I am an Associate Professor in the Department of Criminology, Law, and Justice at the University of Illinois Chicago and Co-Director of the Applied Policy Research Lab in UIC’s College of Urban Planning and Public Affairs. My research examines how institutions of social control both respond to and reproduce social inequality. Using quantitative research designs oriented toward causal explanation, I analyze how shifts in policy and broader social conditions shape patterns of enforcement and disparities in criminal justice contact. 

My work advances two interrelated lines of inquiry:

1. Social control and immigration enforcement. This research focuses on the growing entanglement between local criminal justice systems and immigration enforcement, examining how immigration policy and rhetoric reshape social control practices and contribute to unequal patterns of criminal justice contact, while also identifying conditions under which these effects may be mitigated.

2. Structural determinants of enforcement and public safety. This line of inquiry examines how broader institutional and social forces—such as police legitimacy, public service retrenchment, organizational practices, and community conditions—influence patterns of police activity. This work highlights how responses to social problems often become concentrated within the criminal justice system, with important consequences for marginalized communities.

My work has been published in leading journals across criminology, urban studies, and migration research, including Criminology, Justice Quarterly, Criminology & Public Policy, the Journal of Urban Economics, and the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies.