I thank Anthony Gregory for his thoughtful comments. They encourage deeper consideration of how liberalism has shaped law-and-order politics, an objective our books share.

First, Gregory claims my book expresses “ambivalence” about its proposed reforms, leaving readers uncertain about the path forward. I disagree with this characterization. The book proposes a combination of specific large-scale changes to the political economy and targeted institutional reforms to the carceral and regulatory states. I acknowledge the limitations of each approach out of a pragmatic understanding of their weaknesses and complementary strengths, not out of ambivalence. Smaller-scale institutional reforms, like creating new corporate crime divisions in the Justice Department, are insufficient as long-term fundamental solutions. But like hammering in a loose nail on a shaky railing, they can provide immediate stability and mitigate urgent problems pending the structural fix of installing something stronger. Meanwhile, the book remains unambiguous that only significant transformations in the political economy can fundamentally resolve the problems it identifies. Recognizing the short-term political unfeasibility of such changes is not ambivalence, but a realism accepting smaller reforms as incremental steps preceding harder-to-achieve systemic changes.

Next, Gregory probes my emphasis on rehabilitative and regulatory ideologies’ alignment with liberal individualism, suggesting that other “non-liberal, non-individualist policy traditions” may have also influenced some of the developments studied. As Dual Justice qualifies, my emphasis on these ideologies does not imply that they completely explain all aspects of carceral and regulatory development. Instead, the book draws lessons from studying various ways in which they have been politically leveraged in different contexts. For instance, rehabilitative ideology’s individualist orientation was clearly the prime influence on some developments, like the incorrigibility idea within indeterminate sentencing. But its significance was subtler elsewhere. Chapter 3 acknowledges that while convict leasing predated the rehabilitative turn and would have persisted without it, Southern lawmakers defended it as consistent with rehabilitative ideology’s systemic logic emphasizing natural incorrigibility. This highlights the ideology’s versatility in rationalizing myriad punitive policies and its unsuitability as a reform strategy.

Relatedly, Gregory observes that I do not fully explore how rehabilitative and regulatory ideologies interacted with some latter-twentieth-century transformations in American liberalism. While the book spotlights several critical moments in liberalism’s development, others were not prioritized, owing to the trade-offs involved in selecting policy case studies for the book. I agree with Gregory that assessing additional periods in liberalism’s development could provide valuable insights, even beyond the Nixon era he highlights. For instance, Lyndon Johnson signed the Crime Control and Safe Streets Act following his crime commission’s call for rehabilitation while expanding regulations on motor vehicle safety and financial lending, and Bill Clinton championed the 1994 Crime Bill while deregulating finance, telecommunications, and energy. While Dual Justice did not study these developments, its arguments offer a new perspective on how we can critically assess them.

Lastly, Gregory writes that the book carefully defines its key analytic terms but undertheorizes some ancillary concepts. Understandably, some briefly mentioned terms (e.g. “American racial capitalism”) receive limited treatment. However, he suggests I overgeneralize neoliberalism, an important concept in the latter chapters. I concur that the valorization of market logic and cost-efficiency considerations, which I emphasize, neither capture all dimensions of neoliberalism nor its various manifestations. I did not aim to comprehensively describe the neoliberal paradigm but emphasized these ideas because of their relevance for understanding the ideologies’ contemporary transformations, bipartisan appeal, and the resulting policy ironies explored in Dual Justice. For instance, risk assessments framed within bipartisan cost-efficiency formulations of rehabilitative ideology paradoxically justify the costly detention of high-risk inmates, while cost-efficiency arguments concerning regulation obscure how regulatory enforcement is revenue-producing. It is likely that other developments, like Clinton-era criminal justice and regulatory reforms, were influenced by other manifestations of neoliberalism not encompassed within the study’s scope.

I again thank Anthony Gregory for his sharp commentary. I hope that readers draw insights about American law-and-order politics by reading our books together.