1 What’s Wrong with the Sociology of Punishment?1

The sociology of punishment is seen through the work of David Garland, as contributing useful insights, but less than it might because of its focus on societal choices of whether and how to punish instead of on choices of whether to regulate by punishment or by a range of other important strategies. A problem in Garland’s genealogical method is that branches of the genealogy are sawn off – the branches where the chosen instruments of regulation decentre punishment. This blinds us to the hybridity of predominantly punitive regulation of crime in the streets that is reshaped by more risk-preventive and restorative technologies of regulation for crime in the suites, and vice versa. Such hybridity is illustrated by contrasting the regulation of pharmaceuticals with that of “narcotics ” and by juxtaposing the approaches to a variety of business regulatory challenges. A four-act drama of Rudoph Guiliani’s career as a law enforcer- Wall Street prosecutor (I), “zero-tolerance ” mayor (II), Mafia enforcement in New York (III), and Rudi the Rock of America’s stand against terrorism (IV)-is used to illustrate the significance of the hybridity we could be more open to seeing. Guiliani takes criminal enforcement models into business regulation and business regulatory models to street crime. The weakness of a genealogical approach to punishment can be covered by the strengths of a history o