Sherod Thaxton

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Sherod Thaxton is Professor of Law at the UCLA School of Law, and former Faculty Director of the David J. Epstein Program in Public Interest Law and Policy. He also holds secondary appointments in the Department of Public Policy at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, and in the Departments of African American Studies and Sociology at the UCLA College of Letters and Sciences. Professor Thaxton teaches Business Crime, Capital Punishment, Criminal Adjudication, Criminal Law, Federal White Collar Crime, Habeas Corpus and Introduction to Legal Analysis. His scholarships centers on quantitative empirical legal studies, with a substantive focus on criminal law, criminal procedure, and the sociology of crime and punishment. Prior to joining UCLA, he taught at the University of Chicago Law School and worked as a federal public defender in Northern California.

After receiving his undergraduate degree in political science from the University of California at Davis, Professor Thaxton enrolled in the sociology program at Emory University and studied under the direction of Robert Agnew. While pursuing his graduate studies, he was the principal investigator of the Death Penalty Tracking Project for the Office of the Multi-County Public Defender in Atlanta, Georgia. At Emory, he earned his master’s and doctoral degrees—specializing in criminology and social psychology. He received his law degree from the University of Chicago Law School where he was a John M. Olin Fellow in Law and Economics, an Academy of Achievement student honoree, and a Public Interest Law Prize recipient. He was also an editor of the University of Chicago Law Review and the University of Chicago Legal Forum. Prior to law school, he was a Soros Justice Postgraduate Fellow at the Open Society Institute of the Soros Foundation and a Law and Social Science Doctoral Fellow at the American Bar Foundation.

 

Bibliography
Articles and Chapters

Shrinking the Accountability Deficit in Capital Charging, in Oxford Handbook of Prosecutors, 565 (edited by Russell Gold, Kay Levine & Ronald Wright, Oxford University Press, 2021). Full Text

How Not to Lie About Affirmative Action, 67 UCLA Law Review 834 (2020). Full Text

Metrics of Mayhem: Quantifying Capriciousness in Capital Cases, in The Eighth Amendment and its Future in a New Age of Punishment, 266 (edited by Meghan Ryan & Will Berry, Cambridge University Press, 2020). Full Text

Reexamining the Link between Parental Knowledge and Delinquency: Unpacking the Influence of Adolescents’ and Parents’ Perceptions (with Heather Scheuerman & Jessica Grosholz), 40 Deviant Behavior 703 (2019). Full Text

When Criminal Coping is Likely: An Examination of Conditioning Effects in General Strain Theory (with Robert Agnew), 34 Journal of Quantitative Criminology 887 (2018). Full Text

Disentangling Disparity: Exploring Racially Disparate Effect and Treatment in Capital Charging, 45 American Journal of Criminal Law 95 (2018). Full Text

Disciplining Death: Assessing and Ameliorating Arbitrariness in Capital Charging, 49 Arizona State Law Journal 137 (2017). Full Text

Race, Place, and Capital Charging in Georgia, 67 Mercer Law Review 529 (2016). Full Text

Un-Gregg-ulated: Capital Charging and the Missing Mandate of Gregg V. Georgia, 11 Duke Journal of Constitutional Law & Public Policy 145 (2016). Full Text

Leveraging Death, 103 Journal of Criminal Law & Criminology 475 (2013). Full Text

Does Victimization Reduce Self-Control? A Longitudinal Analysis (with Robert Agnew, Jessica Grosholz, Deena Isom, Heather Scheuerman, and Lesley Watson), 39 Journal of Criminal Justice 169 (2011). Full Text

Do Frustrated Economic Expectations and Objective Economic Inequity Promote Crime? A Randomized Experiment Testing Agnew’s General Strain Theory (with Nicole Leeper-Piquero, Alex R. Piquero, and Cesar J. Rebellon), 6 European Journal of Criminology 47 (2009). Full Text

A General Strain Theory of Racial Differences in Criminal Offending (with Robert Agnew, Joanne M. Kaufman, and Cesar J. Rebellon), 41 Australian & New Zealand Journal of Criminology 421 (2008). Full Text

Determining ‘Reasonableness’ without a Reason? Federal Appellate Review Post-Rita v. United States, 75 University of Chicago Law Review 1885 (2008). Full Text

The Nonlinear Effects of Parental and Teacher Attachment on Delinquency: Disentangling Strain from Social Control Explanations (with Robert Agnew), 21 Justice Quarterly 763 (2004). Full Text

A General Strain Theory Approach to Families and Delinquency (with Robert Agnew and Cesar J. Rebellon), in Families, Crime and Criminal Justice, (edited by Greer L. Fox and Michael L. Benson, JAI Press, 2000). Full Text

Mark A.R. Kleiman

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Mark Kleiman died July 21, 2019. A memoriam to his life and career can be found here.

Mark Kleiman was Professor Emeritus of Public Policy in the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs and was employed at NYU at time of his death.

Mr. Kleiman was the author of Marijuana: Costs of Abuse, Costs of Control; of Against Excess: Drug Policy for Results;  and of When Brute Force Fails: How to Have Less Crime and Less Punishment, listed by The Economist as one of the “Books of the Year” for 2009.  Drugs and Drug Policy: What Everyone Needs to Know (co-authored with Jonathan Caulkins and Angela Hawken) was published in July 2011 by Oxford University Press. He edited the Journal of Drug Policy Analysis.

In addition to his academic work, Mr. Kleiman provided advice to local, state, and national governments on crime control and drug policy. Before he came to UCLA in 1995, he taught at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and at the University of Rochester. Outside of academia, he had worked for the U.S. Department of Justice (as Director of Policy and Management Analysis for the Criminal Division), for the City of Boston (as Deputy Director for Management of the Mayor’s Office of Management and Budget), for Polaroid Corporation (as Special Assistant to the CEO, Edwin Land), and on Capitol Hill (as a legislative assistant to Congressman Les Aspin). He graduated from Haverford College (magna cum laude, majoring in political science, philosophy, and economics) and did his graduate work (M.P.P. and Ph.D.) at the Kennedy School.

Mr. Kleiman blogged at The Reality-Based Community, at samefacts.org

SELECTED BOOKS & PUBLICATIONS

When Brute Force Fails
Since the crime explosion of the 1960s, the prison population in the United States has multiplied fivefold, to one prisoner for every hundred adults — a rate unprecedented in American history and unmatched anywhere in the world. Even as the prisoner head count continues to rise, crime has stopped falling, and poor people and minorities still bear the brunt of both crime and punishment. When Brute Force Fails explains how we got into the current trap and how we can get out of it: to cut both crime and the prison population in half within a decade.
Read more

Excess: Drug Policy for Results
Kleiman, M. Against Excess: Drug Policy for Results. New York: Basic Books, 1992. Kleiman, M.Marijuana: Costs of Abuse, Cost of Control. Greenwich, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1989.
Read more

Amada Armenta

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Amada Armenta’s research examines the connections between the immigration enforcement system and the criminal justice system, and the implications of this connection for immigrants, bureaucracies, and cities.

Her award-winning book, “Protect Serve and Deport: The Rise of Policing as Immigration Enforcement” (University of California Press, 2017), analyzes the role of local law enforcement agencies in immigration enforcement in Nashville, Tennessee. Currently, she is working on her second book project, an examination of the legal attitudes of unauthorized Mexican immigrants in Philadelphia.

Dr. Armenta’s research has been published in journals of sociology, law and society, and policy. She has received research funding from the American Sociological Association, the National Science Foundation, the American Society of Criminology, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Prior to joining Luskin as a faculty member, she was an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Pennsylvania.

Michael Lens

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Michael Lens is Professor of Urban Planning and Public Policy, Chair of the Luskin Undergraduate Programs, and Associate Faculty Director of the Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies. Professor Lens’s research and teaching explore the potential of public policy to address housing market inequities that lead to negative outcomes for low-income families and communities of color. This research involves housing interventions such as subsidies, tenant protections, and production. Professor Lens regularly publishes this work in leading academic journals and his research has won awards from the Journal of the American Planning Association and Housing Policy Debate.

In ongoing research, Professor Lens is studying the neighborhood context of eviction, the role of charter schools in neighborhood change, and is engaged in multiple projects (with Mike Manville and Paavo Monkkonen) concerning housing supply in California. Lens is also working on a book project that examines fifty years of neighborhood change in Black neighborhoods following the 1968 Fair Housing Act.

Professor Lens’s research has received funding from the MacArthur Foundation, the Arnold Foundation, and the Terner Center for Housing Innovation, among other sources.

Professor Lens teaches courses on quantitative analysis, poverty and inequality, community development, housing policy, and research methods.

For an appointment, please send an email.

SELECTED BOOKS & PUBLICATIONS

It’s Time to End Single-Family Zoning
Journal of the American Planning Association (Forthcoming)
With Michael Manville and Paavo Monkkonen
Download file

Extremely Low-Income Households, Housing Affordability and the Great Recession
Urban Studies 55(8): 1615-1635
Download file

Spatial Job Search, Residential Job Accessibility, and Employment Outcomes for Returning Parolees
Demography 54: 755-800
With Naomi Sugie
Download file

Employment Proximity and Outcomes for Moving to Opportunity Families
Journal of Urban Affairs 39(3): 547-562
With C.J. Gabbe
Download file

Job Accessibility Among Housing Subsidy Recipients
Housing Policy Debate 24(4): 671-691
Best Paper of 2013-14, Housing Policy Debate
Download file

The Impact of Housing Vouchers on Crime in U.S. Cities and Suburbs
Urban Studies 51(6): 1274-1289
Download file 

The Limits of Housing Investment as a Revitalization Tool: Crime in New York City
Journal of the American Planning Association 79(3): 211-221
Best Article of 2014, Journal of the American Planning Association
Download file

Safe, but Could be Safer: Why do Voucher Households Live in Higher Crime Neighborhoods?
Cityscape 15(3): 131-152
Download file

Subsidized Housing and Crime: Theory, Mechanisms, and Evidence
Journal of Planning Literature 28(4): 352-363
Download file

American Murder Mystery Revisited: Do Housing Voucher Households  Cause Crime?
Housing Policy Debate, 22(4): 551-574
Download file

Do Vouchers Help Low-Income Households Live in Safer Neighborhoods? Evidence on the Housing Choice Voucher Program (with Ingrid Gould Ellen and Katherine O’Regan)
2011, Cityscape, 13(3): 135-159
Download file

Laura Abrams

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Professor Abrams’ scholarship focuses on improving the well-being of youth and adults with histories of incarceration. Her ethnographic studies have examined youths’ experiences of criminality, risk, and institutions seeking to reshape their identities. These themes are considered in her first book Compassionate Confinement: A Year in the Life of Unit C (Rutgers University Press, 2013). Her second book Everyday Desistance: The Transition to Adulthood Among Formerly Incarcerated Youth (Rutgers University Press, 2017), examines how formerly incarcerated young men and women navigate reentry and the transition to adulthood in the context of urban Los Angeles. She has published over 100 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters, and is the editor of two edited volumes: The Voluntary Sector in Prisons (Palgrave, 2016); and The International Handbook of Youth Imprisonment (Palgrave, 2021). She also partnered with Professor Laura Wray-Lake to produce a recent SCRD monograph entitled Pathways to Civic Engagement Among Urban Youth of Color.

 

Dr. Abrams is currently involved in several studies concerning the youth and adult criminal legal systems and reentry, locally and globally. Her study of youth justice models in four countries examined how issues of age, maturity, and culpability are constructed in law and practice. A mixed methods study of very young offenders, incarceration, health, and public policy led to a state bill in California barring juvenile justice jurisdiction in for youth under age 12; a model that is spreading nationally. Dr. Abrams is currently fielding a study on reentry, health, and social networks among young people aged 18-25 from Los Angeles County jails and along with PI Dr. Elizabeth Barnert, is the co-director of the UCLA Life Course Intervention Research Network – Youth Justice Node. She is also working with a national team to examine life after “juvenile life without parole” in the United States.

 

In the community, Dr. Abrams has served as an expert witness for death row appeals and in cases involving minors fighting their fitness to be tried as adults. She has provided public and congressional testimony regarding treatment in the juvenile justice system, the reentry needs of youth, and effective practices for the reintegration of reentry youth into the community.

 

Dr. Abrams’ work and opinions have been cited in a range of news media including the Washington Post, the New York Times and NPR, among others. She has received numerous awards for her scholarship, including the SSWR best scholarly book award (2020) and the Frank R. Bruel prize for the best published article in Social Service Review (2013). In 2020 Dr. Abrams was inducted as a member of the American Academy for Social Work and Social Welfare. In 2022, she received the inaugural UCLA Public Impact award and was inducted into the UCLA Faculty Mentoring Honor Society .

 

Professor Abrams teaches the following courses: SW 211B: Human Behavior and the Social Environment II; SW 229: The Craft of Social Welfare Scholarship; SW249: Qualitative Methods; and SW 290T: Juvenile Justice Policy.

 

You can follow Dr. Abrams on Twitter or the Facebook page for the Social Welfare Chair

 

Recent News Releases and Media Interviews:

Vera Institute of Justice: Everyday Desistance

Growing Pains of Formerly Incarcerated Youth 

GPS Rules Send California Juveniles Into a Jail Cycle

Jailed Indiana Teens Reach a Crossroads

MPR News On Abuse in a Private Juvenile Facility

Seeking Justice for Juveniles

More Protections for Juvenile Offenders are Before California Legislators

Take Two: Is Jail for Juveniles Effective in Preventing Future Crime?

Juvenile Arrests Plunged Last Year, why?

Expanding rehabilitation Programs under Federal Decree- NPR

The California Report: NPR

Jorja Leap

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Jorja Leap has been a member of the Social Welfare Department faculty at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs since 1992 and serves as the Executive Director of the UCLA Social Justice Research Partnership. As a social worker/anthropologist and recognized expert in gangs, violence, and systems change, she develops, coordinates and directs real-life scholarly efforts that involve research, evaluation and policy recommendations at the local, state and national level. Dr. Leap has worked nationally as well as globally in post-war environments and settings beset by violence throughout her career, applying a multi-disciplinary, community-based approach to her research and capacity building efforts. Her current work focuses on gangs and community justice in multi-cultural settings, criminal justice and prison reform, and the dilemmas faced by individuals reentering society after incarceration, including women, a group often overlooked.

Dr. Leap has served as policy advisor on Gangs and Youth Violence for Los Angeles County, as an expert reviewer on gangs for the National Institute of Justice, and as the Clinical Director of the Watts Regional Strategy for the Los Angeles Mayor’s Office.  In addition, she has worked as the qualitative research director for the Los Angeles Mayor’s Office Gang Reduction Youth Development (GRYD) Program.  She has also been appointed to the State of California, Board of State and Community Corrections (BSCC), Standing Committee on Gang Issues. Through work she has engaged at the national level, she is now the Evaluation and Research Director for the Community Based Public Safety Collective.

Alongside these efforts, she has served as an expert witness in local, state ,and federal judicial proceedings, focusing on gangs, violence, and the relationships between trauma and criminalized behaviors. Additionally, Dr. Leap has authored a series of reports on gang membership, dynamics, and desistance in death penalty sentencing and plea mitigation procedures, appeals, habeas corpus hearings, and clemency proceedings.  Dr. Leap works to educate the court in understanding the nuances of gang activity and the trauma that underlies so much of its commission.  She continues to provide commentary on numerous television, radio and newspaper stories about gangs.

Currently, Dr. Leap is the lead researcher for the White House Community Violence Intervention Collaborative. Additionally, she is engaged in a five year, longitudinal evaluation of Homeboy Industries, the largest gang reentry program in the world, integrating UCLA undergraduate and graduate students in this ground-breaking research. She is the co-founder of the UCLA Watts Leadership Institute, working closely with the community-based leaders of Watts as well as its nonprofit network to build capacity and ensure equity in the vibrant community she is honored to be part of.  Dr. Leap has authored numerous reports, chapters, and books, including Jumped In: What Gangs taught me about Violence, Drugs, Love and Redemption with all proceeds going to Homeboy Industries and Project Fatherhood: A Story of Courage and Healing in one of America’s Toughest Communities with all the proceeds going to Project Fatherhood.  Her latest book Entry Lessons: The Stories of Women Fighting for their Place, their Children and their Futures after Incarceration was published in 2022, with all proceeds going to Susan Burton and the A New Way of Life Reentry Program.    

 

Learn more about Dr. Leap’s work.

 

Downloads and other links:

Alternative Strategies to Reduce Gang Violence
Gangster Anthropologist
L.A. County Must Reform Outdated, Harmful Youth Probation Camp System
Successful Gang and Violence Prevention Strategies – Minority News
Gang Alternative Movement Gains Momentum – Discovery News
Behind the scenes with the gang strike force

 

Todd Franke

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Trained in social work and educational psychology, Professor Franke seeks to achieve a better understanding of, and improve the responsiveness of service systems in the fields of social services, education and health. Using cognitive theory to better define policy issues related to the integration of these two important fields, Dr. Franke’s research has focused in part on the impact of disability and chronic illness on school-age children. He is currently conducting a study, funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, on the use of personal assistance services for children with disabilities. In addition, Dr. Franke studies how adolescents solve social problems; urban mobility and its impact on children’s education and social development; and how to successfully integrate health and social services in school settings.

Dr. Franke is active in several local and regional efforts to restructure social services in the schools, helping to conceptualize planning and implementation and the design of evaluation measures in Los Angeles Unified School District, the country’s second-largest school district. He also serves as a consultant to local school districts for the preparation of funding proposals for Healthy Start, a state program to establish linkages between community social service agencies and schools. HIs primary work occurs at the intersection of youth violence (child welfare and gang involved youth) and education. In these areas he designs and undertakes evaluative research and has obtained over $9 million in research funding over the past 7 years. He is currently the Associate Director of the UCLA Center for Healthier Children, Families and Communities.

Dr. Franke has been involved with agencies that serve thousands of families representing unique geographic and cultural communities in California, particularly southern California counties. He recently prepared a report for the Los Angeles City Council which examines the measurement issues involved in assessing the success of gang-related and youth development prevention and intervention programs in the city. The link between involvement in the child welfare system and gang involvement is well documented. Dr. Franke is currently the Co-PI of the Best Start LA Initiative which aims to shape, strengthen and support five Los Angeles communities by building resources and providing access to activities that improve the well-being, development and care experienced by pregnant women, parents of newborns and children age 3 and under.

Dr. Franke was also the Principal Investigator for the First 5 LA-funded Partnership for Families Initiative, which is a secondary prevention initiative that is designed to prevent child maltreatment in vulnerable families. Dr. Franke has been the PI for the Small County Initiative, which was designed to systematically examine California’s efforts to build and enhance child abuse and neglect prevention efforts in 11 rural counties in northern California. Additionally, he has numerous years of experience in conducting cross-sectional and longitudinal research in the fields of education, child welfare and adolescent violence.