scholar of place, race, and punishment
I am an urban sociologist who studies how state institutions (re)produce inequality through policing, punishment, and the organization of space. My current research projects examine prisons as place-based institutions that shape urban and suburban life. I am particularly interested in the spatial consequences, or secondary effects, of the criminal legal system, including how carceral expansion creates certain kinds of places. I rely on a range of methods and research designs, including computational approaches and spatial data analysis. I also draw on interdisciplinary scholarship, integrating insights from sociology, geography, demography, and urban studies. My work appears or is forthcoming in journals such as Social Problems, City & Community, and the Journal of Urban Affairs.
I am currently a Provostial Fellow in the Department of Sociology at Stanford University.
speciality areas
Urban and Suburban Sociology; Policing and Prisons; Social Control and Punishment; Race/Ethnicity; Housing and Social Policy; Quantitative and Spatial Methods
“The politics of police technology adoption in California”
- Recently published in the Journal of Urban Affairs
- In this paper, we examine the adoption of controversial new policing technologies that leverage information and communication technologies such as drones and body-worn cameras.
“Policing the California Outercity“
- Published in Social Problems
- Winner, Graduate Student Paper Award, Community and Urban Sociology Section, American Sociological Association
- In this paper, I elaborate on the concept of renter threat: increases in renters are associated with increases in police spending across a range of model specifications in suburbia.