David Garland
In a way, this is the guts of the book.
First, the story I’m telling is about political economy, not just the welfare state. A major part of the story is about how the labor market in this country provides fewer protections and less provision for working people than pretty much any of the other developed countries do, in terms of workers’ rights, trade union rights to organize, the provision of decent wages, and the security of tenure for people who are in employment. We have a much more precarious, more flexible labor market, with the consequence that working people in this country are much more insecure than is the case elsewhere. And their income is much less stable over time.
It’s not just poor people in this country that are impacted by our extraordinary political economy. Working people of all kinds, even middle-class, college-educated people now, are facing real economic insecurity. And that makes a difference for how they think about crime in their neighborhood; how they think about their property values, if they’re lucky enough to be a homeowner; and the impact that crime might have on that.
The story I’m telling is not just about the welfare state but about the labor market and the welfare state together. Political economy impacts levels of family formation and the capacity of communities to control young people, socialize them, and integrate them.
Second, I argue, and I think I show, that the reason why the US has such high levels of violence and such an aggressive use of penal power — such a massive penal Leviathan — is that the political economy and the social structures of this country are just different from those of other Western capitalist nations.
You might think it follows that unless you change these political-economic structures, unless you restructure the labor market and rebuild the welfare state,…
Auteur: David Garland
