Prison and Incarceration Research

Speaker: Isabel Anadon, Department of Sociology & Criminology

Discussant: Abigail Cooke, Department of Geography

Title: Profiting from Detention: Privatization and Immigrant Detention Facilities in the United States, 1980-2010

Abstract: During the late twentieth century, government investments in carceral infrastructures, such as prisons and jails, expanded steadily alongside increased funding and support for immigrant detention at the federal level. In line with the federal government’s broader commitment to privatization, the Department of Homeland Security in 2016 prioritized the use of private contractors to manage immigrant detention often alongside county jails. Similar to federal initiatives such as Secure Communities and the Criminal Alien Program, these contractual detention agreements extend immigrant detention far beyond traditional border regions into localities across the United States. This study examines the expansion of the immigrant detention regime since 1980 by centering the role of prisons and privatization to analyze how local community dynamics shape where immigrant detention facilities are sited. Using county-level data across four decades, I find that countries with an existing private prison are nearly three times more likely to open an immigrant detention facility compared to counties without a prison. Counties hosting detention facilities tend to have greater Hispanic/Latino populations and high school graduates. While these pattens are most pronounced across all counties, important regional variation-especially across rural and southern rural counties- underscores how the local context meditates and shapes the expansion of immigrant detention.

Speaker: Alexandra Harrington, School of Law

Discussant: Paul Feigenbaum, Department of English

Title: Broken Record: Revisiting the Crime in the Context of a Second Look

Abstract: This article identifies and critiques the problem of relying on a calcified narrative of the underlying crime in second-look proceedings. Second looks—resentencing and parole hearings, specifically—entail revisiting the appropriateness of a given punishment and, often, also revisiting the underlying crime of conviction.  This raises the question of what exactly defines the crime for the purposes of second-look review—and what the consequences of the answer might be for the individual seeking relief and for our perception of the criminal legal system. Is the crime simply the proven or pleaded mens rea and actus reus? Or does the narrative of the case developed at trial or through a plea colloquy or in a pre-sentence report hold significance? More often than not, the answer is the latter. This developed narrative tends to solidify as gospel—an unassailable truth. And any statement that deviates from this truth can be taken as evidence of incredibility, failure to accept responsibility, and lack of remorse that counsels against granting relief. Yet witnesses (and defendants) can lie or be mistaken; criminal cases proceed with incomplete information; and statements made for the purpose of securing a plea do not always match reality. The predicate of second-look proceedings is thereby inherently uncertain, potentially flawed, and shifting.

While a similar tension has been addressed in the context of actual or factual innocence claims, this article sheds light on a previously obscured problem: the problem for the person who did commit the crime, just not exactly in the way that has been memorialized at trial, in a plea, or in a pre-sentence investigation report. This tension between the calcified narrative of the crime and an individual’s experienced reality leaves the second-look applicant in an untenable position: contradict their own understanding of what happened and adopt a rendition of facts that has been set in stone at the original proceeding; or tell their truth and risk denial of relief. In so doing, the tension compromises the core purposes of taking a second look at a sentence. It further retrenches our belief in the infallibility of the criminal legal system and in its ability to search out the objective truth.  Recognizing these flaws, I argue, prompts an essential reform to how we conduct second-look proceedings: second looks ought to recognize the fallibility of—and on those grounds de-emphasize—the original narrative of the underlying crime.

Author: Allison Dwyer Emory, Department of Sociology & Criminology

Discussant: Michael Applegarth, School of Social Work

Title: Testing Reciprocal Pathways Between Jails and Distress in Non-Metropolitan Counties

Abstract: Jail incarceration in rural areas and small jurisdictions has continued to expand despite national decarceration trends, though the reason for this divergence and the implications of incarceration for non-urban communities is not well understood. This study tests three theoretical pathways linking county economic hardship and jail populations using data on county economic hardship, jail populations, and urbanicity from the Vera Institute of Justice. First, jail populations in rural counties may expand in response to economic distress and its correlated social problems. Second, the collateral consequences of jail incarceration may instead exacerbate economic hardship in counties. Finally, counties may turn to jails as an economic development strategy. If this works as intended, county economic distress could predict an expansion of jail capacity, which in turn could improve economic conditions. Preliminary findings provide strong evidence for the first pathway in rural counties, with significant heterogeneity by county urbanicity, but limited evidence for the other two theoretical pathways.

Abstract: Juvenile detention facilities face unique vulnerabilities during emergencies, yet systematic gaps exist in preparedness planning. Erie County, New York currently lacks a comprehensive, integrated emergency preparedness plan coordinating across agencies to protect incarcerated youth and staff during disasters including blizzards, extreme heat, wildfire smoke, and other hazards impacting Western New York. This project will assess disaster preparedness in juvenile detention facilities across New York State and co-develop an evidence-based emergency preparedness plan for Erie County's juvenile detention facility. Activities include statewide policy surveillance of preparedness plans across all juvenile facilities in New York, qualitative interviews with Erie County partners, and community resource mapping to identify preparedness gaps. The team will facilitate a two-day collaborative workshop with the Erie County Division of Youth Services, Department of Health, and Department of Homeland Security to identify priority hazards and co-develop an integrated plan. The project will procure emergency supplies and measure staff preparedness perceptions before and after implementation. Outcomes will include a comprehensive emergency preparedness plan, procured emergency supplies, publications on statewide preparedness gaps, and reports.

SPRING 2026 DETAILS FORTHCOMING. 
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• Monday, February 2, 2026
• Monday, March 2, 2026
• Monday, April 6, 2026
• Monday, May 4, 2026

Speaker: Veronica Horowitz (Sociology & Criminology) 

Title: “Shared Sorrow: Navigating Mass Grief in Incarceration"

Discussant: Christopher St. Vil (Social Work)

Abstract: Within the context of the small communities that develop in prison, the deaths of individuals integral to these communities echo heavily within the institution, resulting in mass grief. This paper draws on semi-structured interviews with 58 men imprisoned for the duration of the pandemic in an institution where over a dozen men died in a very short time. The term mass grief to describe the collective sorrow, loss, and sadness characterizing the experiences of the survivors. While grieving in prison is often complicated and repressed at the individual level, bereavement may take a different form when experienced collectively within a prison society.

Speaker: D. Michael Applegarth (School of Social Work)

Title: Reexamining the Sequential Intercept Model: Incorporating Theory, Practice Insights, and Social Work Perspectives

Discussant: Mala McCormick Department of Community Health & Health Behavior

Abstract: Persons with mental illness (MI) are disproportionately represented across the criminal legal system (CLS) and regularly experience worse outcomes when compared to persons without MI. The Sequential Intercept Model (SIM) is a framework used to display points of intervention in the CLS where individuals with behavioral health issues can be diverted to social support services or treatment in lieu of criminalization. As currently conceptualized, the SIM consists of several linear intercepts ranging from prevention of involvement with the CLS (i.e., pre-arrest) to community reentry and community supervision following incarceration. Each intercept presents an opportunity for interventions and policies to increase use of community alternatives to incarceration and critically examine current practices. However, gaps often exist in communication and collaboration between administrators, mental health professionals, community stakeholders, and other advocates across these intercepts - contributing to missed opportunities to divert or reduce individuals’ involvement in the CLS. The SIM is a valuable resource to numerous communities; yet, the linear nature of the model can fail to fully represent individuals’ journey through the CLS and the necessity of collaboration of stakeholders across the entire system. Additionally, the SIM is not theoretically based or empirically driven, but rather a roadmap of how the CLS operates. This paper seeks to reexamine the SIM and its intended objectives, propose a reimagined visualization of the framework, and incorporate relevant theory and practice insights. Further advancing the SIM requires identifying where social workers fit into this model, decentralizing the focus on criminal legal actors where appropriate, and infusing theory into how the model is conceptualized and implemented.

Speaker: Brian Whitener (Romance Languages & Literatures)

Title: "Abolitionisms at the Border"

Discussant: Isabel Anadon (Sociology & Criminology)

Abstract: This piece is a rough draft of the first chapter of a new book project, which will examine abolitionist movements and theory in a Hemispheric frame. In this chapter, I am putting prison and police abolition ideas into conversation with emerging work on border abolition. First, I make an argument for the importance of control of mobility as a historical, and necessary, feature of capitalism, which I do by examining how much contemporary discourse on migration has a “hydraulic” imaginary. Second, I demonstrate how the control of mobility has served as a material support for multiple processes of racialization. While much anti-capitalist work on migration locates racializing processes at the boundary between formally free and coerced labor, I argue that the fixing or forced circulation of populations has historically served as a critical site where the racializing work of linking beliefs and practices takes place. Following from this, I argue for thinking of bordering devices as complex techno-juridical infrastructures which underpin capitalist control of mobility and as devices for fixing bodies in space and inciting them into movement. Finally, the chapter closes with a set of reflections on the political horizons this chain of concepts opens for us.

Jarrett M. Drake (Africana and American Studies)

Title: Angels of Angola: Fascism and Slavery in the Deep South (Chapter 3: Touch)

Discussant: Veronica Horowitz, Sociology & Criminology

Abstract: This chapter from my in-progress book manuscript explores how prisons steal time, money, and flesh from non-imprisoned people and demonstrates how traditions of Black captive love work to restore relationships disrupted by regimes of anti-Black alienation.

Andrea Pitts (Comparative Literature) presents “Health Empires Behind Bars: Carceral Humanism and the Rise of Correctional Medicine" 

Victoria Piehowski (Sociology & Criminology) will be the discussant.

Abstract: Drawing from the prescient calls to action of radical organizations like the Young Lords of the 1970s, this presentation seeks to examine how health care and carceral industries have become intertwined. Starting with medical oversight of prisons and jails beginning in the mid-1970s, this presentation outlines the institutionalization of medical industries within carceral facilities. It argues that a post-civil rights era of medical racism has become further obfuscated under the terms of what James Kilgore and others describe as “carceral humanism.” According to Kilgore, “Carceral humanism recasts the jailers as caring social service providers.” This presentation thereby seeks to address the deep rift between humanist reforms and abolitionist projects, as the former seeks to address forms of suffering within existing institutional apparati, while the latter calls for the formation of new social and institutional configurations to end punishment industries altogether.