Criminology

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:

This webinar features K-Sue Park, professor of law at Georgetown University Law Center.

Her scholarship examines the creation of the American real estate system and the historical connections between property law, immigration law, and American Indian Law. Previously, she was the Critical Race Studies Fellow at UCLA School of Law and an Equal Justice Works Fellow and staff attorney in El Paso. She received her J.D. from Harvard Law School and her Ph.D. in rhetoric from UC Berkeley.

Have questions? Please reach out to the DJSS Committee: Dr. Lee Cabatingan (lcabatin@uci.edu), Dr. Amanda Geller (agellers@uci.edu), and Juan R. Sandoval (jrsando1@uci.edu)

 Presented by UCI Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellow in Criminology, Law & Society, Lillian T. Jungleib.

Police use of force continues to be a problem, and communities across the nation are demanding reform that includes providing police with less violent tools and tactics. One option that is becoming popular is for law enforcement to collaborate with paramedics to use chemical restraints – drugs typically used in hospital settings to calm agitated patients – to subdue people detained by the police. While injecting people with sedatives might seem harmless, there are increasing reports that using chemical restraints in this manner is leading to significant injury and death.
What are the constitutional limits on medical professionals who ostensibly use “force” as part of a police seizure, albeit with drugs rather than guns or chokeholds? Does the use of sedatives by paramedics in pre-hospital settings that leads to physical harm or death constitute excessive force that violates the Fourth Amendment? This talk will explore these questions and offer legal and policy frameworks for police/paramedic partnerships that centers the health and safety of community members rather than the needs or convenience of law enforcement.