scholar of race, place, 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.
RECENT PUBLICATION
The politics of police technology adoption Journal of Urban Affairs
Who governs policing, one of the primary points of everyday contact between individuals and government? 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. Drawing on a new dataset tracking municipal adoption across several policing technologies in the state of California, we find that the strongest predictor of adoption across technology type is the number of sworn officers in a municipality. We also find evidence of spatial diffusion, with cities more likely to adopt technologies their neighbors have implemented. Our findings suggest that the influence of bureaucracies and geographic proximity warrant more attention in studies of local and urban politics. Read coverage here.
