criminal justice

Incarcerated Women and the Transition to Adulthood

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Enactment of adult roles such as parenthood, marriage, and employment has been tied to desistance (the slowing down or cessation of offending behavior) but little is known about how incarcerated women conceptualize these roles in the first place. Drawing on 35 in-depth interviews with incarcerated women, supplemented by mail correspondence with a sub-sample of these women, I explore how incarcerated women interpret their early life-course experiences when reflecting on their transition to adulthood and, subsequently, their views on adult roles and responsibilities. The women’s narratives indicate that early experiences with trauma, along with premature entries into adult roles, result in a difficult transition to adulthood. I argue that women’s accelerated transitions to adulthood shape their views on adult roles, pointing to a need to incorporate discussions of age-normative timetables in efforts to assist at-risk and incarcerated women.

Deportation Discretion: Where are County Jails Most Likely to Cooperate with Federal Immigration Officials?

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In 2008, the Secure Communities enforcement program extended deportation capacity throughout the nation by creating greater cooperation between federal, state, and local law enforcement. However, despite claims that the program would help enforce immigration law in a neutral manner, evidence from the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) own data reveal that deportations were much more common in some locations than in others. Examining program data between 2008 and 2013 across 2,669 counties, I found that counties with the smallest (less than 20 percent) and largest (over 40 percent) concentrations of Hispanic and Latinx residents would routinely turn noncitizens over for deportations. By contrast, counties with 20-40 percent Hispanic and Latinx residents were least likely to cooperate with DHS. Notably, ‘sanctuary’ designation did not necessarily translate into tangible protections for noncitizen arrestees. This disparity in enforcement has profound implications for the supposed impartiality of U.S. immigration policy.

Criminal and Immigration Laws Shape Health Outcomes of Racial and Ethnic Minorities

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Over the last several decades, criminal and immigration laws in the United States have disproportionately burdened marginalized racial and ethnic minorities such as African Americans and Latinos. This policy brief reviews the sociological and public health research on the health effects of various criminal and immigration laws, policies, and practices. We argue that scholars and policy makers should understand the law as a fundamental cause of health disparities operating through two broad mechanisms: (1) primary effects on those who hold a stigmatized legal status; and (2) spillover effects on racial and ethnic in-group members, regardless of their own legal status.  We conclude that the massive expansion of punitive legal control should be treated as a public health crisis. To address this, policy should reduce the material and stigmatic burdens of criminal and immigration statuses on those directly impacted, as well as their legally-unmarked families and communities.