My thesis is an autoethnography considering the ways to be a respectful and effective ally and advocate for racial justice issues as a White person. I have written my paper as a love letter to my Indigenous sister, synthesizing the lessons I learned throughout my justice studies courses and applying them to the very personal experience of my relationship with my sister.

This dissertation examines the San Diego border region to understand migrant construction worker’s mobility, autonomy, and labor power. San Diego County is enclosed by a network of internal immigration checkpoints and roving patrol operations that constrain migrant worker’s labor power to the territorial boundaries of the county. The project uses ‘differential mobility’ as a strategic concept to highlight the ways in which borders differentiate, sort, and rank among noncitizen migrant construction workers to meet local labor demands. The project reveals worker’s collective struggle to evade and cross border enforcement operations to maintain consistent employment across a border region that is marked by internal immigration checkpoints, roving patrol stops, and state surveillance measures. In addition, the project examines migrant men’s emerging workplace narratives about the body and penetration that symbolize workers’ understanding of social domination in a global economy. These expressions open up a critical space from which migrant men begin to critique a global economy that drives men northbound for employment and southbound for retirement—inhibiting a future that is neither entirely in the United States or Mexico.

Arguing for the importance of decolonial pedagogy in human rights education, this research is located at the intersection of human rights education, pedagogy, and justice studies, and is situated in the context of a contested neoliberal university in order to learn about and understand some of the challenges in implementing pedagogical change inspired by decolonial theory. This research focuses on pedagogical approaches of human rights professors to understand how and to what extent they are aligned with and informed by, incorporate, or utilize decolonial theory. This is accomplished through a content analysis of their syllabi, including readings and pedagogical statements, and semi-structured interviews about their praxis to draw attention to the what and how of their pedagogical practices and the ways in which it aligns with a decolonial pedagogical approach. This research calls attention to the specific manner in which they include decolonial pedagogical methods in their human rights courses. The findings determined that a decolonial pedagogical approach is only just emerging, and there is a need to address the barriers that impede their further implementation. In addition, there is a need for research that will further investigate the pedagogical approaches professors are employing, particularly those in alignment with decolonial criteria; the impact of decolonial and non-decolonial approaches on students’ epistemologies, and how to overcome barriers to advance implementation of a decolonizing pedagogical approach.

In which industry that has ever been profit generating, does a firm profit from their failure? The United States has a mass incarceration problem. With 25% of the world prison population residing in the US, spending on detention costs the US government $80 billion annually. Over 50% of the individuals incarcerated in America are of black or Latino descent. This massive growth in the incarcerated population of America began in the 1970s and with the passive support of American citizens has created an industry whose players profit from the detention of people. Currently, the privately run detention facilities in the United States hold 7% of state prisoners, 18% of federal prisoners, and nearly 75% of ICE's undocumented detainee population. The detention of people for profit is an idea rooted in the same profit motive that allowed the institution of slavery to flourish. However even after the 13th Amendment abolished slavery in the U.S., the oppressive forces behind slave-era economics have been perpetuated through legislation and policies that continued the stratification of society and reinforcement of the social order. With the help of corporate lobbyists, political action committees, and organizations such as the American Legislative Exchange Council, the corporate shareholders of private prisons, such as CoreCivic and The GEO Group, are able to directly align their profit-driven interests with those of federal and state legislators. By the incorporation of legislation and policy into state and federal law, the shareholders of private prisons are able to directly affect legislation as well as their own potential for profit. The justification for the usage of private prisons is thought to be seen in the price savings and flexibility that it provides for federal and state governments. However, due to the law enforcement contractor's exemption from public record laws, there is no clear evidence of where the cost savings occur, or even if there are cost savings at all. Is it ethical for a for-profit-prison corporation to be responsible for the care, security, and rehabilitation of an individual, when if they fail to rehabilitate the individual, it will add to the number of inmates under their control? The measure of a prison's failure to rehabilitate an inmate is considered the recidivism rate, and is affected when an inmate leaves a detention facility, commits another crime, then is arrested. This profit motive is causing our society to incarcerate increasing numbers of people in private prisons. For-profit prisons financially benefit from long-term incarceration and recidivism. The passive investments from public and private employees and institutions through investment corporations are the legs that allow the private prison industry to stand. Twenty-nine investment firms, such as The Vanguard Group and Fidelity Investments, own nearly two-thirds of the two largest players in the private prison industry. This includes the passive investments by public institutions such as the Arizona State University Foundation's $600 million endowment fund as well as the $500 million directly invested into CoreCivic and GEO Group from the University of Texas/ Texas A&M Investment Management Company. The goal of abolishing private prisons will require years of litigation against the giants of the industry as well as the governmental entities supporting them. However, we can start today by demanding divestiture by our school and similar institutions as well continuing to share the knowledge of the oppressive forces associated with the detention of individuals for profit.

Patriarchal forces manifest in a variety of wide-reaching ways, but few are more potent then the methods by which patriarchy becomes embodied and integrated into patterns of emotional expression. This is particularly true to the boundaries of anger expression for women which are placed upon and reinforced through patriarchal socialization. This thesis explores the relationship between gender socialization, the construction of happiness, and resistance through anger expression. Drawing from Sarah Ahmed's The Promise of Happiness and Judith Butler's Gender Troubles, this project first identifies the construction of subjecthood for women, focusing particularly on the ways in which performance of gendered categories becomes necessary to intelligibility as a subject. Through an exploration of current social science research, this project then seeks to answer the ways in which the theoretical notion of gendered subjecthood comes to function within tangible expressions, or lack of expression, of anger. Finally, this thesis explores what it may mean for women to create a healing relationship with anger, forcibly creating space for expansive subjecthood.

Ample research proves the American criminal justice system to be a mechanism for the unjust incarceration of hundreds of thousands of non-violent offenders. Less studied is the fact that thousands of these prisoners die agonizing and ugly deaths in custody each year at the discretion of government officials and public awareness is noticeably lacking. American government is complicit in the expedited premature death of thousands of federal and state inmates thanks to general prisoner anonymity, sociocultural constructs that invite condescension between individuals, and a morally repressive political system. The following analysis regarding the negligent mood underpinning inmate mortality issues attempts to draw connections between American sociological constructs along economic, political, and cultural lines. The priority of this thesis is to detail how such a stunning trend of maleficence has been able to go unchecked for decades, and what this says about American moral and political culture. Social construction theory will be used as a foundation to understanding how subscription to the ideals of American social hierarchies dictates political coercion and consent, and the manner in which this allowed for the emergence of mass incarceration. Further, political alignment and corresponding criminal justice positions will be scrutinized for moral authenticity and juxtaposed to traditional moral interpretations of the U.S. Constitution for ideological consistency. By doing so, I explore how moral and political hypocrisy has led to American moral atrophy, in turn facilitating the ongoing inmate health care crisis, through the sublimation of political values to financial priorities. I also discuss the resolutions for the inmate health crisis through a retroactive, legislative draw-down of incarcerated populations in order to free up budgets and reduce health care provider backlogs. In order to promote the utilitarian benefit of America's perception as a global beacon of freedom and personal liberty, the release of non-violent prisoners is advocated for under the pretense of mending the deep divides along class and racial lines that permeate American society. Finally, I will argue for the reinterpretation of penal philosophy to retreat from methods of incarceration and deterrence. I will attempt to persuade corrections officials to go further than simple rehabilitation and aim for complete redemption of inmates in the eyes of society, in part through the use of biblical overtones. The intended result will entail the eventual bowing of the arc of the moral universe back towards justice and even beyond towards redemption.

Sentencing reform has been the subject of much debate in the 21st century and has resulted in a great deal of consternation in state and federal systems of government (Chesney-Lind, 2012). The public does not view incarceration as an important topic needing attention or requiring change, which makes invisible the needs and histories of prisoners as a consequence of not addressing them (Connor, 2001). Through an analysis of the spectrum of women’s crime, ranging from non-violent drug trafficking to homicide, I conclude within this paper that the criminal justice system was written as a male-oriented code of addressing crime, which has contributed to women being made into easier targets for arrest and female imprisonment at increasing rates for longer lengths of time.
In the last decade, California’s imprisoned population of women has increased by nearly 400% (Chesney-Lind, 2012). The focus of this thesis is to discuss the treatment—or lack thereof—of women within California’s criminal justice system and sentencing laws. By exploring its historical approach to two criminal actions related to women, the Three Strikes law (including non-violent drug crimes) and the absence of laws accounting for experiences of female victims of domestic violence who killed their abusers, I explore how California’s criminal code has marginalized women, and present a summary of the adverse effects brought about by the gender invisibility that is endemic within sentencing policies and practice. I also discuss recent attempted and successful reforms related to these issues, which evidence a shift toward social dialogue on sentencing aiming to address gender inequity in the sentencing code. These reforms were the result of activism; organizations, academics and individuals successfully raised awareness regarding excessive and undue sentencing of women and compelled action by the legislature.
By method of a feminist analysis of these histories, I explore these two pertinent issues in California; both are related to women who, under harsh sentencing laws, were incarcerated under the state’s male-focused legislation. Responses to the inequalities found in these laws included attempts toward both visibility for women and reform related to sentencing. I analyze the ontology of sentencing reform as it relates to activism in order to discuss the implications of further criminal code legislation, as well as the implications of the 2012 reforms in practice. Through the paper, I focus upon how women have become a target of arrest and long sentences not because they are strategically arrested to equalize their representation behind bars, but because the “tough on crime” framework in the criminal code cast a wide and fixed net that incarcerated increasingly more women following the codification of both mandatory minimums and a male-oriented approach to sentencing (Chesney-Lind et. al, 2012).