BOOKS
Arresting Citizenship: The Democratic Consequences of American Crime Control
University of Chicago Press 2014
Amy E. Lerman & Vesla M. Weaver
Winner of the Dennis Judd Best Book in Urban Politics Award
Never before has American government exhibited so strong an urge to punish, and so vast a network of institutions dedicated to the control, confinement and supervision of its citizens. Citizen contact with criminal justice is unmatched in American history and around the world. How does our view of American democracy change once we account for the growth of its punitive apparatus? How do citizens experience government and democratic citizenship when the most visible face of the state is punitive?
In this book, we argue that the modern criminal justice system embodies a set of values that are antithetical to democratic norms.
Through the detailed narratives of over one hundred custodial citizens, along with careful analyses of large-scale survey data, we demonstrate that contact with police, courts, prisons and jails produces a “carceral lifeworld”—a particular sense of the state, conception of citizenship, and orientation toward the democratic polity. The result of criminal justice contact is decreased trust in political institutions and a reduced faith that the state will respond to the will of the people. Worse, custodial citizens not only disengage and feel disempowered, they actively fear and avoid interactions with government.At the same time, contact with criminal justice shapes citizens’ racial transcripts, constructing ideas not only about blacks in custody, but about the condition of blacks in America—perceptions of their worth, standing, and citizenship. Blacks who undergo law enforcement interventions are more pessimistic about racial equality in America.
Our focus is not simply criminal justice as a distinct policy domain, separable from American governance more broadly. Our inquiry must instead also prompt us to revisit core assumptions about the character of the American state and the increasingly defining role of its least democratic institutions. Our central claim is that the growth of criminal justice has fundamentally recast the citizen-state relationship.
Read a key findings brief about Arresting Citizenship on the Scholars Strategy Network. Review from Prison Policy Institute. Review in American Journal of Sociology. Review in the American Prospect.
Princeton University Press 2012
Jennifer L. Hochschild, Vesla M. Weaver & Traci Burch
The American racial order—the beliefs and practices that organize relationships among the nation’s many races and ethnicities—is undergoing its greatest transformation since the 1960s. Creating a New Racial Order takes a groundbreaking look at the reasons behind this dramatic change, from the late twentieth century to today, and considers what parts of the American population have been affected. Through original analysis, revealing narrative, and striking research, the authors show that the personal and political choices of Americans will be critical to how the racial hierarchy is redefined in decades to come.
The authors examine the components that make up a racial order and focus on the specific mechanisms influencing shifting demographics in the United States: immigration, multiracialism, genomic science, and generational change. Cumulatively, these mechanisms increase heterogeneity within each racial or ethnic group, and decrease the distance separating groups from each other. The authors show that individuals are moving across group boundaries and that genomic science is challenging the whole concept of race. Economic variation within groups is increasing and the traditional hierarchy of whites on the top and blacks at the bottom is breaking down. Above all, young adults understand and practice race differently from their elders: their formative memories are 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, and Obama’s election—not civil rights marches, riots, or the early stages of immigration.
Portraying a vision, not of a post-racial America, but of a different racial America, Creating a New Racial Order examines how the structures of race and ethnicity are altering a nation.
Named a Choice Outstanding Academic Title for 2012.
Read the Introduction to CNRO.
Read a review of CNRO by Rogers Smith.
ARTICLES
Black-Led Political Mobilization and the US Carceral State: How Tracing Community Struggles for Safety Transforms the Policing Narrative with D. Knight, Annual Review of Criminology, 8 (2025): 25-52.
Why Black Demands for Public Safety Leads to More Police and Prisons – A Conversation between Elizabeth Hinton and Vesla Weaver. The Notebook. Vol. 1 (2024). https://www.justicehappenshere.yale.edu/the-notebook
“They Make Money Off Chaos”: Understanding Racially Extractive Police Regimes through a Subjugated Lens with M. Chaudhary & G. Prowse, Journal of Urban Affairs 46.8 (2024): 1570-1594.
“Beyond the Ballot Box: A Conversation About Democracy and Policing in the United States.” Jefferson, Hakeem, José Luis Gandara, Cathy J. Cohen, Yanilda M. González, Rebecca U. Thorpe, and Vesla M. Weaver. Annual Review of Political Science 26 (2023): 1-32.
“Racial Inequality in Punishment and Policing in the United States: A Report,” Inequality Uncovered Project, Lipman Center for Journalism on Civil and Human Rights, Columbia Journalism School. (with D. Knight, 2023).
A People’s Abolition: How policed communities describe and enact liberatory futures with M. Chaudhary & G. Prowse, Social Science Quarterly 102.7 (2022): 3058-3072. [in Freedom Dreams Symposium].
My Group or Myself? How Black, Latino, and White Americas Choose a Neighborhood, Job, and Candidate when Personal and Group Interest Diverge with Jennifer Hochschild and Spencer Piston. Perspectives on Politics.
Racial Authoritarianism in U.S. Democracy with Gwen Prowse. Science.
Withdrawing and Drawing In: Political Discourse in Policed Communities with Gwen Prowse and Spencer Piston. Journal of Race, Ethnicity, and Politics.
De-Policing America’s Youth: Disrupting Criminal Justice Policy Feedbacks That Distort Power and Derail Prospects with Amanda Geller, ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science.
The State from Below: Distorted Responsiveness in Policed Communities with Gwen Prowse and Tracey Meares. Urban Affairs Review.
Too Much Knowledge, Too Little Power: An Assessment of Political Knowledge in Highly Policed Communities with Spencer Piston and Gwen Prowse, Journal of Politics. Supplemental Online Appendix.
The Great Decoupling: The Disconnection Between Criminal Offending and Experience of Arrest Across Two Cohorts with Andrew Papachristos and Michael Zanger-Tishler. RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences.
Police Are Our Government: Politics, Political Science, and the Policing of Race-Class Subjugated Communities with Joe Soss, Annual Review of Political Science.
Political Consequences of the Carceral State with Amy Lerman, American Political Science Review.
Frontlash: Race and the Development of Punitive Crime Policy. Studies in American Political Development.
Destabilizing the American Racial Order with Jennifer Hochschild, Daedalus.
Is the Significance of Race Declining in the Political Arena? Yes, and No with Jennifer Hochschild, Ethnic and Racial Studies.
Staying Out of Sight? Concentrated Policing and Local Political Action with Amy Lerman, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science.
“There’s No One as Irish as Barack O’bama”: The Policy and Politics of American Multiracialism with Jennifer Hochschild, Perspectives on Politics. [Winner of the best paper award from the APSA Public Policy section]
Electoral Consequences of Skin Color: The “Hidden” Side of Race in Politics. Political Behavior Political Behavior.
The Skin Color Paradox and the American Racial Order with Jennifer Hochschild, Social Forces.
Between Reconstructions: Congressional Action on Civil Rights, 1890-1950 with Jeff Jenkins and Justin Peck, Studies in American Political Development.
CHAPTERS & ESSAYS
Policing Narratives in the Black Counterpublic, in The Ethics of Policing: An Interdisciplinary Perspective, B. Jones & E. Mendieta, NYU Press (2021): 149-178.
Learning From Ferguson: Welfare, Criminal Justice, and the Political Science of Race and Class with Joe Soss, APSA Taskforce on Racial and Class Inequalities in the Americas.
Black Citizenship and Summary Punishment: A Brief History to the Present, Theory and Event.
A Tradeoff Between Democracy and Deterrence? An Empirical Investigation of Prison Violence and Inmate Advisory Councils.* with Amy Lerman, in Democratic Theory and Mass Incarceration (I. Loader, A. Dzur, and R. Sparks, eds.)
Unhappy Harmony: Black Mass Incarceration in a “Postracial” Era* In Beyond Discrimination: Racial Inequality in a Post-Racial Era (F. Harris and R. Lieberman, eds.)
Embedding Crime Policy: The Law Enforcement Assistance Administration and the Growth of the Carceral State* In Living Legislation: Durability, Change and the Politics of American Lawmaking (J. Jenkins and E. Patashnik, eds.)
Race and Crime in American Politics: From Law and Order to Willie Horton and Beyond* with Amy Lerman. Oxford Handbook of Race, Ethnicity, Immigration, and Crime, Oxford University Press (S. Bucerius and M. Tonry, eds.)
The Carceral State and American Political Development* with Amy Lerman. Oxford Handbook of American Political Development, Oxford University Press (R. Lieberman, S. Mettler, and R. Valelly, eds.)
Racial Classification and the Politics of Inequality with Jennifer Hochschild. In J. Soss, S. Mettler, and J. Hacker, Remaking America: Democracy and Public Policy in an Age of Inequality.
*Essays without links are available at my Academia.edu site.
REVIEWS & SYMPOSIA
More security may actually make us feel less secure. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2018)
Detaining Democracy? Criminal Justice and American Civic Life With colleagues Jacob Hacker and Chris Wildeman, a convening to showcase new research exploring how punishment impacts the health of civic and political life in the United States. Papers and commentary were published in a special issue of the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science in Jan. 2014, including an introduction by us.
“The Condemnation of Blackness: Race, Crime and the Making of Modern Urban America” in Perspectives on Politics
Critical Trialogue: Arresting Citizenship, Caught, and The First Civil Right in Perspectives on Politics
The Untold Story of Mass Incarceration, book review of James Forman, Jr.’s Locking Up Our Own and John Pfaff’s Locked In, Boston Review
“Justice in America” in Public Opinion Quarterly