about

My work centers on understanding pathways to promote equity, justice, and wellbeing for people involved with the criminal legal system and their loved ones. A qualitative sociologist by training, I have extensive experience conducting research on topics such as the repercussive effects of incarceration on family relationships, the health care needs of women navigating intersectional disadvantage, and how systems perpetuate and intensify structural racism. During my employment at the University of California, San Francisco (2002-2011) and RTI International (2011-2025), I have been principal investigator, multiple principal investigator, or co-investigator on numerous studies funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) that combine qualitative and quantitative methods. I also have led the qualitative component of projects funded by Arnold Ventures and the MacArthur Foundation evaluating innovative approaches to decreasing the use of jails by diverting people from incarceration and increasing the use of pretrial release.

I am strongly invested in mentoring early-career researchers, including students who are the first in their family to attend college, family members of incarcerated people, and scholars who have been involved with the criminal legal system. From 2022-2023, my colleague Monica Sheppard and I co-directed the Emerging Equity Scholars program, which we designed in partnership with Lissette Saavedra and Johnna Christian as a belonging intervention to address othering in research careers.  In 2024 I was deeply honored to receive the Peterson-Krivo Mentoring Award, jointly awarded by the Crime, Law, and Deviance and the Sociology of Law sections of the American Sociological Association.

I began my career working for a non-profit organization that provided advocacy and support services for people who are incarcerated and their loved ones and I believe in strengthening the policy and programmatic relevance of research in the service of social justice. Currently, I serve on the advisory board of UnCommon Law, a non-profit organization that supports people navigating California’s discretionary parole process through trauma-informed legal representation, mental-health counseling, legislative and policy advocacy, and in-prison programming led by those who have been through the parole process themselves.

I am the author of Doing Time Together: Love and Family in the Shadow of the Prison (University of Chicago Press, 2008) and a co-author with Tasseli McKay, Christine Lindquist, and Anupa Bir of Holding On: Family and Fatherhood During Incarceration and Reentry (University of California Press, 2019). My work has been published in RSF: The Russell Sage Journal of Social Sciences, The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Gateways: International Journal of Community Research and Engagement, the Journal of Criminal Justice, and Critical Public Health, among other journals, and also has been translated for journals in Brazil, Argentina, France, and Portugal.