Criminal Legal Contact
Bail and Monetary Sanctions
How do private companies (i.e., bail agencies) shift the responsibility of risk management onto families?
Deckard, Faith M. 2025. “Surveilling Sureties: How Privately Mediated Monetary Sanctions Enroll and Responsibilize Families.” Social Problems 72(4):1651-1667.
Deckard, Faith M. 2025. “‘A Good Client Gets Arrested A Lot’: Constructing and Maintaining Profitable Subjects Through Marking and Surveillance.” Theoretical Criminology 29(4):434-451.
How do private actors (i.e., bail agents) “see” and process defendants pretrial?
Policing
Faith M. Deckard, Shannon Malone Gonzalez, Yasmiyn Irizarry, and Jaime Feng-Yuan Hsu. 2026. “Perpetual Encounters: Reconceptualizing Police Contact and Measuring its Relationship to Black Women’s Mental Health.” Social Forces 104(3):1004-1028.
What is the association between police contact and mental health among Black women?
Malone Gonzalez, Shannon and Faith M. Deckard*. 2024. “’We Got Witnesses’: Black Women Navigating Police Violence and Legal Estrangement.” Social Problems 71(3):894-911. VIDEO SUMMARY AVAILABLE VIA AUTHOR ATTIC
How do Black women navigate interactions with police?