Brittany Friedman
Biographic Data
| ID | 4179099 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Brittany Friedman |
| GIVEN NAMES | Brittany |
| FAMILY NAME | Friedman |
| SIGNATURE | FRIEDMAN B |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Southern California |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-8868-9134 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 18 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 86 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 18 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2015 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Review of “The Secrets of Silence
Police as Policymakers
Scholars of political representation have focused primarily on congruence between public preferences and enacted legislation, paying less attention to how policies are actually delivered by street-level bureaucrats in face-to-face encounters with citizens. This approach obscures the possibility that individuals may nonetheless have divergent perceptions of implemented policy that, in turn, inform their political attitudes. We examine this argumen…
Not Like Us—Black Women Scholars, Strategic Flourishing, and Breaking Free from the Burden of Institutional Transformation
This paper presents a critical dialogue between Black women scholars that examines how they navigate and resist institutional expectations while creating new pathways for survival and flourishing in academia. Drawing from in-depth conversations with Drs. Brittany Friedman and Kris Marsh, we explore how Black women scholars are actively rejecting the false burden of institutional transformation while developing innovative strategies for personal a…
Civil Lawfare
To offset rising mass incarceration expenses, states adopted strategies to increase revenue, including charging incarcerated individuals pay-to-stay fees, a per diem room and board charge for the cost of their incarceration. In several states, the collection of these fees is done through civil lawsuits where defendants are alleged to be unlawful consumers of state goods and resources resulting from their incarceration. We draw on the case of pay-…
Carceral Apartheid
Introduction to special issue on dismantling the shadow carceral state
Reforming the shadow carceral state
This article examines the repeal of prison pay-to-stay policies in the United States. We process-trace reform efforts in Illinois drawing from novel data retrieved through multiple FOIA requests to state agencies and public records searches. Our analysis reveals how lawmakers who advocated for reforming the shadow carceral state in 2016 and 2019 through repealing prison pay-to-stay repurposed penal logics they had once used punitively in the 1980…
Punishing Places
White Unity and Prisoner-Officer Alliances
The law enforcement badge is a prized possession for white supremacists. Broader patterns of alliances between law enforcement and civilian white supremacists are endemic to social order in the United States, both in free society and within prisons. Using archival methods on trusty systems in California prisons, I show the development of prisoner-officer alliances that reify the privileges of white power
The “Damaged” State vs. the “Willful” Nonpayer
which were implemented in the state of Illinois in 1981 through the Prisoner Reimbursement Act, The "Damaged" State vs. the "Willful" Nonpayer: Pay-to-Stay and the Social Construction of Damage, Harm, and Moral Responsibility in a Rent-Seeking Society a Pr il d. fer na ndes , Br it ta n y fr iedm a n , a nd ga Br iel a k ir k
What Is Wrong with Monetary Sanctions? Directions for Policy, Practice, and Research
Monetary sanctions are an integral and increasingly debated feature of the American criminal legal system. Emerging research, including that featured in this volume, offers important insight into the law governing monetary sanctions, how they are levied, and how their imposition affects inequality. Monetary sanctions are assessed for a wide range of contacts with the criminal legal system ranging from felony convictions to alleged traffic violati…
Theorizing Embodied Carcerality
Brittany Friedman proposes embodied carcerality as a conceptual tool for understanding the production of carceral subjects through reifying one’s physical representation as indistinguishable from a deviant object in her work on criminal justice imagery. She argues this reification process occurs through a series of interpersonal interactions, where a person’s outward representation (movement, speech, appearance) is perceived as inherently dangero…
Unveiling the Necrocapitalist Dimensions of the Shadow Carceral State
The expansion of monetary sanctions constitutes what Beckett and Murakawa describe as the “shadow carceral state,” where covert penal power is expanded through institutional annexation by blending civil, administrative, and criminal legal authority. A growing body of work on monetary sanctions has begun to dissect covert penal power by tracing increased civil and administrative pipelines to incarceration, civil financial alternatives to criminal …
Like if you Get a Hotel Bill”
Neoliberal governance has become a defining feature of our social world, fast‐tracking the commodification of human interaction, particularly within capitalist economies. Neoliberalism’s intensification of capitalist social relations shifted social institutions such as education, healthcare, and criminal justice to resemble profit‐oriented enterprises. A preeminent consequence of this shift for the administration of criminal justice is the rapid …
Toward a Critical Race Theory of Prison Order in the Wake of Covid-19 and Its Afterlives
In this article, I bridge critical sociological perspectives on penal institutions with insights from the sociology of disaster to advance a critical race theory of prison order in the wake of COVID-19 and its afterlives. Penal institutions officially categorize people as detainees, inmates, or prisoners in order to deliberately relegate human beings to a degraded social status, ultimately in service of an intentionally racist system. I theorize …
Who Pays for the Welfare State? Austerity Politics and the Origin of Pay-to-Stay Fees as Revenue Generation
Using a comparative historical analysis of legislative transcripts and primary and secondary historical documents in Illinois and Michigan, we trace the adoption of a largely understudied form of monetary sanction: pay-to-stay fees. Pay-to-stay fees are financial commitments imposed by the state on incarcerated individuals for the day-to-day cost of their incarceration. Our study identified two mutually constitutive bureaucratic motivations for t…
Statutory Inequality
Monetary sanctions mandated in state statutes include fines, fees, restitution, and other legal costs imposed on persons convicted of crimes and other legal violations. Drawing on content analysis of current legislative statutes in Illinois pertaining to monetary sanctions, we ask three questions: What are defendants expected to pay for and why? What accommodations exist for defendants' poverty? What are the consequences for nonpayment? We find t…
Dan Berger, Captive Nation
Statutory Inequality
Monetary sanctions mandated in state statutes include fines, fees, restitution, and other legal costs imposed on persons convicted of crimes and other legal violations. Drawing on content analysis of current legislative statutes in Illinois pertaining to monetary sanctions, we ask three questions: What are defendants expected to pay for and why? What accommodations exist for defendants' poverty? What are the consequences for nonpayment? We find t…
Like if you Get a Hotel Bill”
Neoliberal governance has become a defining feature of our social world, fast‐tracking the commodification of human interaction, particularly within capitalist economies. Neoliberalism’s intensification of capitalist social relations shifted social institutions such as education, healthcare, and criminal justice to resemble profit‐oriented enterprises. A preeminent consequence of this shift for the administration of criminal justice is the rapid …
The “Damaged” State vs. the “Willful” Nonpayer
which were implemented in the state of Illinois in 1981 through the Prisoner Reimbursement Act, The "Damaged" State vs. the "Willful" Nonpayer: Pay-to-Stay and the Social Construction of Damage, Harm, and Moral Responsibility in a Rent-Seeking Society a Pr il d. fer na ndes , Br it ta n y fr iedm a n , a nd ga Br iel a k ir k
What Is Wrong with Monetary Sanctions? Directions for Policy, Practice, and Research
Monetary sanctions are an integral and increasingly debated feature of the American criminal legal system. Emerging research, including that featured in this volume, offers important insight into the law governing monetary sanctions, how they are levied, and how their imposition affects inequality. Monetary sanctions are assessed for a wide range of contacts with the criminal legal system ranging from felony convictions to alleged traffic violati…
Who Pays for the Welfare State? Austerity Politics and the Origin of Pay-to-Stay Fees as Revenue Generation
Using a comparative historical analysis of legislative transcripts and primary and secondary historical documents in Illinois and Michigan, we trace the adoption of a largely understudied form of monetary sanction: pay-to-stay fees. Pay-to-stay fees are financial commitments imposed by the state on incarcerated individuals for the day-to-day cost of their incarceration. Our study identified two mutually constitutive bureaucratic motivations for t…
Toward a Critical Race Theory of Prison Order in the Wake of Covid-19 and Its Afterlives
In this article, I bridge critical sociological perspectives on penal institutions with insights from the sociology of disaster to advance a critical race theory of prison order in the wake of COVID-19 and its afterlives. Penal institutions officially categorize people as detainees, inmates, or prisoners in order to deliberately relegate human beings to a degraded social status, ultimately in service of an intentionally racist system. I theorize …
Introduction to special issue on dismantling the shadow carceral state
Reforming the shadow carceral state
This article examines the repeal of prison pay-to-stay policies in the United States. We process-trace reform efforts in Illinois drawing from novel data retrieved through multiple FOIA requests to state agencies and public records searches. Our analysis reveals how lawmakers who advocated for reforming the shadow carceral state in 2016 and 2019 through repealing prison pay-to-stay repurposed penal logics they had once used punitively in the 1980…
Dan Berger, Captive Nation
Statutory Inequality
Monetary sanctions mandated in state statutes include fines, fees, restitution, and other legal costs imposed on persons convicted of crimes and other legal violations. Drawing on content analysis of current legislative statutes in Illinois pertaining to monetary sanctions, we ask three questions: What are defendants expected to pay for and why? What accommodations exist for defendants' poverty? What are the consequences for nonpayment? We find t…
Who Pays for the Welfare State? Austerity Politics and the Origin of Pay-to-Stay Fees as Revenue Generation
Using a comparative historical analysis of legislative transcripts and primary and secondary historical documents in Illinois and Michigan, we trace the adoption of a largely understudied form of monetary sanction: pay-to-stay fees. Pay-to-stay fees are financial commitments imposed by the state on incarcerated individuals for the day-to-day cost of their incarceration. Our study identified two mutually constitutive bureaucratic motivations for t…
Theorizing Embodied Carcerality
Brittany Friedman proposes embodied carcerality as a conceptual tool for understanding the production of carceral subjects through reifying one’s physical representation as indistinguishable from a deviant object in her work on criminal justice imagery. She argues this reification process occurs through a series of interpersonal interactions, where a person’s outward representation (movement, speech, appearance) is perceived as inherently dangero…
Unveiling the Necrocapitalist Dimensions of the Shadow Carceral State
The expansion of monetary sanctions constitutes what Beckett and Murakawa describe as the “shadow carceral state,” where covert penal power is expanded through institutional annexation by blending civil, administrative, and criminal legal authority. A growing body of work on monetary sanctions has begun to dissect covert penal power by tracing increased civil and administrative pipelines to incarceration, civil financial alternatives to criminal …
Like if you Get a Hotel Bill”
Neoliberal governance has become a defining feature of our social world, fast‐tracking the commodification of human interaction, particularly within capitalist economies. Neoliberalism’s intensification of capitalist social relations shifted social institutions such as education, healthcare, and criminal justice to resemble profit‐oriented enterprises. A preeminent consequence of this shift for the administration of criminal justice is the rapid …
Toward a Critical Race Theory of Prison Order in the Wake of Covid-19 and Its Afterlives
In this article, I bridge critical sociological perspectives on penal institutions with insights from the sociology of disaster to advance a critical race theory of prison order in the wake of COVID-19 and its afterlives. Penal institutions officially categorize people as detainees, inmates, or prisoners in order to deliberately relegate human beings to a degraded social status, ultimately in service of an intentionally racist system. I theorize …
White Unity and Prisoner-Officer Alliances
The law enforcement badge is a prized possession for white supremacists. Broader patterns of alliances between law enforcement and civilian white supremacists are endemic to social order in the United States, both in free society and within prisons. Using archival methods on trusty systems in California prisons, I show the development of prisoner-officer alliances that reify the privileges of white power
The “Damaged” State vs. the “Willful” Nonpayer
which were implemented in the state of Illinois in 1981 through the Prisoner Reimbursement Act, The "Damaged" State vs. the "Willful" Nonpayer: Pay-to-Stay and the Social Construction of Damage, Harm, and Moral Responsibility in a Rent-Seeking Society a Pr il d. fer na ndes , Br it ta n y fr iedm a n , a nd ga Br iel a k ir k
What Is Wrong with Monetary Sanctions? Directions for Policy, Practice, and Research
Monetary sanctions are an integral and increasingly debated feature of the American criminal legal system. Emerging research, including that featured in this volume, offers important insight into the law governing monetary sanctions, how they are levied, and how their imposition affects inequality. Monetary sanctions are assessed for a wide range of contacts with the criminal legal system ranging from felony convictions to alleged traffic violati…
Punishing Places
Carceral Apartheid
Introduction to special issue on dismantling the shadow carceral state
Reforming the shadow carceral state
This article examines the repeal of prison pay-to-stay policies in the United States. We process-trace reform efforts in Illinois drawing from novel data retrieved through multiple FOIA requests to state agencies and public records searches. Our analysis reveals how lawmakers who advocated for reforming the shadow carceral state in 2016 and 2019 through repealing prison pay-to-stay repurposed penal logics they had once used punitively in the 1980…
Civil Lawfare
To offset rising mass incarceration expenses, states adopted strategies to increase revenue, including charging incarcerated individuals pay-to-stay fees, a per diem room and board charge for the cost of their incarceration. In several states, the collection of these fees is done through civil lawsuits where defendants are alleged to be unlawful consumers of state goods and resources resulting from their incarceration. We draw on the case of pay-…
Review of “The Secrets of Silence
Police as Policymakers
Scholars of political representation have focused primarily on congruence between public preferences and enacted legislation, paying less attention to how policies are actually delivered by street-level bureaucrats in face-to-face encounters with citizens. This approach obscures the possibility that individuals may nonetheless have divergent perceptions of implemented policy that, in turn, inform their political attitudes. We examine this argumen…
Not Like Us—Black Women Scholars, Strategic Flourishing, and Breaking Free from the Burden of Institutional Transformation
This paper presents a critical dialogue between Black women scholars that examines how they navigate and resist institutional expectations while creating new pathways for survival and flourishing in academia. Drawing from in-depth conversations with Drs. Brittany Friedman and Kris Marsh, we explore how Black women scholars are actively rejecting the false burden of institutional transformation while developing innovative strategies for personal a…
Criminal Justice and Corrections Analysis (14 works) · Political science (14 works) · Law (13 works) · Sociology (12 works) · Crime Patterns and Interventions (9 works) · Criminology (8 works) · Law (7 works) · Politics (6 works) · Economics (4 works) · Homelessness and Social Issues (4 works)