Articles and Publications

Articles and Publications

Published Reports and Papers

Report:  Reducing Recidivism and Improving Other Outcomes for Young Adults in the Juvenile and Adult Criminal Justice Systems by the Council of State Governments (CSG) Justice Center (November 2015)

Pager, Devah, and David S. Pedulla. 2015. “Race, Self-Selection, and the Job Search Process.”American Journal of Sociology 120(4):1005-1054. PDF

Report: Community-Based Responses to Justice-Involved Young Adults by Vincent Schiraldi, Bruce Western, and Kendra Bradner for series New Thinking in Community Corrections, Executive Session on Community Corrections (September 2015)

Report: The Growth of Incarceration in the United States: Exploring Causes and Consequences by Bruce Western, Committee Co-Chair; Devah Pager, Committee Member; National Research Council (April 2014)

Incarceration, Inequality, and Imagining Alternatives by Bruce Western in The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science (January 2014)

Mass Incarceration, Macrosociology, and the Poor by Bruce Western and Christopher Muller in The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science (May 2013)

Crime and Punishment: Public Safety Doesn’t Require More Inmates by Bruce Western in Boston Review (March 2012)

Locked Up, Locked Out: The Social Costs of Incarceration by Bruce Western in Reason (July 2011)

Paternal Incarceration and Support for Children in Fragile Families by Amanda Geller, Irwin Garfunkel, and Bruce Western in Demography (February 2011)

Incarceration and Social Inequality by Bruce Western and Becky Pettit in Daedalus (2010)

Incarceration in Fragile Families by Christopher Wildeman and Bruce Western in The Future of Children (2010)

Decriminalizing Poverty by Bruce Western in The Nation (2010)

Estimating Risk: Stereotype Amplification and the Perceived Risk of Criminal Victimization by Lincoln Quillian and Devah Pager in Social Psychology Quarterly(2010)

Investigating Prisoner Reentry: The Impact of Conviction Status on the Employment Prospects of Young Men by Devah Pager and Bruce Western, funded by the U.S. Department of Justice (2009)

The Black Family and Mass Incarceration by Bruce Western and Christopher Wildeman in The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science (2009)

Discrimination in a Low Wage Labor Market: A Field Experiment by Devah Pager, Bruce Western, and Bart Bonikowski in American Sociological Review (2009)

From Prison to Work: A Proposal for a National Prisoner Reentry Program by Bruce Western from The Hamilton Project and The Brookings Institution (2008)

Marked: Race, Crime, and Finding Work in an Era of Mass Incarceration by Devah Pager from University of Chicago Press (2008)

Punishment and Inequality in America by Bruce Western from Russell Sage Foundation (2006)
Winner of the 2008 Michael J. Hindelang Book Award from the American Society of Criminology and 2007 Albert J. Reiss Distinguished Scholarship Award

Articles, News, Opinion Pieces

• Why We Need to Shut Down Juvie (Marshall Project)
• Raise the Minimum Age to 21 (NY Times)
• What Age Should Young Criminals Be Tried as Adults? (NY Times)
• Young Adult Justice Experts' Research Supports CT Gov's Unprecedented Proposal to Raise Juvenile Court Age to 21 (PCJ)
• Statement from Vera President Nicholas Turner in Support of Juvenile Justice Reforms Proposed by Connecticut Governor Dannel P. Malloy (Vera Institute of Justice)
• California's Justice Reform Leaders Explore What's Next on Agenda (Juvenile Justice Information Exchange)
• Why Connecticut May Try 21-Year-Olds as Juveniles (Christian Science Monitor)
• Juvenile Incarceration is a Dickensian Nightmare: The Shameful Ravages of Mass Incarceration (Salon)
• Good Reasons to Raise Age for Juvenile Justice (Hartford Courant)
• What Mass Incarceration Looks Like for Juveniles (NY Times)
• Gov’s Juvenile Justice Proposals Win High Praise (Public News Service CT)
• Young Adult Justice Experts' Research Supports CT Gov's Unprecedented Proposal to Raise Juvenile Court Age to 21 (PCJ)
• Connecticut's governor wants to try 19- and 20-year-olds as minors. Why it's a great idea (Vox)
• Ban the Box: President Obama’s Plan to Help Ex-Prisoners Get Jobs, Explained (Vox)
• Ben Carson Is Inspiring, but Not for President (NY Times)
• Out of Prison and Out of Work (CNN Money)
• Here's How We Can Actually Reduce the Number of People in Prison (Vice News)
• The Real Reason to Close the Connecticut Juvenile Training School (CT Mirror)
• Science Supports Raising the Juvenile Age Limit (Press of Atlantic City)
• Faith, Crime, and the Pope (The Crime Report)
• Catching up with Science: Rethinking How our Criminal Justice System Responds to Young Adults (William T. Grant Foundation)
• Why 21 Year-Old Offenders Should be Tried in Family Court (Washington Post)
• Time to Rethink the Age of Adult Court Jurisdiction (Translational Criminology)
• The Black Family in the Age of Mass Incarceration (The Atlantic)
• Mass Incarceration, Visualized (The Atlantic)
• Bruce Western, Other HKS Voices Join in the Debate About the Criminal Justice System in America (HKS)
• Time to Rethink How Young Adults are Punished, Experts Say (NPR)
• Report Proposes a Different Model of Criminal Justice for Young Adults (HKS)
• Science Supports Raising the Juvenile Age Limit (Press of Atlantic City)
• Faith, Crime, and the Pope (The Crime Report)
• Time to Rethink the Age of Adult Court Jurisdiction (Translational Criminology)
• Why 21 year-old offenders should be tried in family court (Washington Post)
• Catching up with Science: Rethinking How our Criminal Justice System Responds to Young Adults (William T. Grant Foundation)
• The Black Family in the Age of Mass Incarceration (The Atlantic)
• You Just Got Out of Prison. Now What? (NY Times)
• Don't Ask, Don't Tell, Get Hired (New Republic)
• Offering Ex-Convicts a Hand up after Prison (Boston Globe)
• Forcing Black Men Out of Society (NY Times)
• The Slow-Death Penalty (Newsweek)
• 'US Should Significantly Reduce Rate of Incarceration,' Says New Report (Science Newsline)
• Experts Suggest How To Cut US Imprisonment, Keep Crime Rate Down (The Crime Report)
• The Prison Problem (Harvard Magazine)
• Should Significantly Reduce Rate of Incarceration; Unprecedented Rise in Prison Population ‘Not Serving the Country Well,’ Says New Report (Corrections Forum)
• In the US, Punishment Comes Before the Crimes (New York Times)
• Western: 'The risk is that incarceration is becoming an inherited trait' (The Chautauquan Daily)
• Prison is the New Poverty Trap (New York Times)
• New Report Pushes for Criminal Justice Reform to Address High US Incarceration Rates (Harvard Kennedy School)
• Summary article, Panel Discusses US Prison Dilemmas (The Crimson)