Limited Scopes of Repair: Black Reparations Strategies and the Constraints of Local Redress Policy
Elizabeth Jordie Davies, Jenn Jackson, and David Jonathan Knight. “Limited Scopes of Repair: Black Reparations Strategies and the Constraints of Local Redress Policy.” RSF Journal of the Social Sciences 10, no. 3 (June 2024), pp. 162-183 (Special Issue on Black Reparations) https://www.rsfjournal.org/content/10/3/162.full
Abstract: We consider two local reparations cases—the Evanston Restorative Housing Program and Chicago reparations for police torture survivors. We argue that the programs are shaped by the differing political opportunities, the local context, and the social location of their advocates given that one was constructed within government systems in Evanston and the other largely by grassroots organizers in Chicago. Furthermore, both programs are criticized to varying degrees as being exclusive in their design and implementation. We term this exclusion a process of deliberative marginalization, whereby some of the most vulnerable and most directly affected beneficiaries of a redress initiative are left out of deliberations and implementation decisions about the initiative’s design. Subsequently, this study shows both the promise and constraints of reparations policy at the level of local government.
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Movements Against Mass Incarceration Lab
READ MOREThe Movements Against Mass Incarceration Lab is a public sociology and human rights documentation project founded with a $1.7 million grant from the Mellon Foundation.
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Contesting the State: Embodied Threat and the Emergence of Prisoner Mobilization
READ MOREPrior studies cast U.S. imprisonment as politically demobilizing. This article complicates that proposition by exploring when, and how, threat under penal confinement leads people to mobilize. Using interviews with currently incarcerated and recently released men across three states, I show that although imprisonment generally fosters political inaction, collective mobilization does arise under certain conditions.
Recognition: Winner, 2026 Distinguished Contribution to Scholarship Article Award, ASA Section on Collective Behavior and Social Movements; Winner, 2026 Distinguished Article Award, ASA Sociology of Law Section; Runner-Up/Honorable Mention, 2026 Distinguished Article Award, ASA Section on Crime, Law, and Deviance; Runner-Up/Honorable Mention, 2026 Distinguished Contribution to Scholarship Article Award, ASA Political Sociology Section
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Carceral Passages: Coming of Age in Prison America
READ MOREImprisonment is recognized as routine in the lives of disadvantaged young men. Scholars center the impact of relatively brief prison experiences on postprison early adulthood, but this approach overlooks the many who are imprisoned for long periods. This study addresses this concern by analyzing interviews with African American and Afro-Latino men who were sentenced as youth and early adults to long prison terms. Prison-like conditions pervaded men’s life histories in ways that shaped how they made sense of incarceration and early adulthood.
Recognition: Winner, 2025 Distinguished Article Award, ASA Section on Crime, Law, and Deviance; Runner-Up/Honorable Mention, 2025 Outstanding Scholarly Contribution, ASA Section on Children and Youth
