Erin Kerrison | Research UC Berkeley

Research Expertise and Interest

crime, criminal justice, drug control, gender, health disparities, inequality, law, mass incarceration, mental health, mixed methods, policing, policy, poverty, prisons, punishment, race, risk, reentry, substance abuse, trauma, violence, race and gender, artificial intelligence, data science, social work and education, social work, public impact research/scholarship, social justice research

Research Description

Dr. Kerrison's work extends from a legal epidemiological framework, wherein law and legal institutions condition structural determinants of health. Specifically, through varied agency partnerships, her mixed-method research agenda investigates the impact that compounded structural disadvantage, concentrated poverty, and state supervision has on service delivery, substance misuse, violence and other health outcomes for individuals and communities marked by criminal legal system intervention.

In the News

DeRay Mckesson is arrested by a police officer

Among the reasons COVID-19 is worse for black communities: Police violence

There are various reasons COVID-19 is killing black people at six times the rate of white people. But one largely unexamined contributor to the disparity is the trauma and stress caused by police violence in those communities, and the physical toll of that violence.