ARTICLES & OP EDS
THE HILL
Faulty background checks are violating privacy and ruining lives
WIRED
Will the Real David Sosa Please Stand Up?
A Mug Shot Could Play Right Into Trump’s Hands
Formerly Incarcerated Job Seekers Need More Than Training
‘Clean Slate’ Laws Offer a Second Chance – Only for Some
Transparency Laws let Criminal Records Become Commodities
Sex-Offender Laws Sent a Man to Prison Over a Prayer Livestream
Do People Caught on Ring Cameras Have Privacy Rights?
VICE
How the Criminal Justice System Deploys Mass Surveillance on Innocent People. (with Juan Sandoval and Liz Webster)
WASHINGTON POST
How criminal background checks lead to discrimination against millions of Americans.
SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
Mugshots don’t belong on search engines.
SLATE
Online Criminal Records Create a Maze of Digital Punishment.
It’s Time for the Digital Mug Shot Industry to Die.
There’s No Such Thing as Expunging a Criminal Record Anymore.
THE APPEAL
The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative Funds Clean Slate Policy. So Why Won’t Facebook Take Down Mugshots?
THE CONVERSATION
Companies Accused of Crimes Get More Digital Privacy Rights than People Under New Trump Policy. (with Liz Chiarello)
Privacy Concerns Don’t Stop People from Putting Their DNA on the Internet to Help Solve Crimes
THE CRIME REPORT
The Perils of ‘Zoom Justice’
NEW JERSEY STAR-LEDGER
Small business just got a $300B bailout but many who need a second chance won’t see a dime (with Colleen Chien).
PACIFIC STANDARD
Can a Criminal Record Ever Be Fully Expunged?
MINNEAPOLIS STAR-TRIBUNE
The Downside of Highlighting Crime on Facebook"
COLLATERAL CONSEQUENCES RESOURCE CENTER BLOG
It’s Time to Address the Damage of a ‘Criminal’ Digital Reputation (with Jordan Hyatt)
NISKANEN CENTER
The Problem with ‘Clean Slate’ policies: Could broader sealing of criminal records hurt more people than it helps? (with Jen Doleac)
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
The criminal justice system’s big data problem.
CONTEXTS
Digital Punishment’s Tangled Web.
BOOKS
Digital Punishment. 2020. Oxford University Press.
Give Methods a Chance: Interviews with Social Scientists. Co-authored with Kyle Green. 2018. W.W. Norton.
(based on the podcast!)
TESTIMONY & POLICY
Expert testimony on technology and sex offense registries. United States District Court, Eastern District of Michigan, Does v. Whitmer.
Expert testimony on the harms of digital criminal records. United States District Court, Eastern District of Pennsylvania, Taha v. Bucks County Correctional Facility.
Testimony on automatic expungements. New Jersey State Assembly Judiciary Committee, Expedited Expungement Bill.
White paper: Technical advances in background checking and the impact on work opportunities in New Jersey. New Jersey Future of Work Task Force.
Policy Proposals for the 2019 Legislative Session. Scholars Strategy Network.
RESEARCH
Sarah Lageson and Robert Stewart. 2024. “The Problem with Criminal Records: Discrepancies Between State Reports and Private Sector Background Checks.” Criminology.
Sarah Lageson. 2023. “Criminally Bad Data: Inaccurate Criminal Records, Data Brokers, and Algorithmic Injustice.” University of Illinois Law Review.
Sarah Brayne, Sarah Lageson, and Karen Levy. 2023. “Surveillance Deputies: When Ordinary People Surveil for the State.” Law & Society Review.
Juan Sandoval and Sarah Lageson. 2022. “Patchwork Disclosure: Divergent public access and personal privacy across criminal record disclosure policy in the United States.” Law & Policy.
Elizabeth Webster, Kathleen Powell, Sarah Lageson, and Valerio Bacak. 2022. “’Satan’s Minions’ and ‘True Believers’: How Criminal Defense Attorneys’ Employ Quasi-Religious Rhetoric.” Justice System Journal.
Sarah Lageson. 2022. Criminal Record Stigma and Surveillance in the Digital Age. Annual Review of Criminology.
Leslie Schneider, Mike Vuolo, Sarah Lageson, and Chris Uggen. 2022. Before and After Ban the Box: Who Complies with Anti-Discrimination Law? Law & Social Inquiry.
Sarah Lageson, Elizabeth Webster and Juan Sandoval. 2021. Digitizing and Disclosing Personal Data: The Proliferation of State Criminal Records on the Internet. Law & Social Inquiry.
Sarah Lageson and Kateryna Kaplun. 2021. “Public Accusation on the Internet.” In Media and Law: Between Free Speech and Censorship, Sociology of Crime, Law, and Deviance, Volume 26), Mathieu Deflem and Derek M.D. Silva, eds.
Sarah Lageson. 2020. “Privacy Loss as Collateral Consequence.” The Annual Review of Interdisciplinary Justice Research.
Alessandro Corda and Sarah Lageson. 2020. “Disordered Punishment: Workaround Technologies of Criminal Records Disclosure and the Rise of a New Penal Entrepreneurialism.” British Journal of Criminology.
Valerio Bacak, Sarah Lageson, and Kathleen Powell. 2020. “Fighting the Good Fight: Why Do Public Defenders Remain on the Job?” Criminal Justice Policy Review.
Sarah Lageson. 2020. “Digital Legal Subjects and the Use of Online Criminal Court Records for Research.” Elgar Research Handbook on Law and Courts.
Sarah Lageson, Megan Denver, and Justin Pickett. 2019. “Privatizing Criminal Stigma: Experience, Intergroup Contact, and Public Views about Publicizing Arrest Records.” Punishment & Society 21(3):315-341.
Sarah Lageson, Suzy Maves McElrath, and Krissinda Palmer. 2019. “Gendered Public Support for Criminalizing ‘Revenge Porn.’” Feminist Criminology 14(5):560-583.
Sarah Lageson. 2018. Policy Essay: The Politics of Public Punishment. Criminology & Public Policy 17(3): 635-642.
Sarah Lageson and Shadd Maruna. 2018. “Digital Degradation: Stigma Management in the Internet Age.” Punishment & Society 20(1):113-133.
Sarah Lageson. 2017. “Crime Data, the Internet, and Free Speech: An Evolving Legal Consciousness.” Law & Society Review 51(1):8-41.
Mike Vuolo, Sarah Lageson, and Chris Uggen. 2017. “Criminal Record Questions in the Era of ‘Ban the Box.’” Criminology & Public Policy 16(1):139-165.
Mike Vuolo, Chris Uggen, and Sarah Lageson. 2017. “Race, Recession, and Social Closure in the Low Wage Labor Market: Experimental and Observational Evidence.” Research in the Sociology of Work 30:141-183.
Sarah Lageson and Christiane Schwarz. 2017. Criminal Records. Oxford Bibliographies in Criminology. Ed. Beth M. Huebner. New York: Oxford University Press.
Sarah Lageson. 2016. “Found Out and Opting Out: The Consequences of Online Criminal Records for Families.” The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 665(1):127-141.
Sarah Lageson. 2016. “Digital Punishment’s Tangled Web.” Contexts 15(1):22-27. Available online. Reprinted in Contexts Reader 3rd Edition, 2018. Syed Ali & Philip N. Cohen, eds. New York: W.W. Norton.
Mike Vuolo, Chris Uggen, and Sarah Lageson. 2016. “Statistical Power in Experimental Audit Studies: Cautions and Calculations for Paired Tests with Dichotomous Outcomes.” Sociological Methods & Research 45(2):260-303.
Sarah Lageson, Mike Vuolo, and Chris Uggen. 2015. “Legal Ambiguity in Managerial Assessments of Criminal Records.” Law and Social Inquiry 40(1):175-204.
Chris Uggen, Mike Vuolo, Sarah Lageson, Ebony Ruhland, Hilary Whitham. 2014. “The Edge of Stigma: An Experimental Audit of the Effects of Low-level Criminal Records on Employment.” Criminology 52(4):627-654.
Mike Vuolo, Chris Uggen, and Sarah Lageson. 2014. “Taste Clusters of Music and Drugs: Evidence from Three Analytical Levels.” British Journal of Sociology 65(3):520-54.
Sarah Lageson and Chris Uggen. 2013. “How Work Affects Crime – and Crime Affects Work – Over the Life Course.” Handbook of Life Course Criminology, edited by Marvin Krohn and Chris Gibson. New York: Springer.