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

Jasmine D. Hill

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Jasmine D. Hill is an Assistant Professor of Public Policy and Sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles. She is a sociologist whose scholarship focuses on racial inequality and social mobility for Black Americans. Her current work explores the mechanisms that lift communities of color out of poverty and the ramifications of upward mobility for Black families. Jasmine’s scholarship has been published in top journals such as Social Problems, Teaching Sociology, The Journal of Cultural Economy, and in 2017 she co-edited Inequality in the 21st Century with David B. Grusky (Westview Press). As a publicly engaged scholar, she’s also authored several influential research briefs for policymakers, surveying topics like race, intimate partner violence, and tactics to eliminate extreme poverty.

Her scholarly contributions have been recognized and awarded by the Washington Center for Equitable Growth, the Society for the Study of Social Problems, the American Sociological Association, and the Stanford Center for the Comparative Study of Race & Ethnicity. Because of her expertise on matters related to race, inequality, and the labor market, Jasmine is regularly called to design and evaluate anti-racism initiatives with organizations like the Annenberg Foundation, Blue Shield of California Foundation, University of California Students Association, and numerous corporate partners like Soylent, Dollar Shave Club and PocketWatch.

Her work and advocacy have garnered attention from TIME Magazine, The Los Angeles Times, and Cheddar News. Jasmine maintains an active speaking, facilitating, and training schedule – working with universities, foundations, nonprofit organizations, and corporations to increase racial equity in our economy. She received her B.A. in Communication Studies from UCLA and she holds a Ph.D. in Sociology from Stanford University. More information can be found at jasmine-hill.com.

 

Term Course Location Level
Winter 2023 Qualitative Methods UCLA Public Policy Graduate-Level
Spring 2023 Labor Policy and Racial Inequality UCLA Public Policy Graduate-Level

 

Marques Vestal

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Marques Vestal is an Assistant Professor of Urban Planning and Critical Black Urbanism. He serves as a Faculty Advisor for Million Dollar Hoods, a community-driven and multidisciplinary initiative documenting the human and fiscal costs of mass incarceration in Los Angeles. He also serves as a historical consultant for the Luskin Center for History and Policy. Marques is a tenant of Los Angeles and a member of the South Central local of the Los Angeles Tenants Union.

Marques is an urban historian studying the social history of residential property in Black Los Angeles during the rebellious twentieth century. His work links property conflict—the everyday contracts, solicitations, complaints, lawsuits, and murders over property—to broader transformations of real estate, urban development, and Black liberation. He argues that this space of incessant conflict is the unwritten housing policy of the United States.

Marques’ research interests are broad, but center on the twentieth-century experience of a few key political relations to land: property, housing insecurity, municipal incapacity, and racial capitalism. Having witnessed, archivally and firsthand, the violence of Los Angeles’ rental housing markets, he is dedicated to projects that advance social housing and horizontal tenant governance.

 

Publications

Marques Vestal and Andrew Klein, “What we should have learned from L.A.’s long history of homelessness,” Los Angeles Times, February 22, 2021. https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2021-02-22/homelessness-encampments-shelter-los-angeles-history

Kirsten Moore-Sheeley et. al. “The Making of a Crisis: A History of Homelessness in Los Angeles,” UCLA Luskin Center for History and Policy. https://luskincenter.history.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/66/2021/01/LCHP-The-Making-of-A-Crisis-Report.pdf. (February 2021)

Lytle Hernandez, Kelly and Marques Vestal. “Million Dollar Hoods: A Fully-Loaded Cost Accounting of Mass Incarceration in Los Angeles,” Radical History Review. http://www.radicalhistoryreview.org/

Katz, Alisa with Peter Chesney, Lindsay King, and Marques Vestal. “People Are Simply Unable to Pay Rent: What History Tells Us About Rent Control in Los Angeles,” White Paper. Luskin Center for History and Policy, University of California, Los Angeles. (October 2018)

Adam Millard-Ball

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Adam Millard-Ball is Professor of Urban Planning at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs and director of the UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies. His research and teaching are about transportation, the environment, and urban data science. Trained as an economist, a geographer, and an urban planner, he analyzes the environmental consequences of transportation and land-use decisions, and the effectiveness of policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. His research uses large-scale geospatial data analysis as well as econometric and qualitative methods.

For more details about Dr. Millard-Ball’s teaching and research, please visit his website. Note that he is on sabbatical for the 2023-24 academic year.

Kelly Lytle Hernandez

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Kelly Lytle Hernandez is a professor of History, African American Studies, and Urban Planning at UCLA where she holds The Thomas E. Lifka Endowed Chair in History. She is also the Director of the Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies at UCLA. One of the nation’s leading experts on race, immigration, and mass incarceration, she is the author of the award-winning books, Migra! A History of the U.S. Border Patrol (University of California Press, 2010), and City of Inmates: Conquest, Rebellion, and the Rise of Human Caging in Los Angeles (University of North Carolina Press, 2017). City of Inmates recently won the 2018 James Rawley Prize from the Organization of American Historians, 2018 Athearn Prize from the Western Historical Association, the 2018 John Hope Franklin Book Prize from the American Studies Association, and the 2018 American Book Award. Currently, Professor Lytle Hernandez is the Director and Principal Investigator for Million Dollar Hoods, a university-based, community-drive research project that maps the fiscal and human cost of mass incarceration in Los Angeles. The Million Dollar Hoods team won a 2018 Freedom Now! Award from the Los Angeles Community Action Network. For her leadership on the Million Dollar Hoods team, Professor Lytle Hernandez was awarded the 2018 Local Hero Award from KCET/PBS and the 2019 Catalyst Award from the South L.A. parent/student advocacy organization, CADRE. In 2019, Professor Lytle Hernandez was named a James D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Fellow for her historical and contemporary work.

For speaking requests, please contact Rolisa Tutwyler at CCMNT Speakers Bureau at info@ccmntspeakers.com

For media requests, please contact Jessica Wolf (UCLA Media Relations) at jwolf@stratcomm.ucla.edu

 

Awards

2010 Clements Prize for Migra! A History of the U.S. Border Patrol

Honorable Mention, 2011 Lora Romero First Book Prize, American Studies Association

Honorable Mention, 2011 John Hope Franklin Book Prize, American Studies Association

Finalist, 2011 First Book Prize from the Berkshire Conference of Women Historians

2007 Oscar O. Winther Award for the best article to appear in the Western Historical Quarterly.

2007 Bolton-Kinnaird Award for best article on the Spanish borderlands.

 

Selected Publications

“Hobos in Heaven: Race, Incarceration, and the Rise of Los Angeles, 1880 – 1910,” Pacific Historical Review v 83, n 3 (August 2014)

“Amnesty or Abolition: Felons, Illegals, and the Case for a New Abolition Movement,” Boom: A Journal of California (Winter 2011).

MIGRA! A History of the U.S. Border Patrol (University of California Press, 2010)

“An Introduction to el Archivo Histórico del Instituto Nacional de Migración,” co-authored with Pablo Yankelevich, Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies v 34, n 1 (Spring 2009), 157-168.

“Persecuted Like Criminals”: The Politics of Labor Emigration and Mexican Migration Controls in the 1920s and 1930s,” Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies v 34, n 1 (Spring 2009), 219-239.

“The Crimes and Consequences of Illegal Immigration: A Cross-Border Examination of Operation Wetback, 1943-1954,” Western Historical Quarterly (Winter 2006), 421-444.

“Ni blancos ni negros: mexicanos y el papel de la patrulla fronteriza estadounidense en la definición de una nueva categoría racial, 1924-1940,” Cuicuilco v 11, n 31 (Mayo-Agosto 2004): 85-104.

Mexican Immigration to the United States, 1900 – 1999: A Sourcebook for Teachers, published by the National Center for History in the Schools (Fall 2002).

Judith L. Perrigo

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Judith (Judy) Perrigo is an Assistant Professor in the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs Social Welfare Department. Additionally, she serves as the Research Director for the Data Informed Futures (DIF) project at the UCLA Center for Healthier Children, Families, and Communities and assumes the role of Social Work Training Director within the UCLA Leadership Education in Neurodevelopmental Disabilities (LEND) clinic. Drawing from over two decades of clinical experience working with children and families in Los Angeles County, her scholarship and teaching revolve around prevention and early intervention (PEI) strategies aimed at addressing societal challenges, particularly those impacting early childhood.

 

Dr. Perrigo specializes in advancing holistic wellbeing for young children aged birth to 5 years. Her research encompasses various facets of early childhood, including mental health, socio-emotional development, early educational experiences, access to public services, and economic security. Her overarching objective is to identify both protective and risk factors contributing to childhood wellbeing, such as systemic challenges like socioeconomic and ethnoracial disparities and inequities. She approaches this goal through the lens of equitable PEI strategies and utilizes a range of research methodologies, including qualitative, mixed-methods, and quantitative approaches, thoughtfully selected to align with the unique demands of each research inquiry.

 

Her research agenda can be divided into two primary streams. The first focuses on transforming early childhood ecosystems, while the second delves into the impact of policies on families with young children facing poverty and material hardships. Among Dr. Perrigo’s ongoing research projects is a series of descriptive studies examining holistic wellbeing trends among kindergarten populations across the United States. These studies encompass facets such as physical and mental health, socio-emotional skills, and cognitive development. Another notable project is a multi-year, randomized controlled trial testing the impacts of guaranteed income receipt on early childhood development and various aspects of material hardship and poverty. Additionally, Dr. Perrigo is involved in research examining the experiences of young neurodivergent children within medical, mental health, and educational systems.

 

Dr. Perrigo is also deeply committed to collaborating with and serving communities to tackle local, social needs that can be explored through research. A key facet of her commitment lies in making sure that research findings are strengths-oriented, culturally humble, and accessible to a broad range of audiences. Support for her work comes from the Society for Research in Child Development, First 5 Orange County, Conrad N. Hilton Foundation, the Council on Social Work Education, and Los Angeles County.

 

In addition to her scholarship, Dr. Perrigo places a strong emphasis on engaging and mentoring student research collaborators. She teaches courses on social welfare practice and infant and early childhood mental health. Her teaching approach highlights the historical and structural forces that underlie both oppression and opportunity. Through her collaborative guidance, students develop practical, meaningful, and pertinent knowledge and skills that resonate within the realm of social justice and welfare.

Tranishia James

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Tranishia James is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker. Her interests are in cultural issue, eliminating racial disproportionately and disparity in the child welfare system, trauma informed social work practice and assisting at-risk adolescents with attaining higher education. 

 

As a Practicum Education Consultant with the California Social Work Education (Cal-SWEC) program, Tranishia works with first and second year students training them to become professional public child welfare social workers and is involved in recruiting child welfare candidates. 

 

Prior to coming to UCLA, Tranishia worked with children and families in L.A. County Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) for 10 1/2 years. She was a supervisor in Emergency Response (child abuse investigations); as well as a Coach Developer, teaching skills development trainings for Supervisors and Children’s Social Workers. While at DCFS, Tranishia also worked as a Practicum Instructor training/supervising UCLA and USC social work interns. 

José Loya

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José Loya is an Assistant Professor in Urban Planning at UCLA’s Luskin School of Public Affairs and faculty affiliate with the Chicano Studies Research Center. His research addresses Latino issues in urban areas by connecting ethno-racial inequality and contextual forces at the neighborhood, metropolitan, and national levels. His research discusses several topics related to stratification in homeownership, including ethno-racial, gender, and Latino disparities in mortgage access. José received his PhD. at the University of Pennsylvania in Sociology and holds a master’s degree in Statistics from the Wharton School of Business at Penn. Prior to graduate school, José worked for several years in community development and affordable housing in South Florida.

Kirsten Schwarz

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Kirsten Schwarz is an urban ecologist working at the interface of environment, equity, and health. Her research focuses on environmental hazards and amenities in cities and how their distribution impacts minoritized communities. Her work on lead contaminated soils documents how biogeophysical and social variables relate to the spatial patterning of soil lead. Her research on urban tree canopy has revealed large scale patterns related to income and tree canopy as well as historical legacies that impact this relationship. Most recently, Dr. Schwarz led an interdisciplinary team working on a community-engaged green infrastructure design that integrated participatory design and place-based solutions to realizing desired ecosystem services.

Her expertise in science communication and engaging communities in the co-production of science was recognized by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) naming her a Fellow in the Leshner Leadership Institute in the Center for Public Engagement with Science and Technology. Dr. Schwarz’s research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, AAAS, and the University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources.

Dr. Schwarz has a BA in Human Ecology from College of the Atlantic and a Ph.D. in Ecology from Rutgers University. Prior to joining UCLA, she was an Associate Professor of Environmental Science at Northern Kentucky University where she directed their Ecological Stewardship Institute.

Selected Publications:

Schwarz, K., A. Berland, and D.L. Herrmann. 2018. Green, but not just: Rethinking environmental justice outcomes in shrinking cities. Sustainable Cities and Society 41:816-821.

Ossola, A., L.A. Schifman, D.L. Herrmann, A.S. Garmestani, K. Schwarz, and M.E. Hopton. 2018. The provision of urban ecosystem services throughout the private-social-public domain: a conceptual framework. Cities and the Environment 11(1): Article 5.

Herrmann, D.L., W-C Chuang, K. Schwarz, T.M. Bowles, A.S. Garmestani, W.D. Shuster, T. Eason, M.E. Hopton, C.R. Allen. 2018. Agroecology for the shrinking city. Sustainability 10(3):675.

Cutts, B.B., J.K. London, S. Meiners, K. Schwarz, and M.L. Cadenasso. 2017. Moving dirt: Soil, lead and the unstable politics of urban gardening. Local Environment 22(8):998-1018.

London, J.K., K. Schwarz, M.L. Cadenasso, B.B. Cutts, C. Mason, J. Lim, K. Valenzuela-Garcia and H. Smith. 2017. Weaving community-university research and action partnerships for environmental justice. Action Research 16(2):173-189.

Schwarz, K., R.V. Pouyat, and I. Yesilonis. 2016. Legacies of lead in charm city’s soil: Lessons from the Baltimore Ecosystem Study. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health 13(2):209.

Herrmann, D.L., K. Schwarz, W.D. Shuster, A. Berland, B.C. Chaffin, A.S. Garmestani, and M.E. Hopton. 2016. Ecology for the shrinking city. BioScience 66(11):965-973.

Schwarz, K., B.B. Cutts, J.K. London, and M.L. Cadenasso. 2016. Growing gardens in shrinking cities: A solution to the soil lead problem? Sustainability 8(2):141.

Cutts, B.B., D. Fang, K. Hornik, J.K. London, K. Schwarz and M.L. Cadenasso. 2016. Media frames and shifting places of environmental (in)justice: a qualitative historical geographic information system method. Environmental Justice 9(1):23-28.

Berland, A., K. Schwarz, D. L. Herrmann, M.E. Hopton. 2015. How environmental justice patterns are shaped by place: terrain and tree canopy in Cincinnati, Ohio, USA. Cities and the Environment 8(1):Article 1.

Schwarz, K., M. Fragkias, C.G. Boone, W. Zhou, M. McHale, J.M. Grove, J. O’Neil-Dunne, J.P. McFadden, G.L. Buckley, D. Childers, L. Ogden, S. Pincetl, D. Pataki, A. Whitmer, and M.L. Cadenasso. 2015. Trees grow on money: urban tree canopy cover and environmental justice. PLoS ONE 10(4).

Zhou, W., M.L. Cadenasso, K. Schwarz, and S.T.A. Pickett. 2014. Quantifying spatial heterogeneity in urban landscapes: integrating visual interpretation and object-based classification. Remote Sensing 6(4):3369-3386.

Schwarz, K., K.C. Weathers, S.T.A. Pickett, R.G. Lathrop, R.V. Pouyat, and M.L. Cadenasso. 2013. A comparison of three empirically based, spatially explicit predictive models of residential soil Pb concentrations in Baltimore, Maryland USA: understanding the variability within cities. Environmental Geochemistry and Health 35(4):495-510.

Schwarz, K., S.T.A. Pickett, R.G. Lathrop, K.C. Weathers, R.V. Pouyat, and M.L. Cadenasso.  2012. The effects of the urban built environment on the spatial distribution of lead in residential soils. Environmental Pollution 163:32-39.

Osmond, D.L., N.M. Nadkarni, C.T. Driscoll, E. Andrews, A.J. Gold, S.R. Broussard Allred, A.R. Berkowitz, M.W. Klemens, T.L. Loecke, M.A. McGarry, K. Schwarz, M.L. Washington and P.M. Groffman. 2010. The role of interface organizations in science communication and understanding. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 8(6):306-313.

Boone, C.G., M.L. Cadenasso, J.M. Grove, K. Schwarz, and G.L. Buckley. 2010. Landscape, vegetation characteristics, and group identity in an urban and suburban watershed: why the 60s matter. Urban Ecosystems 13(3):255-271.

Zhou, W., K. Schwarz, and M.L. Cadenasso. 2010. Mapping urban landscape heterogeneity: agreement between visual interpretation and digital classification approaches. Landscape Ecology 25(1):53-67.

Cadenasso, M.L., S.T.A. Pickett, and K. Schwarz. 2007. Spatial heterogeneity in urban ecosystems: reconceptualizing land cover and a framework for classification. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 5(2):80-88.

Grove, J.M., M.L. Cadenasso, W.R. Burch, Jr., S.T.A. Pickett, K.Schwarz, J. O’Neil-Dunne, M. Wilson, A. Troy, and C.Boone. 2006. Data and methods comparing social structure and vegetation structure of urban neighborhoods in Baltimore, Maryland. Society and Natural Resources 19:117-136.