A complete list of my peer-reviewed articles, working papers, and other publications in criminal justice, political behavior, and AI governance.
Under which conditions do voters support progressive reform? Are voters willing to support politicians who are not tough on crime? Using data from the San Francisco DA recall and a national sample, I argue that there are political majorities in favor of reforming the intensity of the criminal legal system, not its extent. Voters support reducing outcomes' harshness but not limiting the scope of prosecuted behavior. Support for reducing intensity is wide and cuts across political attitudes, while support for reducing extensiveness is narrow.
🏆 UC Berkeley CSLS Graduate Student Paper Prize, 2023Criminal justice policy reform is crucial for a nation grappling with public safety concerns and decades of mass incarceration. This study investigates factors shaping public attitudes toward criminal justice policy reform, focusing on dispositional racial attitudes and political/racial group cues. Using a conjoint design and follow-up survey experiment, I demonstrate that people's dispositions toward racial and political groups affect their preferences. Both people of color and white respondents follow cues from Black voters, with racial attitudes playing an important moderating role.
Algorithmic decision-making tools are changing governmental operations as machine learning models proliferate. Can agencies maintain legitimacy while relying on algorithms? This article uses a conjoint survey experiment (N=499) to test which aspects affect public perceptions of legitimacy. We find positive effects from communicating the algorithmic procedure: notice about algorithm use, human involvement, decision explanation, and hearing by request. Respondents view algorithms in criminal justice as less fair than other domains but not less efficient.
Assessing whether an individual poses a risk to society is routine throughout the criminal legal system. Across two experiments (N=1005 and N=276), I examine how a parole candidate's choice to attribute their crime to dispositional or situational factors affects perceptions of dangerousness and racial classification. Situational attribution increased perceptions of dangerousness when participants did not accept the account as valid. Moreover, attributing crime to situation/environment predicted perceiving the candidate as a person of color.
Op-ed discussing the nuanced public attitudes toward criminal justice policy.
Book chapter in Research Handbook of Comparative Criminal Justice.
What is the effect of political struggle between a district attorney and police department on public safety? Using the San Francisco DA recall, we estimate the effect of police taking sides in a political campaign. We show sharp changes in jail population after the recall, attributed to changes in police behavior: increased crime reports, police stops, and arrests.
Book chapter examining the application of artificial intelligence methods to analyze discretionary parole decisions.