Criminal Legal System RIG

Becky Pettit
Department of Sociology

Dr. Pettit is the Barbara Pierce Bush Regents Professor of Liberal Arts in Sociology at the University of Texas at Austin. She is the author of Invisible Men: Mass Incarceration and the Myth of Black Progress (Russell Sage Foundation 2012) which investigated how decades of growth in America's prisons and jails obscures basic accounts of racial inequality. Much of Professor Pettit’s past and present research estimates the demographic contours of exposure to the criminal legal system as well as the consequences of criminal justice contact for social and economic inequality and its measurement. One on-going project examines the imposition and impact of legal fines and fees in Texas. Another investigates how fine-only, Class C, misdemeanors in Texas impact educational and employment outcomes. She is also engaged in a national study of demographic differences in public opinion about the criminal legal system.

Professor Pettit’s research has been funded by NIH, NSF, HUD, the Russell Sage Foundation, the Arnold Foundation, and others. Her research has broad implications for public policy and she has been invited to speak at the White House, the Congressional Budget Office, the Department of Health and Human Services, the Council of Economic Advisors, the U.S. Senate Finance Committee, the Census Bureau, and many colleges and universities. She holds a Ph.D. in sociology from Princeton University and a B.A. in sociology from University of California at Berkeley.

Noel Busch-Armendariz
School of Social Work

Dr. Busch-Armendariz is a nationally recognized expert in sexual assault, human trafficking, and domestic violence. She has conducted research funded by variety of federal and state agencies such as the National Science Foundation, Department of Justice’s, National Institute of Justice, Office of Victims of Crimes, and the Office of Violence Against Women, the Texas Office of the Attorney General and the Office of the Texas Governor, Criminal Justice Division.

Helen Gaebler
School of Law

Helen Gaebler is a lecturer and Senior Research Attorney at The University of Texas School of Law where she teaches a Reentry seminar and directs the Mithoff Pro Bono Program's Parole Project. Immediately prior to joining Texas Law, she was Assistant Director for the Frances McClelland Institute for Children, Youth, and Families, at the University of Arizona, where she taught family law and coordinated research and community outreach. She helped co-found the UT Opportunity Forum, an interdisciplinary collaboration of faculty working to promote increased opportunities for low-income Texans, and serves on the Planning Council of the Austin/Travis County Reentry Roundtable.

Chantal Hailey
Department of Sociology

Dr. Hailey’s research is at the intersections of race and ethnicity, stratification, urban sociology, education, and criminology. She is particularly interested in how micro decision-making contributes to larger macro segregation and stratification patterns and how segregation creates, sustains, and exacerbates racial, educational, and socioeconomic inequality.

Her study, Choosing Schools, Choosing Safety, uses the New York City High School Admissions Process as a case study to understand individual choices and stratification in education. Employing experimental and quantitative methods, Choosing Schools, Choosing Safety demonstrates how heuristics and racialized perceptions of safety induce families’ divergent choices schools by their associated racial demographics and, ultimately, influence racial segregation.

Dr. Hailey’s other research projects examine how spatially- and racially-concentrated practices and events, such as Stop, Question, and Frisk affect educational outcomes.

Hannah Walker
Department of Government

Dr. Walker is an assistant professor of Government at the University of Texas at Austin. Her research examines the impact of the criminal justice system on American democracy with special attention to minority and immigrant communities. Previously, she served as and assistant professor of Political Science and Criminal Justice at Rutgers University (2017-2020), and a post doctoral fellow with the Prisons and Justice Initiative at Georgetown University (2016-2017). She received her PhD in 2016 from the University of Washington.

Her book, Mobilized by Injustice (available through Oxford University Press), explores the impact of experiences with the criminal justice system on political engagement. Springing from decades of abuse by law enforcement and an excessive criminal justice system, members of over-policed communities lead the current movement for civil rights in the United States. Activated by injustice, individuals protested police brutality in Ferguson, campaigned to end stop-and-frisk in New York City, and advocated for restorative justice in Washington, D.C. Yet, scholars focused on the negative impact of criminal justice on resources and public trust did not predict these pockets of resistance, arguing instead that demeaning policy leads individuals to withdraw. Mobilized by Injustice excavates conditions under which, despite other negative outcomes, criminal justice experiences catalyze political action. When understood as resulting from a system that targets people based on race, class, or other group identifiers, contact can politically mobilize.