Criminology

Abstract:

Extensive research finds that place-based investment reduces crime,

leading practitioners to propose it as an alternative to police-centered

policies. We explore another channel linking local investment to

crime—that police patrol is endogenous to the built environment-using

smartphone location data. Exploiting quasi-experimental variation in

HUD rules designating Qualified Census Tracts (QCTs), we find police

increase patrol in QCTs enough to explain all the observed violent

crime reduction. Police increase patrol more in neighborhoods with

more Black residents and fewer recently-built units. Our findings

highlight the importance of understanding police response to local

development before framing it as a substitute for policing.

Bio: Emily Owens is the Chair of the Department of Criminology,

Law, and Society at UC Irvine. She also holds a secondary appointment

in the Department of Economics. Professor Owens studies a wide range

of topics in the economics of crime, including policing, sentencing, and

the impact of local public policies on criminal behavior. Her research

examines how government policies affect the prevalence of criminal

activity as well as how agents within the criminal justice system,

particularly police, prosecutors, and judges, respond to policy changes.

Distinguished Professor Elizabeth Loftus is a featured speaker at the Nobel Prize Summit on a panel titled “Making Sense of Misinformation.”

Her talk is titled, “The Misinformation Effect.”

More information is available online.

This talk will examine the intersection of mass incarceration and mass child support enforcement in the contemporary U.S. Based on material from my new book, Prisons of Debt, I analyze how these state systems work together to create complex entanglements for formerly- incarcerated fathers--entanglements that lead to cycles of debt and punishment. Drawing on observations in child support courts across the country and interviews with 145 indebted fathers, I show how these cycles too often undermine familial wellbeing and relations of care and reciprocity. The talk also connects the criminalization of child support to conceptualizations of state hybridity, unraveling the cross-system linkages and legal interlacing that create prisons of debt.

Join the Urban Institute for a conversation on restrictive housing and how social science research and lessons from on-the-ground implementation can move reform forward. A controversial practice in corrections policy, restrictive housing typically isolates an incarcerated person to their cell for all but an hour per day, sometimes for months or years. Although correctional administrators often argue that restrictive housing makes facilities safer, research has shown it can result in a plethora of negative health outcomes in those who experience it.

This discussion pairs Keramet Reiter, a UCI professor of criminology, law & society with more than 20 years of experience researching solitary confinement, with Sara Sullivan, a US Department of Justice policy advisor who has worked with numerous corrections systems to reduce or eliminate the use of restrictive housing. The conversation will focus on how research and practice can come together to reform restrictive housing in prisons and jails.

SPEAKERS:

Keramet Reiter, Professor and Vice Chair of Criminology, Law, and Society, University of California, Irvine

Sara Sullivan, Senior Policy Advisor, US Department of Justice

David Pitts, Interim Associate Vice President and Senior Research Fellow, Urban Institute (moderator)

PRISON RESEARCH MEETS PRACTICE LECTURE SERIES

Brian D. Johnson, Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of Maryland, will be the featured speaker for the Department of Criminology, Law and Society's Colloquium series.

Johnson is the recipient of the American Society of Criminology (ASC) Ruth Shonle Cavan Young Scholar and the ASC Division on Corrections and Sentencing Distinguished New Scholar Awards. He is a recent co-Editor of Criminology and currently serves as the gubernatorial-appointed Criminal Justice Policy Expert on the Maryland State Commission on Criminal Sentencing. His research addresses issues related to social inequality in the criminal legal system, with a particular focus on racial disparities in prosecution and punishment. His published research appears in journals such as the American Journal of Sociology, Criminology, Journal of Quantitative Criminology and Justice Quarterly.

Jackson Smith, Chancellors Postdoctoral Fellow at tUCLA, will be the featured speaker. His talk is titled “Drug Nuisance Properties and Municipal Carceral Power in Philadelphia.”

Abstract: In 1991 Philadelphia prosecutors formed the Public Nuisance Task Force (PNTF) to shutter bars they accused of harboring narcotics activity. Between the early 1990s and the late 2010s the PNTF would go on to seize nearly 1,700 homes, most located in Black and Latinx neighborhoods devastated by decades of disinvestment. I explore how the PNTF’s targeting of drug nuisance properties transformed these neighborhoods into arenas for the projection of municipal carceral power. Prosecutors defended the unit’s work by claiming it remedied the harms associated with the criminalized distribution of narcotics. However, my research reveals how the PNTF’s home seizures ultimately exacerbated racialized disinvestment and reproduced racial segregation.  

Ana Flauzina, Chancellors Postdoctoral Fellow at UC Riverside, will explore how sexual violence forms a complex matrix of assault targeting Black communities in Brazil and the United States. Her talk is part of the Criminology, Law and Society's Colloquium series. 

In addition to being a historically durable method for brutalizing Black women's bodies, rape also constitutes a weapon in disarticulating Black communities en masse. That is, rape is materially responsible for the massacre of Black women’s bodies and is also a primary ideologicaldiscursive weapon of anti-Black genocide. The research methodology accounts for the formulations of Black feminist scholars as well as the primary testimonies of Black women survivors of sexual violence and terror. Facets of Anti-Black Genocide responds to a broad, diasporic demand for scholarship on anti-Black genocide that directly reflects Black women’s complex reflections on their bodily and spiritual exposure to gendered and sexualized terror.

Flauzina is a black activist and a legal scholar. Her publications include: “Corpo Negro Caído no chão: o sistema penal e o projeto genocida do Estado brasileiro” (Black Body on the ground: the penal system and the genocidal project of the Brazilian State) (2008) and “Utopias de Nós Desenhadas a Sós” (Utopias of Us) (2015).

Michelle Phelps, associate professor of sociology at the University of Minnesota, will present “From Police Reform to Police Abolition? How Residents and Activists in Minneapolis Want to Make Black Lives Matter” as part of the Criminology, Law and Society’s Colloquium series.

Abstract: The police killing of George Floyd in 2020 was a watershed moment, triggering massive protests across the country and demands to “end” the Minneapolis Police Department (MPD). I draw on a multi-method case study of anti-police violence activism and community perceptions of the police in Minneapolis from 2017-2021 to understand how activists, city leaders, and everyday residents frame the problems in policing and their potential solutions. The project findings highlight the enduring role of race/racism in shaping orientations toward the law and the future of public safety.

FREEBIE GIVE AWAY:

The first five graduate students from the School of Social Ecology to RSVP will receive a free copy of the book!

An outstanding Social Ecology alumnus, Dr. Matthew Valasik, will be presenting his latest book: Alt-Right Gangs: A Hazy Shade of White. It is one of the first books to conceptualize Alt-Right gangs and situate their existence across a broad range of academic literature and current events. This event will be a great opportunity for attendees to consider racism and whiteness through the lens of gang research. Students will also be able to engage in conversations with Dr. Valasik regarding career development and academic publications. Come socialize with your amazing peers in person after a year of quarantine while enjoying light refreshments!

All Social Ecology Graduate Students are welcome and encouraged to attend!

Bio: Dr. Matthew Valasik (UCI CLA 14') is an Associate Professor at Louisiana State University (LSU) in the Department of Sociology. His areas of expertise include criminology, gangs, white power movement (Alt-Right), policing, spatial analysis, and social networks.

The DJSS Committee is pleased to host Professor Thalia González as part of the Diversity & Justice Speaker Series (DJSS).

She will be presenting her talk, “Antiracism and Health Equity: Exploring the Relationship between Exclusionary School Discipline Law and Politics, Negative Health Outcomes, and Lifelong Hardships for Students of Color” on April 19, 2021, from 1 to 2:30 p.m., via Zoom.

González is an associate professor of politics at Occidental College. A nationally recognized interdisciplinary legal scholar, she explores contemporary theoretical and empirical questions at the intersection of law, society, inequality and public systems. A core theme within her portfolio of work is the examination of how restorative justice operates within law and policy to examine disproportionality, structural inequality, and systematic harm. González has been recognized for her excellence in teaching at Occidental, and currently holds an appointment as a Senior Scholar in the Center on Poverty and Inequality at Georgetown University Law Center.

Abstract: