Identity
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Identity factors such as race, gender, socioeconomic status, and cultural background can influence interactions in the criminal legal space. Studying these identity factors and understanding disparities helps implement reforms and promote equity.
Associated Researchers
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Gloria Gonzalez-Lopez
Gloria González-López holds the C.B. Smith Sr. Centennial Chair # 1 in US-Mexico Relations, and is Professor of Sociology at The University of Texas at Austin. Her sociological research focuses on the areas of sexuality, gender, Mexican American and Mexican studies, and social inequality. In her more current research project, she conducted an in-depth sociological examination of incest and other forms of sexualized contact (i.e., voluntary and involuntary) within the context of the family in Mexican society. Her primary methodological approach is ethnographic, and she also has a special interest in engaging in multidisciplinary conversations on self-care, and the ethical and methodological issues and concerns researchers encounter while conducting research on dangerous, sensitive, and/or controversial issues. Lastly, she has a special interest in exploring ways in which feminist-informed epistemologies and methodologies in the social sciences have the potential to facilitate individual and collective healing, and social justice through dialogue with emerging critical theories of feminism and engaged research across disciplines.
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Peniel Joseph
Peniel Joseph holds a joint professorship appointment at the LBJ School of Public Affairs and the History Department in the College of Liberal Arts at The University of Texas at Austin. He is also the founding director of the LBJ School's Center for the Study of Race and Democracy (CSRD). His career focus has been on "Black Power Studies," which encompasses interdisciplinary fields such as Africana studies, law and society, women's and ethnic studies, and political science. Prior to joining the UT faculty, Dr. Joseph was a professor at Tufts University, where he founded the school's Center for the Study of Race and Democracy to promote
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Hannah Walker
Dr. Hannah L. Walker is an associate professor of Government at the University of Texas at Austin. Her research examines the impact of the criminal justice system on American democracy with special attention to minority and immigrant communities. She is currently a visiting scholar at the Russell Sage Foundation (2023-2024). Her book, Mobilized by Injustice (available through Oxford University Press), explores the impact of experiences with the criminal justice system on political engagement.
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Talitha LeFlouria
Talitha L. LeFlouria is Associate Professor of History and Fellow of the Mastin Gentry White Professorship in Southern History at the University of Texas at Austin. She earned her Ph.D. in US History at Howard University and has held positions with the Frederick Douglass National Historic Site (National Park Service) and the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center in Washington, DC. She is the author of Chained in Silence: Black Women and Convict Labor in the New South (UNC, 2015), the first history of Black, working-class incarcerated women in the post-Civil War period. She is currently finishing her second single-authored book, Searching for Jane Crow: Black Women and Mass Incarceration in America from the Auction Block to the Cell Block (forthcoming from Beacon Press). The Carnegie Corporation supported this project with a prestigious Andrew Carnegie fellowship.
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Monica M. Martinez
Monica Muñoz Martinez is an award winning author, teacher, and public historian. She received her PhD in American Studies from Yale University and her AB from Brown University. She offers courses in US history, Texas history, Latinx history, Mexican American history, borderlands history, women and gender history, public history, digital humanities, and civil rights history. Martinez is the primary investigator for Mapping Violence: Racial Terror in Texas 1900-1930, a digital project that recovers histories of racial violence in Texas. The multifaceted project includes a digital archive of histories of racial violence, research for each documented case, curated content (including digital tours and historical essays), and an interactive map. The project documents multiple forms of violence (at the hands of law enforcement, US soldiers, and vigilantes) that targeted multiple racial and ethnic groups.
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Eric McDaniel
Professor McDaniel is a Professor in Department of Government and the co-director of the Politics of Race and Ethnicity Lab. He specializes in racial and ethnic politics, religion and politics and health policy. His book, Politics in the Pews: The Political Mobilization of Black Churches, provides an explanation for why some Black churches choose to engage the political world while others do not. His work in health policy examines how citizens interpret government involvement in treating health epidemics and how political empowerment can reduce health disparities. Currently, he is working on a project examining what people believe their religion calls upon them and the political and social consequences of these beliefs. Additionally, he is working on projects related concerning religious freedom and the role of religion in shaping health behavior and health policy attitudes.
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Abigail Weitzman
Dr. Weitzman is an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology and a research affiliate of the Population Research Center and the Long Institute for Latin American Studies at the University of Texas. Her research examines two interrelated questions linking social psychology and demography: how do expectations and desires influence the timing and nature of important events in people’s lives, cumulatively shaping demographic patterns and population health? And, reciprocally, how do shifting demographic circumstances influence desires, expectations, and behaviors in ways that determine individuals' health outcomes and trajectories?
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Chantal Hailey
Chantal Hailey is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Texas at Austin. Her research is at the intersections of race and ethnicity, stratification, urban sociology, education, and criminology. She is particularly interested in how micro decision-making contributes to larger macro segregation and stratification patterns and how racism creates, sustains, and exacerbates racial, educational, and socioeconomic inequality. To understand these processes, she employs a range of methodologies, from quantitative analysis of administrative and survey data to qualitative interviews and experiments.
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Michael Roy Hames García
Michael Hames-García studies and teaches about inequalities of race, class, gender, sexuality and disability in the criminal justice system from policing and criminal courts to incarceration and reentry. His current research considers the attitudes, motivations, and experiences of people engaged with overseeing local law enforcement. Police oversight is resisted by police unions as enfeebling and derided by abolitionists as concessionary; yet it has been touted as the gold standard for policing reform since the 1967 Kerner Commission. In addition to extensive archival data, the research draws from in-depth, semi-structured interviews with officials (independent auditors, internal affairs investigators, city bureaucrats, and local politicians), volunteers (police commissioners and review board members), and others (activists, attorneys, and journalists) who participate in community oversight of police and sheriff’s departments. The first phase of the research uses data (including around 50 interviews) from a mid-sized city in the northwestern United States, while the second will include about twice as many interviews from one of the nation’s most populous counties.
