About

Valerie Jenness is a professor affiliated with the School of Social Ecology at the University of California, Irvine, specializing in Criminology, Law, and Society. Her research extensively explores issues related to prisons, transgender inmates, and the legal and social dynamics within carceral institutions. Jenness has contributed significant scholarship on the experiences of transgender women in men's prisons, focusing on how prison as a total institution shapes gender and the challenges of gender-affirming health care for transgender women in prison. Her work also addresses sexual victimization against transwomen in prison, examining consent and coercion in these contexts. In addition to her focus on transgender issues in the prison system, Jenness has conducted research on prisoners' perceptions of justice, grievance systems, and the culture of control within prisons. She has analyzed the implementation and effects of hate crime laws and policies, particularly in California, and has studied the transformation of symbolic law into organizational action in law enforcement practice. Jenness employs a variety of methodological approaches, including ethnography and mixed methods, to study complex social and legal phenomena related to criminal justice and incarceration. Her scholarship includes contributions to understanding the intersection of race, grievance systems, and justice perceptions in prisons, as well as the broader implications of criminal justice policies on marginalized populations. Jenness's work is recognized for its depth in examining the lived experiences of inmates, the institutional structures of prisons, and the legal frameworks that govern them, making her a prominent voice in the sociology of law and criminology.

Research topics

• Sociology
• Psychology
• Criminology
• Gender studies
• Medicine
• Psychoanalysis

Selected publications

• Article 15: Rethinking Sex-Segregated Incarceration: What Transgender Prisoners Want and Why It Matters

  Advancing Corrections Journal · 2026-01-27

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Media and political attention have put a spotlight on transgender women living inside prisons designated for men and, in some cases, requesting placement in a women’s prison. This, in turn, has raised questions about where to house transgender people who are incarcerated in High Income Countries, given they face high rates of verbal, physical, and sexual victimization and other harms. Some legislation and policies seeking to address the issue emphasize the incarcerated person’s expressed preference for prison type and housing situation should be considered. Data from a national survey of 280 transgender prisoners in 31 states reveals 70% of transgender women prefer to be housed in prisons for women, representing a notable shift from previous research, in the direction of preferring women’s prisons. More than three quarters of transgender men and transgender women prefer to be housed with other transgender people. Only about a third of transgender women and about half of transgender men reside in prison facilities that align with their preference (i.e., men’s or women’s prison). These and other findings emerge amid evolving legal frameworks, including the Prison Rape Elimination Act (2003) and California’s Transgender Respect, Agency, and Dignity Act (2020), which mandate consideration of prisoners’ gender identity and perspectives on safety and housing. Given the political prominence of this topic and the problems with the status quo, policymakers and correctional leaders must understand transgender people’s preferences for prison housing reveal both patterns and variation.

  PublisherDOI

• LGBTQ+ perspectives on police reform: An examination of support for defunding, reallocating, and disbanding, a research note

  Criminology · 2025-05-01

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract The murder of George Floyd in 2020 catalyzed a national discussion about policing, including calls to #DefundthePolice that recently manifested in the 2024 national election as presidential candidates debated competing approaches to achieving public safety and police reform. The well‐documented “race gap” in views of the police was apparent in this discussion, whereas the views of another minoritized community with a long history of being subjected to police violence, the LGBTQ+ community, were imperceptible. This research examines LGBTQ+ people's support for police reform. Using data from a national probability survey, we find LGBTQ+ people express more support than non‐LGBTQ+ people do for three types of reform: defunding the police, reallocating police funds, and disbanding the police. For both LGBTQ+ and non‐LGBTQ+ people, the predicted probabilities for supporting reallocating police funds are higher than for defunding the police and disbanding the police. Within the LGBTQ+ population, the predicted probability for each type of reform is highest for nonbinary people, generally followed by those who are young, of color, and liberal. The findings related to the LGBTQ+ population are foundational to understanding how different segments of the LGBTQ+ community orient to police and prospects for reform.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• From the Stonewall Inn to The Cuff: Legacies of the Past, Current Disparities, and LGBTQ Communities’ Complex Relationship with Police

  Criminology Criminal Justice Law & Society · 2025-11-01

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Originating as a keynote address delivered at the Western Society of Criminology, this article focuses on the complex and fraught relationship between LGBTQ communities and law enforcement, historically and in the present. Situating current LGBTQ–police relations in a historical context as revealed by pivotal events occurring in New York and Los Angeles, it first emphasizes a history of police violence against LGBTQ people. Thereafter, this article draws on original survey data to reveal that LGBTQ people are more likely to see the police as “foe” rather than “friend,” are less willing to call the police for help, and are more supportive of three types of policing reform (defunding the police, reallocating funds for police, and disbanding the police) compared to non-LGBTQ people. In addition to these disparities between LGBTQ people and non-LGBTQ people, there are differences within the LGBTQ community. These and other findings are situated in a larger context in which studies reveal that LGBTQ people are overpoliced and underserved. The implications of these historical legacies, empirical findings, and calls for policy reform are presented as the basis for future research that can enrich theory, policy, and practice.

  PublisherDOI

• Transgender People Involved with Carceral Systems

  2024-12-02 · 4 citations

  bookSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• The Structure and Operation of the Transgender Criminal Legal System Nexus in the United States: Inequalities, Administrative Violence, and Injustice at Every Turn

  CrimRxiv · 2024-01-14

  preprintOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  A growing body of research reveals that transgender people are disproportionately in contact with the criminal legal system, wherein they experience considerable discrimination, violence, and other harms. To better understand transgender people's involvement in this system, this article synthesizes research from criminology, transgender studies, and related fields as well as empirical findings produced outside of academe, to conceptualize a “transgender criminal legal system nexus.” This article examines historical and contemporary criminalization of transgender people; differential system contact and attendant experiences associated with police contact, judicial decision-making, and incarceration; and pathways to system involvement for transgender people. The analytic focus is on cultural logics related to institutionalized conceptualizations of gender, discriminatory people-processing in various domains of the criminal legal system, and institutionally produced disparities for transgender people involved in the criminal legal system, especially transgender women of color. The article concludes with a discussion of directions for future research, including a focus on administrative violence, organizational sorting, intersectionality, and measurement challenges.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Often Cruel, Sometimes Unusual, and Sadly Predictable

  2024-12-02 · 1 citations

  book-chapterSenior author

  Decades of successful grassroots activism, policy advocacy, and legal change have raised the visibility of transgender people, including by bringing attention to the ways in which transgender people are differentially criminalised and policed, are judicially discriminated against, and suffer the pains of imprisonment in disparate ways. As the Prison Policy Initiative in the United States succinctly observed, “trans people are criminalised and discriminated against for simply being trans” (Herring and Widra 2022, p. 4), an insight that has been affirmed in reports by the United Nations 1 and publications by academics outside the United States (Rodgers, Asquith, and Dwyer 2017). This reality is increasingly recognised by researchers, politicians and policymakers, advocates, and corrections officials who publicly proclaim a commitment to ensuring fair treatment of transgender people who have contact with the criminal legal system, including those in carceral spaces. As O'Connell, Aizpurua, and Rogan (2021, pp. 447–8) explained in their work on the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (a supranational prison oversight body): Transgender people are incarcerated for various reasons, but systemic discrimination is often an underlying factor [41]. Transgender people face discrimination when it comes to housing and employment opportunities and are also likely to face harassment and hate-based violence. As a result, transgender people are at risk of dropping out of school, experiencing economic uncertainty and criminalization [42]. Many transgender people face problems at home, find it difficult to secure employment and are unable to access safe support services. This amalgamation of discriminatory factors may result in transgender people finding themselves homeless and unemployed. In such situations, transgender people may turn to working in illegal economies, which can lead to their imprisonment [24].

  PublisherDOI

• The Structure and Operation of the Transgender Criminal Legal System Nexus in the United States: Inequalities, Administrative Violence, and Injustice at Every Turn

  Annual Review of Criminology · 2023-07-14 · 19 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  A growing body of research reveals that transgender people are disproportionately in contact with the criminal legal system, wherein they experience considerable discrimination, violence, and other harms. To better understand transgender people's involvement in this system, this article synthesizes research from criminology, transgender studies, and related fields as well as empirical findings produced outside of academe, to conceptualize a “transgender criminal legal system nexus.” This article examines historical and contemporary criminalization of transgender people; differential system contact and attendant experiences associated with police contact, judicial decision-making, and incarceration; and pathways to system involvement for transgender people. The analytic focus is on cultural logics related to institutionalized conceptualizations of gender, discriminatory people-processing in various domains of the criminal legal system, and institutionally produced disparities for transgender people involved in the criminal legal system, especially transgender women of color. The article concludes with a discussion of directions for future research, including a focus on administrative violence, organizational sorting, intersectionality, and measurement challenges.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Understanding the context for police avoidance: the impact of sexual identity, police legitimacy and legal cynicism on willingness to report hate crime

  Current Issues in Criminal Justice · 2023-02-06 · 8 citations

  article

  Developed over decades, a body of research identifies the factors that affect people’s willingness to report crime to law enforcement. In a context in which studies of anti-LGBTQ violence and peoples’ responses to such victimisation are proliferating, a timely question warrants attention: What predicts the willingness of sexual minorities (SMs) (ie, lesbian, gay, bisexual and queer) to report hate crime to the police? Utilising original data collected from a multi-site survey, this article assesses factors that shape the probability that young SMs will report bias-motivated crime victimisation to the police. We find that, compared to their non-SM heterosexual counterparts, SMs express a wider range of willingness to report crime as well as more legal cynicism and lower perceptions of police legitimacy. Our multivariate analyses reveal that SM identity indirectly influences reporting behaviour vis-a-vis legal cynicism and perceptions of police legitimacy. The implications of these findings for future research are discussed in the context of a growing body of literature that reveals the plethora of ways in which LGBTQ communities are both over-policed and underserved.

  PublisherDOI

• LGBTQ+ People’s Views of the Police: Friend or Foe?

  Contexts · 2023-08-01 · 4 citations

  articleSenior author

  Stefan Vogler and Valerie Jenness on community views toward cops.

  PublisherDOI

• The centrality of relationships in context: a comparison of factors that predict the sexual and non-sexual victimization of transgender women in prisons for men

  Journal of Crime and Justice · 2021-06-06 · 11 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  This research draws on original data to empirically assess how an array of factors – including features of the self, the prison environment, and prisoners’ interactions with each other – shape the probability of transgender women in prisons for men experiencing sexual victimization and non-sexual physical assault. Logistic regression analyses reveal that, in general, the same factors that predict sexual assault per se predict sexual victimization more generally as well as non-sexual assault. The most consistently powerful predictor is an interactional variable: whether transgender women report having been in a consensual sexual relationship with another prisoner, which consistently approximately triples the odds of all three categories of victimization (i.e., sexual assault, sexual victimization, and non-sexual assault). The prominence of this durable interactional predictor points to lifestyle and routines as the most proximate influence on victimization – sexual or otherwise. This, in turn, allows for both a more robust understanding of the social organization of violence and victimization within prison settings as well as a more robust understanding of the relationships between different types of victimization.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Kitty Calavita

  University of California System

  26 shared

• David A. Smith

  19 shared

• Judith Stepan‐Norris

  University of California, Irvine

  19 shared

• Ryken Grattet

  University of California, Davis

  13 shared

• Kendal Broad

  University of Florida

  11 shared

• Jennifer Sumner

  8 shared

• Lori Sexton

  University of Missouri–Kansas City

  7 shared

• Cheryl L. Maxson

  University of California, Irvine

  6 shared

Education

• Ph.D., Criminology, Law and Society

  University of California, Irvine

• M.A., Sociology

  University of California, Santa Barbara

• B.A., Sociology

  University of California, Santa Barbara

Awards & honors

• American Sociological Association Distinguished Faculty Awar…
• President's Award (for mentoring) from the Western Society o…
• Faculty of the Year from the Master of Advanced Study in Cri…
• Most Inspirational Instructor in the Department of Sociology…
• Excellence in Undergraduate Education Award at the Universit…