Christopher Uggen

Last updated
Christopher Uggen
Bornc. 1964 (age 5758)
NationalityAmerican
Alma mater University of Wisconsin–Madison
Scientific career
Fields Sociology
Institutions University of Minnesota
Thesis Choice, Commitment, and Opportunity: An Event History Analysis of Supported Employment and Crime  (1995)
Doctoral advisor Ross Matsueda
Website www.soc.umn.edu/~uggen/

Christopher J. Uggen (born c. 1964) is a Regents professor [1] and Distinguished McKnight Professor of sociology and law at the University of Minnesota, where he also holds the Martindale Chair in Sociology. [2] Uggen is best known for his work on public criminology, [3] desistance from crime and the life course, crime in the workplace, sexual harassment, and the effects of mass incarceration, including Felon disenfranchisement, reentry, recidivism, and inequality.

Contents

Background and early education

Uggen attended the University of Wisconsin–Madison for undergraduate and graduate school, earning his PhD in 1995. [2]

Career

Uggen began his studies at University of Minnesota in 1995, and was chair of the University of Minnesota sociology department from 2006 to 2012. Uggen gained recognition in the early 2000s for his research on work opportunities and recidivism. He went on to author a 2003 American Sociological Review article with sociologist Jeff Manza, "Democratic Contraction: Political Consequences of Felon Disenfranchisement in the United States," which gained significant attention after finding that the 2000 United States presidential election could have gone to Al Gore if felons were not disenfranchised. [4] Uggen and Manza went on to author "Locked Out: Felon Disenfranchisement and American Democracy." [5] They found that US ex-felons who voted in the 1996 US election were much less likely to have committed crimes in the four years following the election. [6]

Uggen's research on workplace authority and sexual harassment, incarceration and health, race in the United States criminal justice system, employer discrimination against felons, and other collateral consequences of criminal conviction have been influential both in and out of the sociology discipline. [7]

Uggen was expected to assume the office of vice president of the American Sociological Association in August 2017, [8] and has received the 2016 SUNY Albany Hindelang Speaker Award for career contributions to criminology. [9]

Related Research Articles

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Gary LaFree is a Professor and Chair of the Criminology and Criminal Justice department at the University of Maryland, College Park, the Director of the Maryland Crime Research and Innovation Center (MCRIC) and the Founding Director of the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START). His main areas of expertise are sociology, criminology, race and crime, cross-national comparative research and political violence and terrorism.

Civil death is the loss of all or almost all civil rights by a person due to a conviction for a felony or due to an act by the government of a country that results in the loss of civil rights. It is usually inflicted on persons convicted of crimes against the state or adults determined by a court to be legally incompetent because of mental disability.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Recidivism</span> Person repeating an undesirable behavior following punishment

Recidivism is the act of a person repeating an undesirable behavior after they have experienced negative consequences of that behavior. It is also used to refer to the percentage of former prisoners who are rearrested for a similar offense.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Edwin Sutherland</span>

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<i>Muntaqim v. Coombe</i> American legal case

Muntaqim v. Coombe, 449 F.3d 371, was a legal challenge to New York State’s law disenfranchising individuals convicted of felonies while in prison and on parole. The plaintiff, Jalil Abdul Muntaqim who is serving a life sentence, argues that the law has a disproportionate impact on African Americans and therefore violates Section 2 of the federal Voting Rights Act as a denial of the right to vote on account of race.

<i>Hayden v. Pataki</i> American legal case

Hayden v. Pataki, 449 F.3d 305, was a legal challenge to New York State's law disenfranchising individuals convicted of felonies while in prison and on parole. New York State is one of the 47 states to prohibit citizens from voting while in prison.

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Jonathan Simon is an American academic, the Lance Robbins Professor of Criminal Justice Law, and the former Associate Dean of the Jurisprudence and Social Policy Program at the UC Berkeley School of Law. Simon’s scholarship concerns the role of crime and criminal justice in governing contemporary societies, risk and the law, and the history of the interdisciplinary study of law. His other interests include criminology; penology; sociology; insurance models of governing risk; governance; the origins and consequences of, and solutions to, the California prison "crisis"; parole; prisons; capital punishment; immigration detention; and the warehousing of incarcerated people.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Felony disenfranchisement in the United States</span> Prohibiting criminals from voting in elections in the United States

Felony disenfranchisement in the United States is the suspension or withdrawal of voting rights due to the conviction of a criminal offense. The actual class of crimes that results in disenfranchisement vary between jurisdictions, but most commonly classed as felonies, or may be based on a certain period of incarceration or other penalty. In some jurisdictions disfranchisement is permanent, while in others suffrage is restored after a person has served a sentence, or completed parole or probation. Felony disenfranchisement is one among the collateral consequences of criminal conviction and the loss of rights due to conviction for criminal offense. In 2016, 6.1 million individuals were disenfranchised on account of a conviction, 2.47% of voting-age citizens. As of October 2020, it was estimated that 5.1 million voting-age US citizens were disenfranchised for the 2020 presidential election on account of a felony conviction, 1 in 44 citizens. As suffrage rights are generally bestowed by state law, state felony disenfranchisement laws also apply to elections to federal offices.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Criminal justice reform in the United States</span>

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Broadly speaking, the term racial threat refers to how people react to those of a different race. More specifically, the racial threat hypothesis or racial threat theory proposes that a higher population of members of a minority race results in the dominant race imposing higher levels of social control on the subordinate race, which, according to this hypothesis, occurs as a result of the dominant race fearing the subordinate race's political, economic, or criminal threat. Racial threat theory is also known as minority group threat theory. In his 1949 book, political scientist V. O. Key found that white voters in the U.S. South turned out at higher rates and voted more for conservative politicians in areas with high levels of African-Americans; Key argued that whites felt threatened by African-Americans, thus becoming more politically motivated.

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Marie Gottschalk is an American political scientist and professor of political science at the University of Pennsylvania, known for her work on mass incarceration in the United States. Gottschalk is the author of The Prison and the Gallows: The Politics of Mass Incarceration in America (2006) and Caught: the Prison State and the Lockdown of American Politics (2016). Her research investigates the origins of the carceral state in the United States, the critiques of the scope and size of the carceral network, and the intersections of the carceral state with race and economic inequality.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Public criminology</span> Academic tendency within criminology

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References

  1. "Christopher Uggen named Regents professor". University of Minnesota, News & Events. June 22, 2016. Retrieved February 6, 2019.
  2. 1 2 "CV January 2016" (PDF). Retrieved February 6, 2019.
  3. Uggen, Christopher; Inderbitzin, Michelle (November 2010). "Public criminologies". Criminology & Public Policy. 9 (4): 725–749. doi:10.1111/j.1745-9133.2010.00666.x.
  4. "Florida's ex-convicts seek right to vote". Chicago Tribune . Retrieved 6 February 2019.
  5. Hull, Elizabeth (2007-03-01). "Locked Out: Felon Disenfranchisement and American Democracy". Social Forces. 85 (3): 1438–1442. doi:10.1353/sof.2007.0039. ISSN   0037-7732. OCLC   892313357.
  6. Mount, Connor; Wright, Charlie (November 3, 2016). "Maryland takes measures to increase voter access". Associated Press.
  7. Butler, Sana (December 14, 2003). "2003: THE 3rd ANNUAL YEAR IN IDEAS; Give Felons the Vote". The New York Times. ISSN   0362-4331. OCLC   746941922.
  8. "Results of the 2016 Election". American Sociological Association. June 8, 2016. Retrieved February 6, 2019.
  9. "Duke University Professor Elected President of the American Sociological Association". American Sociological Association. October 12, 2016. Retrieved February 6, 2019.