William Garriott III

Biography

William Garriott is Professor and Chair of the Law, Politics, and Society Program at Drake University where he also serves as Director of the Center for the Humanities. He holds a Ph.D. in Anthropology from Princeton University and an M.T.S. from Harvard Divinity School. His research and teaching focus on the relationship between law, crime, and criminal justice, with specific interest in drugs, addiction, and policing.

He is the author of Policing Methamphetamine: Narcopolitics in Rural America as well as the edited collections Addiction Trajectories, Policing and Contemporary Governance, and The Anthropology of Police. A new book on marijuana (cannabis) legalization and criminal justice reform is forthcoming with The University of California Press as part of the California Series in Public Anthropology.

His work has appeared in journals such as Anthropological Theory and Law and Social Inquiry, where he previously served on the editorial board. His public-facing scholarship includes articles on cannabis legalization for The Conversation and a feature in the podcast Home Cooked: A Fifty Year History of Meth in America. He also testified before the Pennsylvania state legislature during committee hearings on cannabis legalization and social equity programs.

He is former coeditor-in-chief of PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review. He currently serves as coeditor of the book series, Police/Worlds: Studies in Security, Crime, and Governance with Cornell University Press.

Professor Garriott teaches courses in the core LPS curriculum as well as elective courses like Crime and Film, Drugs, Law, and Society, and Justice Reform.