Research

My research examines the sociolegal dimensions and intersectional effects of policing and punishment in the United States, particularly carceral protectionist strategies to address human trafficking, sex work, and labor exploitation in the United States. My work also tracks carceral control beyond the criminal legal system and investigates the known and lesser-known effects of policies and strategies billed as alternatives to punishment.

My book Control, and Protect: Collaboration, Carceral Protection, and Domestic Sex Trafficking in the United States uncovers how anti-sex trafficking interventions in the United States underwrite carceral interventions that blur the boundaries between punishment and protection and state and non-state authority.

I have also long investigated how technology and networked governance arrangements extend surveillance and transform policing. In numerous peer-reviewed articles and essays, for instance, I describe the limits of tech-oriented anti-trafficking efforts and document the punitive effects of interventions pitched as protection yet which expose survivors, sex workers, and migrants to carceral control within and beyond the bounds of the criminal legal system.