Research & Publications
My research covers a wide range of topics in criminal justice, broadly examining how politics, knowledge and social relations draw people into criminal justice contact, and shape their experiences. I am particularly interested in how contemporary criminal justice reform movements engage with expert knowledge in the context of political conflict. If you can’t access anything, please let me know— I am happy to share.
trauma discourse and Criminal Justice reform: veterans treatment courts
The US punishes violent crime more harshly than other affluent nations, driving mass incarceration and doing little to curb the country’s high rates of violence. Against this punitive trend in policy and practice, Veterans Treatment Courts (VTCs) provide military veterans with rehabilitation-focused supervision instead of incarceration. Through ethnography and discourse analysis, this study asks how the VTC campaign secured and implemented less punitive policies for veterans accused of violent crime. Core to this campaign’s success was its unique engagement with the resonant discourse of trauma. VTC advocates adapted combat trauma discourse to recontexualize causal stories of violent crime. This project enhances understanding of the parameters and possibilities of contemporary uses of trauma, particularly in the pursuit of justice reform. I am currently preparing a manuscript from this study entitled, “We broke ‘em, we fix ‘em: trauma discourse, Veterans Treatment Courts, and the politics of crime.”
Probation, sobriety, and social precarity
Forthcoming in Law & Social Inquiry, with co-author Prof. Michelle Phelps. Drawing on interviews with 166 adults on probation in Hennepin County, MN, in 2019, we argue that the coercive care of probation is structured by the broader project of controlling alcohol and drug use among the poor. Developing the concept of strong-arm sobriety, we show how the “criminal addict” trope undergirds the central processes of probation: treatment, testing, and revocation. We argue that strong-arm sobriety misreads structural precarity as the result rather than the cause of individuals’ choices. In doing so, strong-arm sobriety fails to address the circumstances that engender substance use and produces future subjects for coercive care.
Domestic violence: Punishment and therapy
“Under the Punitive Aegis: Dependency and the Family Justice Center Model.” Punishment & Society 24, no. 2 (April 1, 2022): 221–40. The San Diego Family Justice Center (FJC) model seeks to lessen the burden on domestic violence victims by co-locating social service agencies, law enforcement, and prosecution at one site. Shortly following the inception of the model in 2002, it gained widespread acclaim (and federal funding), spreading the model across the country. Using visual and textual discourse analysis, this paper examines the promotional and procedural material produced by proponents of the San Diego FJC model. FJC materials construct victimhood using discourses of crime control and therapeutic intervention. The resulting discursive formation is that of the passive, dependent battered woman, curable only through robustly punitive state intervention. In this way, FJC materials not only advance a distinct construction of victimhood but also a particular agenda for punishment policy. Extending Jonathan Simon’s arguments about the resonance of victim discourse in American politics, I argue that therapeutic discourse can bolster the effectiveness of punitive campaigns.
Bail and Care Work
Page, Joshua, Victoria Piehowski, and Joe Soss. “A Debt of Care: Commercial Bail and the Gendered Logic of Criminal Justice Predation.” RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences 5, no. 1 (February 1, 2019): 150–72. Among the institutions that link criminal justice and inequality in the United States, commercial bail remains one of the most important yet least understood. Each year, the bail industry extracts millions of dollars from lower-income Americans, disproportionately draining resources from poor communities of color. We draw on ethnographic research to explore how the bail system operates as a predatory social process, arguing that gender interacts with class and race to structure resource extraction in this field. Poor women of color are especially subject to bail predation because they are seen within the larger social organization of care as bearing primary responsibility for defendants. Gendered care work and emotional labor are thus central to the field’s logic of practice and to bail industry profits.
Protective orders as Pragmatic punitiveness
Horowitz, Veronica L., Ryan Larson, Allison Nobles, Victoria Piehowski, and Joshua Page. “Pragmatic Punitiveness: The Institutionalization of Criminal Domestic Violence Protection Orders.” Social & Legal Studies, November 29, 2021, 09646639211061848. This paper analyzes the implementation of a domestic violence law in Minnesota that, in 2006, made the violation of a Domestic Abuse No-Contact Order a felony-level offense. Since this legal change, the rate of conviction for Domestic Abuse No-Contact Order felonies skyrocketed with stark racial disparities among Black and Native American residents, relative to Whites. Analysis of case files reveals that Domestic Abuse No-Contact Order convictions result from a range of behaviors, from seemingly mutual contact between the defendant and protected party to serious physical violence. We argue that the Domestic Abuse No-Contact Order law facilitates pragmatic punitiveness for legal actors. It is easier for prosecutors to demonstrate contact occurred than to prove domestic assault. Yet, the penalty for a Domestic Abuse No-Contact Order is as severe as the penalties for other domestic abuse-related crimes in Minnesota. Thus, the Domestic Abuse No-Contact Order law enables prosecutors to respond forcefully to domestic violence while avoiding additional burdens on their time and resources.