Speaking at the Center for Psychology and Law's recent event are clockwise from left: Elizabeth Cauffman, Keramet Reiter and Kristin Turney.
Center for Psychology and Law spotlights research on incarceration
More than half of Americans have had a family member incarcerated. Young men cycle in and out of jails before their brains are fully developed. People spend decades in solitary confinement cells the size of a bathroom stall. These are not abstract statistics — they are the daily realities that three UCI researchers are working to change, and on April 27, the UCI Center for Psychology and Law put that work center stage.
At “Journeys Through Justice: Age, Experience and Incarceration,” UC Irvine Professors Elizabeth Cauffman, Keramet Reiter, and Kristin Turney shared research that is actively reshaping how California thinks about who ends up behind bars, what happens to them there, and what ripples outward to the families and communities left behind. The evening also marked a milestone for the center itself, as it bid farewell to two outgoing distinguished fellows and welcomed two new ones.
Rethinking young adults behind bars
Cauffman, professor of psychology and director of the Center for Psychology and Law, opened her presentation with a deceptively simple question: “if we know the human brain isn't fully developed until age 25, why do we treat 18-to-25-year-olds in jail the same as everyone else?”
Cauffman has spent years studying adolescent brain development, and that science formed the backbone of the Road to Reentry project — a partnership with the Orange County Sheriff's Department that created a specialized housing unit at Lacy Jail for young men ages 18 to 25.
The unit, modeled after what researchers call a Transition Age Youth (TAY) mod, gives participants their own rooms, a common area, and structured programming ranging from cognitive behavioral therapy and parenting education with Planned Parenthood, to creative writing and resume building.
The men in Cauffman's study are, on average, 23 years old, have been arrested roughly nine times before, and experienced their first arrest at around age 16. These are not first-time offenders but, Cauffman argued, they are exactly the population most worth reaching.
Her preliminary data tells a compelling story. Young men who remained in the TAY mod reported increasingly higher perceptions of safety around staff compared to those in the general jail population — and feeling safe around staff turned out to matter enormously.
The more safe a participant felt around correctional officers, Cauffman noted, the less likely he was to act out, engage in misconduct or commit physical aggression inside the facility.
“How we treat people on the inside will have an impact on their behavior,” Cauffman said.
She closed with words from one participant that drew a quiet hush from the audience: “When I first came here, it was like my seventh time in here. I didn't think I’d change until I went to the program, and then I saw what life could be like.”
From cages to classrooms
Keramet Reiter, professor of criminology, law and society, took a sweeping look at three interconnected projects — all centered on what happens when researchers and institutions dare to work together differently.
The first involved nearly a decade of work in Washington State studying the reform of solitary confinement.
Reiter described conditions in California's long-term solitary units in stark terms — cells the size of wheelchair-accessible bathroom stalls, lights on 24 hours a day and people emerging only to be locked into telephone booth-sized cages. More than 500 people in California had spent more than a decade in those conditions, she said.
In Washington, where she was invited in as a critical outside researcher, she documented the slow, deliberate work of replacing cages with programming chairs, then carpeted common rooms where incarcerated men could sit on a couch and have a cup of coffee with a correctional officer. The change, she noted, benefited staff as much as prisoners.
Her second project, PrisonPandemic, documented the devastating impact of COVID-19 on California's 172 carceral facilities — which together reported 97,000 COVID cases and 260 deaths in state prisons alone.
By running a hotline, collecting letters, and archiving nearly 5,000 first-person accounts, Reiter and her collaborators created what is now a living research resource, allowing journalists, policymakers, and scholars to hear incarcerated people speak in their own voices about what they experienced.
Her third project may be the most transformative: UCI’s LIFTED (Leveraging Inspiring Futures Through Educational Degrees), the first University of California bachelor's degree completion program offered inside a California state prison. Since launching in 2020, the program has expanded to three UC campuses and seven California State University campuses.
Faculty who have taught in the program call it their favorite teaching experience ever. Three students have received gubernatorial commutations of life sentences. Graduation ceremonies have featured caps, gowns and a hip-hop dance class taught by a world-class UCI professor.
The families left behind
Kristin Turney, professor of sociology, grounded the evening with this statistic: 45% of U.S. adults have had an immediate family member incarcerated. Nearly two-thirds have had any family member incarcerated. Among children born in urban areas, one in three has experienced a father's incarceration by age 9.
Drawing on the Jail and Family Life Study — 800 in-depth interviews with incarcerated fathers, their children, their children’s mothers, and the fathers’ own mothers — Turney explored what she calls “anticipatory stress”: the psychological toll of simply not knowing. When is the hearing? Will my partner leave? Where will I go when I get out?
Her interviews revealed that such uncertainty, often more distressing than the resolution itself, pervades the lives of both incarcerated individuals and the family members waiting for them.
Turney also challenged a common assumption. Family member incarceration, she said, is not uniformly experienced as a tragedy. Some mothers described quiet relief when their sons were incarcerated — at least they knew where he was, that he wasn't using, that he was fed.
Honoring the fellows
In addition to the featured talks, the center paused to honor those bridging the gap between research and community.
Outgoing distinguished fellows Jennifer Friend, CEO of Project Hope Alliance — who serves more than 23,000 Orange County students experiencing homelessness — and Dr. Michael Barsom, executive director of the Department of State Hospitals, were recognized for their contributions to the center and to the School of Social Ecology.
Friend, a lawyer who stepped away from legal practice to apply research directly to her community, offered heartfelt thanks and a rally cry: “Zot zot zot!”
Incoming distinguished fellows Daniel Hernandez, chief probation officer of the Orange County Probation Department, and Sheila Hanson, OC Superior Court judge, were welcomed into the fold — new partners in the center's ongoing mission to connect science with justice.
— Mimi Ko Cruz