In the last thirty years, there has been a profound change in how we understand crime and criminal justice. Crime has become a symbolic event, a test for social order and government policies, a challenge for civil society, democracy, and human rights. David Garland, a leading scholar in the sociology of punishment, argues that there has been a true security obsession in late modernity, directing criminal policies toward greater rigidity in punishment and greater intolerance toward criminals. In the 1970s, this trend was unsuspected in the US and UK, but the book shows that these two countries share intriguing similarities in their criminal practices despite racial divisions, economic inequalities, and violent lethality. Garland notes that both countries share the same types of risks and insecurities, the same perception of ineffective social control, the same criticism of traditional criminal justice, and the same anxieties about change and social order. The main argument of the book is that late modernity, with its social, economic, and cultural relations, brought a set of risks, insecurities, and social control problems that shaped our responses to crime, ensuring high costs of criminal policies, maximum sentence durations, and excessive incarceration rates. Garland's book is the latest in a trilogy beginning with "Punishment and Welfare: A History of Penal Strategies" (1985) and "Punishment and Modern Society: A Study on Social Theory" (1990), both of which remain untranslated into Portuguese. Despite the broad topics discussed, Garland avoids generalizations, instead using a wealth of materials, reports, articles, and books to qualify and explain the changes. The book is both a history of crime control policies and debates in the second half of the 20th century and a critical study of social, legal, and criminal research. Garland is strongly influenced by Foucault and the social theory that sees crime as a key element in understanding the formation of modernity and the shaping of our values and attitudes. However, Garland is not alone in this view; he shares a critical perspective on the risks involved in the security adventure, also found in the works of authors like Nils Christie, Loïc Wacquant, and Zygmunt Bauman. The book addresses issues that are not unfamiliar to contemporary social theory. François Ewald (1991) had already suggested that in contemporary society, it is no longer about questioning the effects of penal sanctions but rather about organizing new forms of prevention and minimizing risks. Security would tend to minimize the impact of criminal law and justice. Justice would lose space and importance because punishment would become dysfunctional as it would not allow for the restoration of losses caused by crime. Insurance companies have become the reference for losses in the capitalist and financial system. Risk, a phenomenon measurable and preventable, has taken the place of accident, a natural and inevitable phenomenon. The issue of crime would involve prevention and repair, a matter related to actuarial science andIn the last thirty years, there has been a profound change in how we understand crime and criminal justice. Crime has become a symbolic event, a test for social order and government policies, a challenge for civil society, democracy, and human rights. David Garland, a leading scholar in the sociology of punishment, argues that there has been a true security obsession in late modernity, directing criminal policies toward greater rigidity in punishment and greater intolerance toward criminals. In the 1970s, this trend was unsuspected in the US and UK, but the book shows that these two countries share intriguing similarities in their criminal practices despite racial divisions, economic inequalities, and violent lethality. Garland notes that both countries share the same types of risks and insecurities, the same perception of ineffective social control, the same criticism of traditional criminal justice, and the same anxieties about change and social order. The main argument of the book is that late modernity, with its social, economic, and cultural relations, brought a set of risks, insecurities, and social control problems that shaped our responses to crime, ensuring high costs of criminal policies, maximum sentence durations, and excessive incarceration rates. Garland's book is the latest in a trilogy beginning with "Punishment and Welfare: A History of Penal Strategies" (1985) and "Punishment and Modern Society: A Study on Social Theory" (1990), both of which remain untranslated into Portuguese. Despite the broad topics discussed, Garland avoids generalizations, instead using a wealth of materials, reports, articles, and books to qualify and explain the changes. The book is both a history of crime control policies and debates in the second half of the 20th century and a critical study of social, legal, and criminal research. Garland is strongly influenced by Foucault and the social theory that sees crime as a key element in understanding the formation of modernity and the shaping of our values and attitudes. However, Garland is not alone in this view; he shares a critical perspective on the risks involved in the security adventure, also found in the works of authors like Nils Christie, Loïc Wacquant, and Zygmunt Bauman. The book addresses issues that are not unfamiliar to contemporary social theory. François Ewald (1991) had already suggested that in contemporary society, it is no longer about questioning the effects of penal sanctions but rather about organizing new forms of prevention and minimizing risks. Security would tend to minimize the impact of criminal law and justice. Justice would lose space and importance because punishment would become dysfunctional as it would not allow for the restoration of losses caused by crime. Insurance companies have become the reference for losses in the capitalist and financial system. Risk, a phenomenon measurable and preventable, has taken the place of accident, a natural and inevitable phenomenon. The issue of crime would involve prevention and repair, a matter related to actuarial science and