amy lerman

Amy E. Lerman

Professor of Public Policy and Political Science; Director, Possibility Lab, University of California, Berkeley

About Amy

Alvin Camba is an assistant professor at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver. He is also a faculty affiliate at the Climate Policy Lab at Tufts University, the Sié Chéou-Kang Center for International Security & Diplomacy, and the Center for China-US Cooperation.

Contributions

In the News

Quoted by in "New Study Looks at Suicide Rate of California Prison Guards," KCRA Sacramento, January 10, 2018.
Quoted by Don Thompson in "California: Muchos Suicidios Entre Empleados Penitenciarios," Houston Chronicle, January 9, 2018.
Quoted by Don Thompson in "New Study Looks at California Prison Guards' Suicide Rate," SCNow, January 9, 2018.
Research discussed by "Why are Suicide Rates so High among Corrections Officers?," New York Post, January 9, 2018.
Opinion: "Protest is Democracy at Work," Amy E. Lerman (with Vesla Weaver), Slate, December 23, 2014.
Research discussed by Sarah Stillman, in "Get Out of Jail, Inc.," The New Yorker, June 23, 2014.
Research discussed by Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow, in "Who is Most Likely to Dial 311?," Next City, April 8, 2014.
Research discussed by Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow, in "The Political Cost of a Heavy Police Presence?," Next City, February 19, 2014.
Opinion: "What Medicare Can Teach Us about the Future of Obamacare," Amy E. Lerman, Washington Post, November 26, 2013.
Research discussed by John Sides, in "How Prisons Make Bad Citizens," Washington Post, August 25, 2010.

Publications

"Political Ideology, Skin Tone, and the Psychology of Candidate Evaluations" (with Katherine T. McCabe and Meredith Sadin). Public Opinion Quarterly 79, no. 1 (2015): 53-90.

Examines the role of political ideology in shaping black voters’ evaluations of political candidates’ race and skin tone. Challenges simplistic notions of black preference for descriptive representation.

"Staying out of Sight? Concentrated Policing and Local Political Action" (with Vesla M. Weaver). The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 651, no. 1 (2014): 202-219.
Shows that the concentration and character of police stops in New York City is highly predictive of patterns of local political engagement.
"Arresting Citizenship: The Democratic Consequences of American Crime Control" (with Vesla M. Weaver) (University of Chicago Press, 2014).
Presents a host of evidence that the growth and culture of the American criminal justice system has important consequences for democratic life.
"The Modern Prison Paradox: Politics, Punishment, and American Community" (Cambridge University Press, 2013).
Argues that the modern move toward more punitive prison culture has had deleterious consequences for the social communities of both inmates and correctional officers.
"The State of the Job: An Embedded Work Role Perspective on Prison Officer Attitudes" (with Joshua Page). Punishment and Society 14, no. 5 (2012): 503-529.
Uses original surveys from California and Minnesota to analyze whether differences in the orientations of state correctional systems are reflected in the attitudes of workers who are tasked with the day-to-day oversight of state prisons.
"Political Consequences of the Carceral State" (with Vesla M. Weaver). American Political Science Review 104, no. 4 (2010): 817-833.

Examines the effects of contact with police, courts, prisons and jails on Americans’ political attitudes and behavior.