About

Naomi Murakawa is an associate professor of African American Studies at Princeton University. She studies the reproduction of racial inequality in 20th and 21st century American politics, with specialization in crime policy and the carceral state. She is the author of The First Civil Right: How Liberals Built Prison America, published by Oxford University Press in 2014. Her work has appeared in Law & Society Review, Theoretical Criminology, Du Bois Review, and several edited volumes. She has received fellowships from Columbia Law School’s Center for the Study of Law and Culture, as well as the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Health Policy Research Program. Prior to her current position, she taught in the Department of Political Science at the University of Washington.

Research topics

• Sociology
• Computer Science
• Political Science
• Criminology
• History
• Psychoanalysis
• Mathematics
• Psychology

Selected publications

• Reflections on the shadow carceral state

  Theoretical Criminology · 2024 · 3 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Sociology
  • Political Science
  • Criminology

  In 2012 we urged scholars to explore the extension of penal power through the “shadow carceral state.” The shadow carceral state operates through legally hybrid and institutionally serpentine forms that stretch beyond the criminal legal system. Theoretical Criminology's special issue invited us to reflect on the issues we raised in that piece. We are impressed by the transformation of punishment and society scholarship, which has grown deeper and more sophisticated with each wave of activism. Yet it will take more than a thriving subfield to confront the present and likely future: tenacious and expansive carceral and shadow carceral states that are continually deployed to address the compounding global crises of climate change, mass displacement, and structural poverty.

  PublisherDOI

• Microbial production of hydroxy fatty acids utilizing crude glycerol

  Biocatalysis and Agricultural Biotechnology · 2022-01-01 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access1st author
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Studies on filamentous fungus Fusarium sp. accumulating hydroxy fatty acids

  Proceedings of 2022 AOCS Annual Meeting & Expo · 2022-09-29

  article

  Crude glycerol is produced as a by-product on a biodiesel production process. Effective utilization of this crude glycerol may help to reduce manufacturing costs and produce value-added products. We isolated microorganisms that grow in a medium containing crude glycerol as a major carbon source and analyzed their fatty acid composition. Fusarium sp. D2 was found to accumulate fatty acid secondary metabolites such as 10-hydroxystaric acid (HYB) and 10-oxostearic acid (KetoB). These fatty acids were converted form oleic acid containing crude glycerol as a component. We isolated a hydratase gene from strain D2 and characterized the hydratase by gene expression analysis using Escherichia coli. Strain D2 accumulates toxic fatty acids such as free fatty acids added in the medium. We aimed to use strain D2 as a host for the production of functional lipids that have been difficult to produce by fermentation. We tried to develop a host-vector system for strain D2. Here, we introduce studies on Fusarium sp. D2 accumulating hydroxy fatty acids.

  PublisherDOI

• Efficient production of biolipids by crude glycerol-assimilating fungi

  Bioresource Technology Reports · 2021-10-20 · 6 citations

  articleOpen access
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Mass Incarceration Is Dead, Long Live the Carceral State!

  Tulsa law journal · 2020 · 1 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Sociology
  • Criminology
  • Sociology

  Reviewing: James Forman, Jr. - Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America; Issa Kohler-Hausmann - Misdemeanorland: Criminal Courts and Social Control in an Age of Broken Windows Policing; Heather Schoenfeld - Building the Prison State: Race and the Politics of Mass Incarceration

  PublisherOA PDF

• Racial Innocence: Law, Social Science, and the Unknowing of Racism in the US Carceral State

  Annual Review of Law and Social Science · 2019-10-10 · 33 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Racial innocence is the practice of securing blamelessness for the death-dealing realities of racial capitalism. This article reviews the legal, social scientific, and reformist mechanisms that maintain the racial innocence of one particular site: the US carceral state. With its routine dehumanization, violence, and stunning levels of racial disparity, the carceral state should be a hard test case for the willful unknowing of obvious devastation. Nonetheless, the law presumes “no racism,” condones racial profiling, and interprets racial disparity in policing and imprisonment as evidence of true racial difference in criminality, not discrimination. Prominent social science research too often mimics these practices, producing research that aids in the collective erasure of racism.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• <i>Progressive Punishment: Job Loss, Jail Growth, and the Neoliberal Logic of Carceral Expansion</i>. By Judah Schept. New York: New York University Press, 2015. Pp. v+320. $89.00 (cloth); $27.00 (paper).

  American Journal of Sociology · 2019-05-01

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• 4. Weaponized empathy: emotion and the limits of racial reconciliation in policing

  New York University Press eBooks · 2018-05-24 · 1 citations

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Trading Democracy for Justice: Criminal Convictions and the Decline of Neighborhood Political Participation

  The Forum · 2015-10-01

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Response to Maria Gottschalk’s and Amy E. Lerman and Vesla M. Weaver’s reviews of <i>The First Civil Right: How Liberals Built Prison America</i>

  Perspectives on Politics · 2015-09-01

  article1st authorCorresponding

  An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content.

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Frequent coauthors

• Katherine Beckett

  University of Washington

  3 shared

• Anyah Prasad

  University of Massachusetts Boston

  1 shared

• Dara Z. Strolovitch

  Yale University

  1 shared

• Charles Gouaux

  University of Missouri–St. Louis

  1 shared

• D. G. Byrne

  1 shared

• William Griffitt

  1 shared

• John Lamberth

  Mississippi State University

  1 shared

• Manuel Ramírez

  Wheelock College

  1 shared

Awards & honors

• Fellowship from Columbia Law School’s Center for the Study o…
• Fellowship from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Health…