Baćak, V. & Apel, R. (2021). Police fairness and legitimacy across the post-communist divide in Europe. Law & Society Review, 55(3), 473-495.

In the present study, we compared two European regions with deeply contrasting policing traditions—post-communist countries and established democracies—to explore whether political history may have long-term consequences for police–public interactions. Using... Learn More

Baćak, V., Mausolf, J., & Schwarz, C. (2021). How comprehensive are media-based data on police officer-involved shootings? Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 36, 55-65.

In the absence of systematic data collection by the state and federal governments, efforts to collect information on officer-involved shootings (OIS) have been assumed by the public and news agencies.... Learn More

Hyatt, J., Baćak, V., & Kerrison, E. (2021). COVID-19 vaccine refusal and related factors: Preliminary findings from a system-wide survey of correctional staff. Federal Sentencing Reporter, 33(4), 272–277.

n partnership with the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections (PADOC), a team including BIDS Faculty Affiliate Erin M. Kerrison (and colleagues Jordan M. Hyatt and Valerio Baćak) administered an electronic survey to a diverse sample... Learn More

Raz, M., Dettlaff, A., & Edward, F. (2021). “The Perils of Child ‘Protection’ for Children of Color: Lessons from History”. Pediatrics.

Based upon recent investigation rates, as many as 37% of children born this year in the United States may become the subject of a child welfare system investigation. Among Black... Learn More

This article provides county-level estimates of the cumulative prevalence of four levels of Child Protective Services (CPS) contact using administrative data from the 20 most populous counties in the United... Learn More

Family separation is a defining feature of the U.S. government’s policy to forcibly assimilate and dismantle American Indian and Alaska Native (AIAN) tribal nations. The historical record catalogues the violence... Learn More

McCarthy, B., Jansson, M., & Benoit, C. (2021). Job attributes and mental health: A comparative study of sex work and hairstyling. Social Science 10,

A growing literature advocates for using a labor perspective to study sex work. According to this approach, sex work involves many of the costs, benefits, and possibilities for exploitation that... Learn More

Hagan, J., McCarthy, B., & Herda, D. (2021). Racist torture and the code of silence: A situational analysis of sidebar secrecy and legal cynicism in the trial of Jon Burge. Du Bois Review 1-30. doi:10.1017/S1742058X21000151

We join Eduardo Bonilla-Silva’s structural theory of the racialized U.S. social system with a situational methodology developed by Arthur L. Stinchcombe and Irving Goffman to analyze how law works as... Learn More

Herrera, J., & McCarthy, B. (In press). Street harassment interpretations: An exploration of the intersection of gender and race/ethnicity, and mediator variables. Violence Against Women

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Hagan, J., McCarthy, B., & Herda, D. (2022). Chicago’s reckoning: Racism, politics, and the deep history of policing in an American city. New York: Oxford University Press.

A searing examination of the long history of police misconduct and political corruption in Chicago that produced the city’s current racial reckoning Chicago faces a racial reckoning. For over 50... Learn More