The new Beyond the Barriers Initiative at UC Davis has awarded three students the inaugural Beyond the Barriers Initiative Carceral Justice Research Awards.  

The awards were created to acknowledge research by undergraduate, graduate, and professional students at UC Davis that contributes to new public knowledge on decarceration, support systems for formerly incarcerated individuals, building creative community alternatives to policing and prisons, and understanding the carceral state in California. The award recognizes research already underway and provides small seed grants for students to document their work. 

Award criteria and the application process for 2020-21 awards will be announced in Fall 2020.

Graduate Research Award: 

Liz Blum, Community and Regional Development

Budgetary Violence in the Wake of Two Pandemics: Systemic Racism and COVID-19

For decades, abolitionist organizers have been working to shift funding away from carceral systems rooted in anti-blackness. Closing state prisons and decreasing contact with the PIC, while building systems of care and community-based services have been central to the work being done in California to abolish prisons (and police). In the wake of two global pandemics, COVID-19 and systemic racism, while neoliberal logics threaten to further austerity budgets, there is growing consciousness around budgetary violence. Using Sacramento County and Los Angeles County as case studies, Liz examines the community organizing, political, and public health landscapes that inform budgetary outcomes in the wake of potential economic devastation. On the state-level, Liz studies the connections of prison closure to California’s budget and policy outcomes during the time of COVID-19 in the fight to reverse the largest prison-building project in the world. 

Bio: Liz's research is informed by being deeply involved in abolitionist organizing. As a survivor of violence, she learned from an early age that police do not make families safer, especially cash poor families. But it wasn't until her brother's first arrest and incarceration that she started organizing for abolition. As an organizer with Decarcerate Sacramento, Liz works to prevent county jail expansions, decrease jail populations, and shift county funds to community-based public health and safety. Liz also works with Californians United for a Responsible Budget to provide research and policy recommendations around California's first state prison closures, using an environmental justice lens to advocate for the closure of the most socially and environmentally toxic prisons.

Undergraduate Research Awards: 

Stephanie Quero '20, Political Science / Public Service and Chicana/o Studies

Project: Youth in Debt and in Jail 

Stephanie Quero's research examines the higher rates of arrests and incarceration affecting Black and Latinx youth and how the process of incarceration and the resulting debt incurred through bail, legal representation, and  booking fees. As a consequence, the inability to pay fees can affect family tax refund checks, eligibility for state assistance, and their access to credit which detrimentally and disproportionately affects people of color. The project was Quero's honors thesis. 

Valencia Scott '20, Anthropology and International Relations

Project: Crimmigration and Black Immigration in the US

Valencia Scott's research examines the current United States political climate and the increasing overlap between criminal and immigration law and policy (Crimmigration) which makes the inclusion of immigrant narratives critical in contemporary discourse on mass incarceration and prison abolition. This project considers the disproportionate number of Black and Brown people imprisoned, which make up over 67% of the population, focusing specifically on Black immigrants in the US who face unique post-incarceration consequences such as mandatory pre-trail detention and even mandatory deportation.