Kate K. O'Neill, PhD
I am currently a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Washington as part of the Collective to Study the Broad Reach and Burden of Monetary Sanctions and will be joining the University of Iowa Department of Sociology and Criminology as a tenure-track assistant professor in fall of 2024. My award-winning work has appeared in multiple publications, including Feminist Criminology, the Sociology of Race & Ethnicity, Deviant Behavior, the Journal of Crime and Justice, and social psychology textbooks. My recent work on the community-level consequences of monetary sanctions has been published by the Russell Sage Foundation and featured in the Seattle Times.
I am a quantiative researcher whose body of work covers gender, racism, and the reproduction of inequalities in crime and punishment. I use self-report, social media, and administrative data to answer research questions about behavioral and cognitive development in adolescence, gangs, and legal financial punishments.
RESEARCH
ONGOING PROJECTS AND PAPERS: LEAD & CO-LEAD PROJECTS
The Broad Reach and Burden of the System of Monetary Sanctions
Postdoctoral Research Projects (Dr. Alexes Harris, PI)
This work links multiple administrative datasets from state and national organizations to build on prior scholarship on the disproportionate distribution of monetary sanctions and their community-level consequences. Working under UW’s Alexes Harris, as well as PIs at the University of Minnesota, Arizona State University, and the University of Georgia, I am currently leading research projects on age and the distribution of misdemeanor and civil penalties; long-term trends in jurisdictional monetary sanction dependence; the stigmatization of Indigenous defendants through restitution; and racialized wealth extraction.
Identity and Gangs in the Digital Streets
Ongoing Research Project (Dr. John Leverso, collaborator)
This mixed-methods research uses web-scraped Facebook data on over 20,000 users and 140,000 interactions from a since-banned Chicago-area gang-affiliated online group to examine how girls and women reproduce and challenge gang culture and dynamics through their online personas and interactions. We call on social networking, social media, feminist theory, and gang literatures to theorize opportunities for girls and women’s entry into this hostile, male-dominated, stigmatized space; identify adaptive behaviors of successful female group members; and highlight the means through which girls and women are placed in marginalized and defensive positions in this unique online environment.
The Long-Term Consequences of Mixed-Sex Peer Groups
PhD Dissertation (Dr. Ross L. Matsueda, chair)
This work uses gender, feminist, and developmental theories to examine patterns of delinquent and criminal behavior and occupational preference as a product of the sex composition of adolescent peer groups.
MEDIA
SELECTED FEATURES ON PUBLIC-FACING RESEARCH
Counties That Rely on the Courts for Revenue Sentence More Women to Incarceration
by Kim Eckart
Op-ed: Lift the Burden of Legal Fines and Fees
by Kate K. O'Neill, Alexes Harris, & Ian Kennedy
Crime, Empathy, and the Adolescent Experience
by Gwendolyn Price
TEACHING
Whether it's teaching anger management to men convicted of domestic violence, a new business process to Pentagon staffers, or sociological theory to undergraduates, I have always felt at home in the classroom. I believe everyone benefits when we create inclusive, challenging spaces for teaching and learning, and I proudly adhere to that philosophy in developing every lecture, training, discussion, and activity that makes it into my classroom.
Check out some of my sample materials, below, or contact me with requests for a full teaching résumé, teaching statements, or additional course materials.
Sample Syllabi
Click these links to download recent syllabi
CONTACT
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