exceptionalism [03:50–06:06]
• Law and Order Covenant Explained [06:06–10:04]
• Why America is so Violent [10:04–15:54]
• Race, Class, and Punishment [15:54–18:04]
• Rise of Mass Incarceration [18:04–21:51]
• The Control Imperative [21:51–24:17]
• Religious and Secular Shifts in Penal Ideology [24:17–33:21]
• Deindustrialization and Community Breakdown [34:47–39:04]
• Criminal Justice Reform and Black Political Leadership [39:04–42:55]
• Solidarity and Segregation [42:55–46:53]
• Black Lives Matter and the Limits of Political Change [46:53–51:11]
• Practical Pathways for Reform [51:11–59:16]

Conclusion

David Garland frames America’s crisis of policing and punishment as deeply rooted in structural inequalities, historical legacies, and political choices. While the dream of a “Norwegian” or even “Canadian” penal system is distant, meaningful reforms are clearly possible within the present American context—even as the struggle continues over solidarity, political will, and structural change.