Heather Schoenfeld

Boston University College of Arts & Sciences

Heather Schoenfeld is an associate professor of sociology and law (by courtesy) at Boston University and an award-winning scholar of mass incarceration in the United States. She is the author of Building the Prison State: Race and the Politics of Mass Incarceration (University of Chicago Press, 2018) and over a dozen articles and essays on historical and contemporary systems of criminal punishment. Her current research project, 21st Century Justice: The Struggle to Decarcerate in the U.S. States (with co-PI Michael Campbell at University of Denver), is funded by the National Science Foundation. Using rigorous social science methods, the project compares efforts to reform criminal justice policy between 2000 and 2020 in six states. Schoenfeld is currently a Visiting Fellow at the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation at Harvard Kennedy School. Before joining Boston University faculty in 2018, Schoenfeld was an assistant professor of legal studies and education and social policy at Northwestern University.

Areas of Expertise

• History
• Law
• Policy
• Social Policy
• Sociology

Methodology

• Archival Methods
• Interviews
• Qualitative Methods