The Inaugural Dr. Anat Kimchi Graduate Student Awards were announced for 2022-2023.
Anat Kimchi was a beloved University of Maryland graduate student in Criminology and Criminal Justice who was tragically killed in 2021, and the endowment memorializes her passion for quantitative empirical research related to racial inequality, recidivism, social justice, or the study of formal institutions of social control.
In making these awards, the Kimchi Family and the Department preserve the memory of Dr. Kimchi’s life and accomplishments.
The Kimchi Memorial Graduate Student Awardee: Erin Tinney
Erin Tinney's proposal to investigate the impact of justice system contact on educational outcomes was favorably reviewed by the committee and selected for the Award. One of the many consequences of juvenile justice system contact, particularly incarceration, is separation from school. While incarcerated youth receive some educational services while they are in a justice facility, the transition back to their community school may negatively alter a student’s educational trajectory. However, little is known about how judicial custody specifically influences educational outcomes such as exclusionary discipline, school completion, and postsecondary enrollment. In this study, Erin builds on this prior research by examining mechanisms of the relationship between justice system involvement and educational outcomes. These mechanisms include the youth’s level of exposure to the justice system, separation from school, and the impacts of justice system contact on secondary educational factors (e.g., grade retention, academic performance) and postsecondary enrollment. The ultimate goal of this project is to investigate the educational outcomes for youth in Maryland who are returning to public schools following justice system contact, particularly incarceration. She assesses whether youth who are incarcerated differ in their academic outcomes than youth with other forms of system contact and youth who have never had system contact. She also investigates whether youth who are incarcerated differ in their academic outcomes than youth who are absent from school for other reasons (which ascertains whether the impact of incarceration on one's education is due to school absence or if incarceration has a unique impact on education above and beyond missing school). She also explores whether the impact of justice system contact on school outcomes varies based on one's gender and racial identities.
The Kimchi Memorial Graduate Student Travel Awardee: Sean Houlihan
Sean received the Kimchi Travel Award to help fund a presentation to be given at the 2022 American Society of Criminology (ASC) Annual Meeting in Atlanta, Georgia this coming November. The presentation is derived from Sean’s doctoral dissertation research and is entitled “Perpetuating Disadvantage: An Investigation of Racial Bias Embedded within Criminal History Measurement.” In the presentation, he will discuss the issue of criminal history records being tainted with racial bias, despite largely accepted arguments that such records provide a race-neutral indicator of an individual’s past criminal behavior and risk of recidivism. Sean’s research argues that the neutrality of criminal history records is uncertain, considering evidence of racial disparities throughout the criminal justice system. Rather than being unbiased, criminal history measures may instead be a source of systemic racism, as the accumulation of a criminal record is partially dependent on decisions made by criminal justice actors, net of actual criminal activity. To the extent that these decisions are influenced by racial bias, so too will be the measurement of criminal history, calling into question its efficacy as a key driver of criminal punishment severity. The presentation will discuss quantitative results regarding evidence of bias in criminal history records, its contribution to cumulative disadvantages across racial groups, as well as policy implications of such bias.
The Kimchi Memorial Graduate Student Travel Awardee: Dixin Li
Dixin Li received the Kimchi Travel Award to help fund a presentation on violent protests and punishment at the 2022 American Society of Criminology (ASC) Annual Meeting in Atlanta, Georgia this coming November. Dixin Li’s project evaluates the impacts of violent protests on local sentencing patterns. Specifically, she plans to examine local sentencing pattern shifts in the aftermath of 2015 Freddie Gray’s death and subsequent social unrest. Extant research has provided informative but mixed findings on the consequences of violent protests. More importantly, little work has been done to explicitly investigate the impact of violent protests on court sentencing patterns. The focus has been on how the mistreatment and inequalities in the criminal justice system can spur varied peaceful or violent protests, while how such events can have feedback loops that subsequently shape the source of the conflicts, the criminal justice system, is unknown. This research analyzes the fluctuation of overall punitiveness and racial disparities in sentencing patterns of Maryland Circuit Courts before and after the uprising. In the wake of recent social unrest events, understanding the association between political struggle and the response of the judicial system has increasing importance.
