Why the US Has Such a Brutal Penal Regime

Compared to similarly rich countries, the US has an exceptionally punitive system of policing and prisons. What explains America’s extremely harsh penal regime?

Compared to other developed nations, the United States is an extreme outlier in the severity of its criminal legal system. Police in the United States kill civilians at between five and forty times the rate of similarly rich countries, for instance, and the United States imprisons people at about seven times the rate of economically comparable countries. The brunt of this aggressive penal regime is borne of course by poor Americans, particularly poor black Americans.

In Law and Order Leviathan: America’s Extraordinary Regime of Policing and Punishment, David Garland, a professor of law and sociology at New York University, attemp