Heather Schoenfeld
Biographic Data
| ID | 230096 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Heather Schoenfeld |
| GIVEN NAMES | Heather |
| FAMILY NAME | Schoenfeld |
| SIGNATURE | SCHOENFELD H |
| AFFILIATIONS | Boston University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-2659-2027 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 18 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 197 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 18 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2006 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
Criminal justice as racialized organizations
Criminology has long grappled with the relationship between race/racism and the criminal justice system. In this article, we build on past critiques and demonstrate how scholars of the criminal legal system can use meso‐level theories of race/racism to better explain their findings, develop new insights, and pose new research questions. To this end, we introduce the theory of racialized organizations. Drawing examples from recent ethnographic stu…
Patchwork Protection
In recent years US prisons have failed to meet legally required minimum standards of care and protection of incarcerated people. Explanations for the failure to protect prisoners in the United States focus on the effects of the Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA) and lack of adequate external oversight. However, very little scholarship empirically examines how different systems of accountability for prisoners’ rights work (or do not work) togethe…
Leveraging the insights of depth
Objective This article identifies and explains the need for qualitative case studies of U.S. state‐level public policy and politics before providing researchers with a practical roadmap for how to proceed. Methods We first review relevant research from political science and sociology to establish the need for qualitative policy‐focused state‐level case study research. We then lay out a three‐stage approach for case study research design and data …
Katherine Beckett, Ending Mass Incarceration
Early 21st century penal reform
This manuscript uses data drawn from case studies of New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Illinois, and Michigan from 2000 to 2006 in order to examine how different states responded to mounting problems caused by mass incarceration. Lawmakers and penal administrators inherited correctional systems that had at least doubled in size over the previous decade and faced budgetary problems, overcrowded conditions, and federal litigation. When economic pressures a…
Same old song and dance? An analysis of legislative activity in a period of penal reform
After years of tough-on-crime politics and increasingly punitive sentencing in the United States, economic, political, and social shifts in the 21st century have created new opportunities for opponents of the penal status quo. By 2013, a majority of states had enacted some type of reform aimed at reducing prison populations. An emerging body of punishment and society scholarship seeks to understand the possibilities and characteristics of reform …
American Exceptionalism in Crime and Punishment
Building the Prison State
A Research Agenda on Reform
In the past 10 years, state legislatures from across the political spectrum have passed or considered reforms aimed at reducing prison populations. The breadth of reform challenges social science scholarship that views mass incarceration as "locked-in" by political, social, and economic forces and, as such, presents an important area of scholarly inquiry. In this article, I argue that new research on reform should be animated by a sociopolitical …
The delayed emergence of penal modernism in Florida
Recently, punishment scholars have challenged the dominant historiography of a relatively uncontested period of penal modernism or penal welfarism across the USA between the Second World War and the 1960s. However, scholarship has not yet explained why penal modernism failed to take hold in particular regions and states. Using the social history of punishment in Florida, I argue that penal modernism failed to take hold in Florida for three reason…
The Transformation of America's Penal Order
Comparative historical methods are used to explain the transformation of the U.S. penal order in the second half of the 20th century. The analysis of multiple state-level case studies and national-level narratives suggests that this transformation has three distinct, but interconnected, historical periods and reveals that the complex interaction between national and state-level politics and policy helps explain the growth in imprisonment between …
Evidence‐Based Policy and the Politics of Criminal Justice Reform
Putting politics in penal policy reform
Crime or insecurity
Mass Incarceration and the Paradox of Prison Conditions Litigation
In this article I examine how prison conditions litigation in the 1970s, as an outgrowth of the civil rights movement, inadvertently contributed to the rise of mass incarceration in the United States. Using Florida as a case study, I detail how prison conditions litigation that aimed to reduce incarceration was translated in the political arena as a court order to build prisons. Drawing on insights from historical institutionalist scholarship, I …
Médiation et droit pénal international
Les vingt dernières années ont vu les tribunaux chargés de juger les crimes de guerre devenir une réponse de plus en plus acceptée aux atrocités commises. Toutefois, pour voir l’univers des tribunaux de guerre avec les yeux des juristes internationaux, il faut prêter attention aux outils juridiques internationaux qui ont été forgés pour enquêter sur les crimes de guerre et les juger. Cela d’autant plus que ces tribunaux doivent respecter deux ens…
Crises extrêmes et institutionnalisation du droit pénal international
Extreme Crises and the Institutionalization of International Criminal Law The end of the Cold War has brought an increased legalization of the international sphere, particularly through the field of international criminal law. We examine how law has enjoyed this dominance through an institutional biography of the International Criminal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY). We find that through its own survival strategies, the Tribunal’s trajectory ge…
The Science of Human Rights, War Crimes, and Humanitarian Emergencies
Sociology can be an important disciplinary bridge between the study of what demographers call forced migration and mortality and what legal sociologists and criminologists understand as war crimes. The challenge is to develop a critically informed sociological synthesis that joins our understanding of the frequently politicized health and violence dimensions of what are also diplomatically called 'complex' humanitarian emergencies. The frequency …
Mass Incarceration and the Paradox of Prison Conditions Litigation
In this article I examine how prison conditions litigation in the 1970s, as an outgrowth of the civil rights movement, inadvertently contributed to the rise of mass incarceration in the United States. Using Florida as a case study, I detail how prison conditions litigation that aimed to reduce incarceration was translated in the political arena as a court order to build prisons. Drawing on insights from historical institutionalist scholarship, I …
The Transformation of America's Penal Order
Comparative historical methods are used to explain the transformation of the U.S. penal order in the second half of the 20th century. The analysis of multiple state-level case studies and national-level narratives suggests that this transformation has three distinct, but interconnected, historical periods and reveals that the complex interaction between national and state-level politics and policy helps explain the growth in imprisonment between …
The Science of Human Rights, War Crimes, and Humanitarian Emergencies
Sociology can be an important disciplinary bridge between the study of what demographers call forced migration and mortality and what legal sociologists and criminologists understand as war crimes. The challenge is to develop a critically informed sociological synthesis that joins our understanding of the frequently politicized health and violence dimensions of what are also diplomatically called 'complex' humanitarian emergencies. The frequency …
The delayed emergence of penal modernism in Florida
Recently, punishment scholars have challenged the dominant historiography of a relatively uncontested period of penal modernism or penal welfarism across the USA between the Second World War and the 1960s. However, scholarship has not yet explained why penal modernism failed to take hold in particular regions and states. Using the social history of punishment in Florida, I argue that penal modernism failed to take hold in Florida for three reason…
A Research Agenda on Reform
In the past 10 years, state legislatures from across the political spectrum have passed or considered reforms aimed at reducing prison populations. The breadth of reform challenges social science scholarship that views mass incarceration as "locked-in" by political, social, and economic forces and, as such, presents an important area of scholarly inquiry. In this article, I argue that new research on reform should be animated by a sociopolitical …
Putting politics in penal policy reform
Same old song and dance? An analysis of legislative activity in a period of penal reform
After years of tough-on-crime politics and increasingly punitive sentencing in the United States, economic, political, and social shifts in the 21st century have created new opportunities for opponents of the penal status quo. By 2013, a majority of states had enacted some type of reform aimed at reducing prison populations. An emerging body of punishment and society scholarship seeks to understand the possibilities and characteristics of reform …
Early 21st century penal reform
This manuscript uses data drawn from case studies of New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Illinois, and Michigan from 2000 to 2006 in order to examine how different states responded to mounting problems caused by mass incarceration. Lawmakers and penal administrators inherited correctional systems that had at least doubled in size over the previous decade and faced budgetary problems, overcrowded conditions, and federal litigation. When economic pressures a…
Crises extrêmes et institutionnalisation du droit pénal international
Extreme Crises and the Institutionalization of International Criminal Law The end of the Cold War has brought an increased legalization of the international sphere, particularly through the field of international criminal law. We examine how law has enjoyed this dominance through an institutional biography of the International Criminal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY). We find that through its own survival strategies, the Tribunal’s trajectory ge…
Crime or insecurity
Criminal justice as racialized organizations
Criminology has long grappled with the relationship between race/racism and the criminal justice system. In this article, we build on past critiques and demonstrate how scholars of the criminal legal system can use meso‐level theories of race/racism to better explain their findings, develop new insights, and pose new research questions. To this end, we introduce the theory of racialized organizations. Drawing examples from recent ethnographic stu…
Patchwork Protection
In recent years US prisons have failed to meet legally required minimum standards of care and protection of incarcerated people. Explanations for the failure to protect prisoners in the United States focus on the effects of the Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA) and lack of adequate external oversight. However, very little scholarship empirically examines how different systems of accountability for prisoners’ rights work (or do not work) togethe…
Leveraging the insights of depth
Objective This article identifies and explains the need for qualitative case studies of U.S. state‐level public policy and politics before providing researchers with a practical roadmap for how to proceed. Methods We first review relevant research from political science and sociology to establish the need for qualitative policy‐focused state‐level case study research. We then lay out a three‐stage approach for case study research design and data …
American Exceptionalism in Crime and Punishment
The Science of Human Rights, War Crimes, and Humanitarian Emergencies
Sociology can be an important disciplinary bridge between the study of what demographers call forced migration and mortality and what legal sociologists and criminologists understand as war crimes. The challenge is to develop a critically informed sociological synthesis that joins our understanding of the frequently politicized health and violence dimensions of what are also diplomatically called 'complex' humanitarian emergencies. The frequency …
Crises extrêmes et institutionnalisation du droit pénal international
Extreme Crises and the Institutionalization of International Criminal Law The end of the Cold War has brought an increased legalization of the international sphere, particularly through the field of international criminal law. We examine how law has enjoyed this dominance through an institutional biography of the International Criminal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY). We find that through its own survival strategies, the Tribunal’s trajectory ge…
Médiation et droit pénal international
Les vingt dernières années ont vu les tribunaux chargés de juger les crimes de guerre devenir une réponse de plus en plus acceptée aux atrocités commises. Toutefois, pour voir l’univers des tribunaux de guerre avec les yeux des juristes internationaux, il faut prêter attention aux outils juridiques internationaux qui ont été forgés pour enquêter sur les crimes de guerre et les juger. Cela d’autant plus que ces tribunaux doivent respecter deux ens…
Mass Incarceration and the Paradox of Prison Conditions Litigation
In this article I examine how prison conditions litigation in the 1970s, as an outgrowth of the civil rights movement, inadvertently contributed to the rise of mass incarceration in the United States. Using Florida as a case study, I detail how prison conditions litigation that aimed to reduce incarceration was translated in the political arena as a court order to build prisons. Drawing on insights from historical institutionalist scholarship, I …
Putting politics in penal policy reform
Crime or insecurity
Evidence‐Based Policy and the Politics of Criminal Justice Reform
The Transformation of America's Penal Order
Comparative historical methods are used to explain the transformation of the U.S. penal order in the second half of the 20th century. The analysis of multiple state-level case studies and national-level narratives suggests that this transformation has three distinct, but interconnected, historical periods and reveals that the complex interaction between national and state-level politics and policy helps explain the growth in imprisonment between …
The delayed emergence of penal modernism in Florida
Recently, punishment scholars have challenged the dominant historiography of a relatively uncontested period of penal modernism or penal welfarism across the USA between the Second World War and the 1960s. However, scholarship has not yet explained why penal modernism failed to take hold in particular regions and states. Using the social history of punishment in Florida, I argue that penal modernism failed to take hold in Florida for three reason…
A Research Agenda on Reform
In the past 10 years, state legislatures from across the political spectrum have passed or considered reforms aimed at reducing prison populations. The breadth of reform challenges social science scholarship that views mass incarceration as "locked-in" by political, social, and economic forces and, as such, presents an important area of scholarly inquiry. In this article, I argue that new research on reform should be animated by a sociopolitical …
Building the Prison State
Same old song and dance? An analysis of legislative activity in a period of penal reform
After years of tough-on-crime politics and increasingly punitive sentencing in the United States, economic, political, and social shifts in the 21st century have created new opportunities for opponents of the penal status quo. By 2013, a majority of states had enacted some type of reform aimed at reducing prison populations. An emerging body of punishment and society scholarship seeks to understand the possibilities and characteristics of reform …
American Exceptionalism in Crime and Punishment
Katherine Beckett, Ending Mass Incarceration
Early 21st century penal reform
This manuscript uses data drawn from case studies of New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Illinois, and Michigan from 2000 to 2006 in order to examine how different states responded to mounting problems caused by mass incarceration. Lawmakers and penal administrators inherited correctional systems that had at least doubled in size over the previous decade and faced budgetary problems, overcrowded conditions, and federal litigation. When economic pressures a…
Patchwork Protection
In recent years US prisons have failed to meet legally required minimum standards of care and protection of incarcerated people. Explanations for the failure to protect prisoners in the United States focus on the effects of the Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA) and lack of adequate external oversight. However, very little scholarship empirically examines how different systems of accountability for prisoners’ rights work (or do not work) togethe…
Leveraging the insights of depth
Objective This article identifies and explains the need for qualitative case studies of U.S. state‐level public policy and politics before providing researchers with a practical roadmap for how to proceed. Methods We first review relevant research from political science and sociology to establish the need for qualitative policy‐focused state‐level case study research. We then lay out a three‐stage approach for case study research design and data …
Criminal justice as racialized organizations
Criminology has long grappled with the relationship between race/racism and the criminal justice system. In this article, we build on past critiques and demonstrate how scholars of the criminal legal system can use meso‐level theories of race/racism to better explain their findings, develop new insights, and pose new research questions. To this end, we introduce the theory of racialized organizations. Drawing examples from recent ethnographic stu…
Political science (18 works) · Criminal Justice and Corrections Analysis (14 works) · Sociology (14 works) · Law (13 works) · Criminology (12 works) · Law (10 works) · Politics (10 works) · Crime Patterns and Interventions (9 works) · Prison (7 works) · State (computer science (6 works)