Great new article from @chiarapackard.bsky.social on prosecutorial discretion and the way that defendants are evaluated based on their informal performance. Excited to cite this!

Chiara Packard@chiarapackard.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Excited to share my new article in Criminology & Public Policy! While most research on prosecutors focuses on how case and defendant characteristics shape plea offers, I find that prosecutors also evaluate defendants' informal performances pretrial in making their plea bargaining decisions. 🧵1/6

Excited to share my new article in Criminology & Public Policy! While most research on prosecutors focuses on how case and defendant characteristics shape plea offers, I find that prosecutors also evaluate defendants' informal performances pretrial in making their plea bargaining decisions. 🧵1/6

Evaluating performances pretrial: The role of defendant performances in prosecutors’ plea bargaining decisions

Research Summary Existing research on plea bargaining focuses primarily on how fixed case and defendant characteristics, such as the strength of the evidence or the race of the accused, impact plea ...

doi.org

Halfway through this article arguing that San Francisco's new "tough love" mayor improved disorder and drug overdoses in the city, the author reveals that the improvement happened under the previous mayor. www.nytimes.com/2026/04/06/o...

Robynn Cox and I have a new paper! It's about the history of predictive algorithms in criminal justice, back in the 1920s-1950s. This paper is the result of five years of research and we're so happy to see it out. 🧵 1/

The Dept of Sociology & Criminology at the University of Utah is hiring 2 non-TT lecturers. Ideal candidate should bridge Soc & Crim but the teaching need is primarily in criminology. Happy to chat with anyone who may be interested. utah.peopleadmin.com/postings/195...

What a privilege to have Dr. Leafia Ye present her work in our department @utah.edu! Thank you for your engaging and interesting talk! And thank you for braving the snow to get to us 😅❄️

Leafia Ye@leafiaye.bsky.social · 6mo ago

I had a great time presenting my work at the University of Utah this week...on their snowiest day of the year no less!! ☃️ Thanks for hosting me @chiarapackard.bsky.social and to everyone for attending! :)

A grim reminder this 4th of July: The US has the highest incarceration rate of any independent democracy on Earth, making it a leader in mass incarceration. Far too many people are locked up in the “land of the free.”

New paper: Wives with more education than husband are *more* likely to take his name than education-equal marriages. As women outpace men in education & increasingly keep their names, name-taking provides symbolic way to compensate for her status superiority www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Doing gender and the surname choices of married women

Marital surname choices reflect deeply embedded, often unspoken gender norms. According to the marital exchange/bargaining approach, women are more li…

sciencedirect.com

Please just us on 5/13 @ 1pm ET for a panel on "How to Conference" sponsored by ASA's Section on Crime, Law, and Deviance! We have an amazing group of interdisciplinary scholars. Feel free to dm me for more info!

New article theorizing the “spatial burdens” of state institutions. Drawing on 125 interviews and over 400 hours of observations among court-involved people in the Bay Area, we show how space shapes poverty governance and institutional inequality. www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...

This book is powerful! It reveals the experiences of mothers who fear CPS will take their children away, while also exploring why people report to CPS and the process of investigation. Importantly, it highlights the problems with using CPS as a tool to address poverty. @kelleyfong.bsky.social

Check out @chiarapackard.bsky.social's thread for info on how to sign up for our discussion tomorrow on this amazing book by @kelleyfong.bsky.social!

Chiara Packard@chiarapackard.bsky.social · last yr.

This book is powerful! It reveals the experiences of mothers who fear CPS will take their children away, while also exploring why people report to CPS and the process of investigation. Importantly, it highlights the problems with using CPS as a tool to address poverty. @kelleyfong.bsky.social

This book is powerful! It reveals the experiences of mothers who fear CPS will take their children away, while also exploring why people report to CPS and the process of investigation. Importantly, it highlights the problems with using CPS as a tool to address poverty. @kelleyfong.bsky.social

Join the Punishment & Society Reading Group this Friday, April 18th at 3 pm ET to discuss Investigating Families @kelleyfong.bsky.social ✨ We’re lucky that Dr. Fong will be joining the conversation! DM me to subscribe to our mailing list and receive the Zoom link to join 📥 @erineife.bsky.social

Yearly reminder that you can get a free year of ASA membership if you got your Ph.D. within the last year! #SocAF

Columbia was first, but it seems very likely they're going to effectively use the same playback to retract federal scientific funding. A new hit list from Trump's Dept of Ed. www.ed.gov/about/news/p...

It's #PiDay – which means it's time for our annual report, Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie 🥧 Over the last year, US prisons & jails have locked up MORE people, growing the incarcerated population by 2% But why? We answer that & bust the biggest myths of the carceral system🧵

Hello Bluesky! 👋 I finally made the move from X and I'm so happy to be here. For those of you who don't know me, I'm a sociologist and ethnographer studying punishment, prosecutorial discretion, and inequality. I'm currently an asst prof of sociology and criminology at the University of Utah.