Research Expertise and Interest

African American communities, policing, racial/gender disparities and the criminal justice system, violence and violence interventions

Research Description

Nikki Jones is a Professor and the H. Michael and Jeanne Williams Department Chair of African American Studies at UC-Berkeley. Her work focuses on the experiences of Black women, men, and youth with the criminal legal system, policing, and violence. Professor Jones is the author of two books: Between Good and Ghetto: African American Girls and Inner-City Violence (2010) and The Chosen Ones: Black Men and the Politics of Redemption (June 2018), which received the Michael J. Hindelang Outstanding Book Award from the American Society of Criminology in 2020. Her current research efforts are focused on the systematic analysis of video records that document routine encounters between police and civilians, with a focus on encounters that involve the police and Black youth in high-surveillance neighborhoods. These records are housed in the Justice Interaction Lab in the Department of African American Studies at UC-Berkeley. Professor Jones has shared her expertise with numerous print, radio, and television news media outlets, including NPR, KCBS Radio, Axios.com, History.com, BBC World Newshour, Minnesota Public Radio, Time Magazine, KQED’s Forum, Ireland Today, Australia Broadcasting Corporation (The Drum), SF Weekly, The Dallas Morning News, and CNN’s “The Lead with Jake Tapper,” among others. Professor Jones is also a faculty affiliate with the Center for Race and Gender; the Department of Women and Gender Studies; and the Center for the Study of Law and Society at UC-Berkeley.