The dog that did not bark

Abstract

Scholars have identified many interrelated factors that may explain a rise in punitive social control policies during the last 35 years. David Garland, for example, in The culture of control: Crime and social order in contemporary society, describes a fall in penal welfarism and a rise of a new culture of control in the context of the complex political, economic and social changes experienced from the 1970s through the late 1990s. Garland claims that the ‘liberal elites, best educated middle classes and public sector professionals’, once the champions of liberal penal welfarism, have been influential in the rise of a new culture of control because they have come to hold increasingly punitive social views. Using data from the US General Social Survey, this study considers the social control views of three possible conceptualizations of Garland's population of interest and fails to find support for his claim. The implications of this study are discussed, and special attention is given to issues of defining punitivity, and to unresolved questions about the role of the public in contemporary American penal culture.