I am an applied economist working at various junctures of public health and public policy and the lead PI at the SHAPE Lab at DU. My primary interests are in the ways that people cope with household uncertainties like domestic violence, housing insecurity, and poverty more broadly. My training is as an applied and development economist, with an emphasis on Latin America and the economic and social implications of the Chilean military dictatorship. As part of that research, I spent a summer as a visiting scholar at Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. More recently, I have been working on understanding the relationship between institutional social support services like police and domestic violence programs on the incidence of violence within the household. I also have work on the environmental justice implications of deforestation policy in the Brazilian Amazon on health.
I draw actively on frameworks developed in psychology and sociology, especially as they relate to trauma (intergenerational and otherwise) and self-concept. My work on these policy-relevant questions involves co-authors from such disciplines as Sociology, Public Policy, and Geography. I am affiliated with the Scrivner Institute of Public Policy at DU, the UW-Madison Sexual Violence Research Initiative (SVRI), and the Gibbs Land Use and the Environment Lab (GLUE).
With Erin Eife at George Mason University and Ella Friday at St. Johns University, I am a co-founder and project lead in the Jail Justice Initiative, where we explore the consequences of the US jail system's expansion throughout mass incarceration.
My first book, Seeking Safe Harbor: How Public Policy is Sinking the Future of Domestic Violence Shelters, is under contract with the University of California Press for release in 2028.
For the most up-to-date copy of my CV, please click here.
For public-facing blog posts explaining research for the public good, visit Empirical Truths.
Refereed publications (available upon request)
Sims, K.M., Barnes, M.J., and Walsh, K.L. (2025). Practice and Practicalities: Challenges to Housing First implementation across nine DV service providers. The Journal of Family Violence. .
Sims, K.M., Meyer, N.D., and Walsh, K.L. (2025) COVID-19 Structural Transformation and Program Adaptation in Emergency Domestic Violence Shelters. Violence Against Women.
Rizzotto, J., Sims, K.M., and Gibbs, H.K. (2025). Hot tempers: Differential effects of heat and drought on domestic violence. Review of Economics of the Household.
Sims, K.M. (2025). Policymaking and pretrial fairness: Evaluating Illinois' ban on cash bail beyond Chicago. The Journal of Criminal Justice, 96: 102354.
In the popular press (selected): "Can Trump's Orders Stop the Rise of Cashless Bail?" Law 360, September 2, 2025.
Sims, K.M., Anadon, I., Haimson, C., and Eason, J.M. (2024). The prison boom, local interpersonal violence, and domestic violence homicide. The Journal of Crime and Justice.
Sims, K.M., Wang, Y., and Wolfe, B. (2024). Impacts of the US EITC program on domestic violence. Review of Economics of the Household.
Reid, T. and Sims, K.M. (2024). (Dis)honorably discharged: Identifying policy gaps in military-civilian reintegration. Health Affairs Scholar, 2(2):1-5.
Sims, K.M., Meyer, N., and Walsh, K. (2023). Barriers to Safe and Secure Housing in the Section 8 Voucher Program Post-Dobbs? Critical Social Policy.
Sims, K.M., Barnes, M., and Walsh, K. (2023). From theory to practice: Designing a multi-method, multi-stage program evaluation of the Wisconsin Domestic Violence Housing First pilot program. INQUIRY: The Journal of Health Care Organization, Provision, and Financing, 60:1-12.
Harris, J., Sims, K.M., Eason, J.M., Chuang, L., Ylizaliturri, V., Anadon, I., and Eife, E. (2023). The Prison Bust: Declining Carceral Capacity in an Era of Mass Incarceration. Punishment & Society.
In the popular press (selected): "NY's prison boom brought jobs Upstate. Now the region is paying the price" North Country Public Radio, April 28, 2025; "Some economies in rural America hit especially hard by prison closures" NPR Morning Edition, May 7, 2025.
Skidmore, M.E., Sims, K.M., and Gibbs, H.K. (2023). Agricultural intensification and childhood cancer in Brazil. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 120(45).
* PNAS Cozzarelli Prize Finalist, Class V Behavioral and Social Sciences https://www.pnas.org/post/update/2023-cozzarelli-prize-recipients
In the popular press (selected): "Soy pesticides killed 123 children in rural areas in 11 years, study says" O Globo, October 30, 2023.; "Brazil child cancer deaths linked to soy farming, study finds" Reuters, November 1, 2023; "The sick children of Brazilian agriculture" Dialogue Earth, August 29, 2024.
Skidmore, M.E., Sims, K.M., Rausch, L., and Gibbs, H.K. (2022). Productive cattle ranches reduce carbon emissions in the Brazilian Amazon. Environmental Research Letters, 17(6): 064026.
Sims, K.M., Foltz, J., and Skidmore, M.E. (2021). Prisons as drivers of COVID-19 spread in the United States. American Journal of Public Health, 111(8): 1534-1541.
In the popular press (selected): "State Prisons Fueled Covid-19 Spread in Their Areas Last Spring, Study Suggests" Gizmodo, June 29, 2021.
Selected working papers
"Improved information and reduced consequences? Experimental evidence from traffic citations in California" with J. Barofsky and A. Fishbane (Under Review).
Abstract: Costly court fines and fees for traffic citations create substantial economic hardship for drivers. If tickets remain unpaid, some jurisdictions can issue a bench warrant for arrest. To address this, courts nationwide are reassessing how they impose and collect fees to minimize economic burden. We revised court materials for one California county to improve clarity and inform drivers about an online ability-to-pay adjustment system, MyCitations. We analyze the universe of approximately 55,000 traffic citations issued over 17 months to test for impacts of these improved notices and envelopes on citation resolution. Using regression discontinuity in time models, we find that drivers are responsive to clear information on court materials. Revised notices increased timely response by 3.7 percentage points and take-up of MyCitations by 10.5 percentage points, generating \$1.28 million in savings to ticketed drivers. Reducing financial penalties for missing response deadlines improved payments, but removing the threat of driver’s license suspension had little impact on timely action and actually decreased the likelihood of payments. Our results indicate that clear information increases court appearance rates, and drivers are motivated to apply for income-based payment reductions, which have the potential to save California drivers millions of dollars.
"Jailization: Entering the Lobby to the US Criminal Legal System" with Erin Eife and Gabreélla Friday (Revise & Resubmit).
Abstract: Despite the substantial interest in mass imprisonment, limited research has studied how mass incarceration has occurred across the 3,000 city and county jails in the United States. Using Bureau of Justice Statistics surveys and censuses of US jails, we investigate patterns of jail construction over the last 50 years and ask whether these infrastructural changes represent expanding carceral capacity or simply capacity restructuring, whereby jails were consolidated and renovated rather than multiplied. Despite consistent numbers of jails over time, jail populations have increased substantially, suggesting that mass incarceration has functioned differently in jails than in prisons. We posit a theory of ‘jailization,’ whereby jails have permeated the membranes of different arms of the criminal legal system to serve as a catchment center or “lobby,” and argue for dedicated studies of jails’ unique and flexible roles. This contributes to literature on penal change by showing that changes to jails during the era of mass incarceration look markedly different than that of prisons, underscoring the importance of studying them as unique criminal legal institutions.
Selected Works in Progress
"COVID-19 Economic Impact Payments among incarcerated populations."
"Emergency domestic violence shelters and family violence" with L. Schechter.
"Patterns of domestic violence churn and homicide" with A. Christian.
"Shoring Up Safe Harbors: Novel survey data of US domestic violence shelter capacity."