Tyler Smith

I am a scholar of punishment and criminal justice with a focus on the historical development of crime control institutions. I study the ways in which the state and private actors extract value from those involved in the criminal-legal system, both historically through forms of unpaid labor and contemporarily through the use of monetary sanctions. My dissertation focuses on how labor unions have shaped ideas about prison labor, as well as their historical role in both the banning of contractual prison production at the turn of the 20th century and its reinstatement fifty years later. I have also studied the use of monetary sanctions, the impact of legal debt on individuals, and the privatization of criminal-legal systems.