Theoretical Advances and Problems in the Sociology of Punishment

In-person event

This seminar, delivered by Sydney Law School visiting Fellow, Professor David Garland (New York University) explores the theoretical advances and problems in the sociology of punishment.

The last twenty years have seen a remarkable increase in “punishment and society” scholarship. Together with this quantitative expansion, there have also been important qualitative developments in research, analysis and explanation – many of which can be counted as scientific advances.

In this talk, Professor Garland will describe a number of dimensions along which theory, method and data in this field have been improved and also identify a number of continuing challenges and problems. Examples from the American literature on the emergence of mass incarceration and the nature of the ‘war on drugs’ are used to indicate the range of theoretical resources that scholars in this field have developed and to point to empirical and theoretical questions that remain to be resolved.

About the speaker

David Garland is Arthur T Vanderbilt Professor of Law and Professor of Sociology at New York University. His distinguished body of work includes Punishment and Welfare: A History of Penal Strategies; Punishment and Modern Society: A Study in Social Theory ; The Culture of Control: Crime and Social Order in Contemporary Society ; Peculiar Institution: America’s Death Penalty in an Age of Abolition ; and The Welfare State: A Very Short Introduction.

His many honours include membership of the British Academy, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and receipt of the American Society of Criminology’s Edwin H. Sutherland Prize for outstanding contributions to theory and research.

He is currently at work on a book entitled Roots of Injustice: The Structural Sources of America’s Penal State. He is a Visiting Fellow at University of Sydney School of Law in October/November 2022.

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Tuesday 1 November

Time: 6-7.30 pm, followed by a cocktail reception
Venue: Law Foyer, Level 2, New Law Building (F10), University of Sydney

CPD points = 1.5

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