
Contact Information
Biography
Katherine Beckett is a Professor in the Departments of Sociology and Law, Societies, and Justice. She is also a faculty affiliate of the West Coast Poverty Center and a faculty associate and steering committee member of the Center for Human Rights at the University of Washington.
Beckett received her Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of California at Los Angeles in 1994. Her research analyzes the causes and consequences of changes in criminal law and punishment, with a particular focus on mass incarceration. Beckett's early research analyzed how and why crime-related issues assumed a central place on the U.S. political agenda, and why enhanced punishment was embraced as the best solution to these problems. More recent research projects have explored the consequences of penal expansion for social inequality, the role of race in drug law enforcement and capital punishment, and the transformation of urban social control practices in the United States. She is the author of numerous articles and four books on these topics. Her most recent book, Ending Mass Incarceration, was published by Oxford University Press in 2022.
Beckett's work has been supported by the National Science Foundation, Allen Family Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Washington State Minority & Justice Commission, the Open Society Institute, and others. She has received numerous awards for her research, teaching and service work, including the Public Impact Award from the Consortium of Social Science Associations in 2020, the ACLU's Dorsen Presidential Prize for Lifetime Contributions to Civil Liberties and Civil Rights in 2019, and the University of Washington's Public Service Award in 2014. She was elected to the Washington State Academy of Sciences in 2016. Beckett also collaborates with a number of civic partners including Collective Justice, the ACLU of Washington, and the Public Defender Association.
Research
Selected Research
- Katherine Beckett. 2023. “Diversion and/as Decarceration.” Law and Contemporary Problems 86: 103-124. Download PDF
- Katherine Beckett and Allison Goldberg. 2022. “The Impact of Imprisonment in a Time of MassIncarceration.” Crime and Justice: Prisons and Prisoner 51: 349-398, edited by Michael Tonry andSandra Bucerius (University of Chicago Press). Download PDF
- Collins, D., Beckett, K., & Brydolf-Horwitz, M. (2022). Pandemic Poverty Governance: Neoliberalism under Crisis. City & Community. https://doi.org/10.1177/15356841221140078
- Marco Brydolf-Horwitz and Katherine Beckett. 2021. “Welfare, Punishment and Social Marginality: Understanding the Connections.” Research in Political Sociology, Volume 28 (The Politics of Inequality, edited by David Pettinicchio), pp. 91-111.
- Katherine Beckett and Lindsey Beach. 2021. “Understanding the Place of Punishment: Disadvantage, Politics and the Geography of Imprisonment in 21st Century America.” Law & Policy 43: 5-29.
- Katherine Beckett and Lindsey Beach. 2021. “The Place of Punishment in 21st Century America: Understanding the Persistence of Mass Incarceration.” Law and Social Inquiry 46, 1: 1-31.
- Katherine Beckett and Megan Ming Francis. 2020. “The Origins of Mass Incarceration: The Racial Politics of Crime and Punishment in the Post-Civil Rights Era.” Annual Review of Law and Social Science 16: 433–52.
- Katherine Beckett and Marco Brydolf-Horwitz. “A Kinder, Gentler Drug War? Race, Drugs, and Punishment in 21st Century America.” Punishment and Society 22, 4: 509-33.
- Beckett, Katherine, Lindsey R. Beach, Emily Knaphus, Anna Reosti. 2018. "US Criminal Justice Policy and Practice in the Twenty‐first Century: Toward the End of Mass Incarceration?" Law & Policy 40(4):321-345.
- Katherine Beckett. 2018. “The Politics, Peril and Promise of Criminal Justice Reform in the Context of Mass Incarceration.” Annual Review of Criminology 1: 235-59.
- Steve Herbert, Katherine Beckett and Forrest Stuart. 2017. “Policing Social Marginality: Contrasting Approaches.” Law and Social Inquiry, February.
- Katherine Beckett. 2016. “The Uses and Abuses of Police Discretion: Toward Harm Reduction Policing.” Harvard Law & Policy Review 10: 77- 100.
- Katherine Beckett and Heather Evans. 2016. “Race, Death and Justice: Capital Sentencing in Washington State, 1981-2014.” Columbia Journal of Race & Law 6, 2: 77-114.
- Beckett, Katherine, Anna Reosti, and Emily Knaphus. 2016. "The End of an Era? Understanding the Contradictions of Criminal Justice Reform." The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 664.1: 238-259.
- Katherine Beckett and Heather Evans. 2015. “Crimmigration at the Local Level:Criminal Case Processing in the Shadow of Deportation.” Law and Society Review 49, 1: 241-277.
- Katherine Beckett and Steve Herbert. 2015. “Managing the Neoliberal City: ‘Quality of Life Policing’ in the 21st Century.” Pp. 349-356 in The Routledge Handbook on Poverty in the United States, edited by Stephan Nathan Haymes, Maria Vidal de Haymes and Reuben Jonathan Miller (New York: Routledge).
- Katherine Beckett and Heather Evans. 2014. The Role of Race in Washington State Capitol Sentencing, 1981-2012. Report commissioned by the Washington State Appellate Project.
- Katherine Beckett. 2014. Seattle’s Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion Program: Lessons Learned from the First Two Years. Process evaluation funded by the Ford Foundation.
- Katherine Beckett. 2012. “Race, Drugs and Law Enforcement: Toward Equitable Policing.” Criminology and Public Policy 11, 4: 641-53.
- Katherine Beckett and Naomi Murakawa. 2012. “Mapping the Shadow Carceral State: Toward an Institutionally Capacious Approach to Punishment.” Theoretical Criminology 16, 2: 221-44.
- Katherine Beckett and Alexes Harris. 2011. “On Cash and Conviction: Monetary Sanctions as Misguided Policy.”Criminology & Public Policy 10, 3: 505-37.
- The End of Mass Incarceration? Exploring the Contradictions of Criminal Justice Reform. 2015-2018. Funded by NSF Law and Social Sciences Program (Award#1456180). Katherine Beckett, PI. $229,940.
Research Advised
- McGlynn-Wright, Anne. 2019. "Farm Bill to Table: Pregnancy and the Politics of Food Assistance." Ph.D. Dissertation, Department of Sociology, University of Washington.
- Reosti, Anna C. 2018 "Tenant Screening and Fair Housing in the Information Age." Ph.D. Dissertation. Department of Sociology, University of Washington.
- Knaphus-Soran, Emily. 2017. "Stigma and the Educational Experience of Children of Incarcerated Parents." Ph.D. Dissertation. Department of Sociology, University of Washington.
- Toksoz, Aysegul. 2017. "Regulation through Legal Ambiguity: Politics of Reproduction in Contemporary Turkey." PhD Dissertation. Department of Sociology, University of Washington.
- Evans, Heather D. 2016. "Disability, Identity, and the Law: A Phenomenological Study of Living with Acquired, Invisible Impairment." PhD Dissertation, Department of Sociology, University of Washington.
- Palazzo, Lorella. 2011. "The Role of State and Markets in the Integration of Complementary and Alternative Medicine into American Health Care: An Institutional-Level Perspective." PhD Dissertation, Department of Sociology, University of Washington.
- Pfingst, Lori. 2010. "Weighing in on Inequality: Obesity among Low and High SES Children." PhD Dissertation, Department of Sociology, University of Washington.
Courses Taught
Spring 2022
LSJ 200: Introduction to Law, Societies & Justice