Sara Wakefield

Sara Wakefield received her Ph.D. from the Department of Sociology at the University of Minnesota in 2007. Her research interests focus on the consequences of mass imprisonment for the family, with an emphasis on childhood wellbeing and racial inequality, culminating in a series of articles and book, Children of the Prison Boom: Mass Incarceration and the Future of American Inequality (Oxford University Press, with Chris Wildeman). More recently, she is working on several original data collection projects funded by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute of Justice. The Prison Inmate Networks Studies (PINS and WO-PINS) leverage a variety of methods and data sources (surveys, intensive interviews, administrative data, and social network analysis) to more fully understand how social ties influence the conditions of confinement, community reintegration, and social inequality.