Research Expertise and Interest

inequality, incarceration, historical sociology, social theory

Research Description

Christopher Muller studies the political economy of incarceration in the United States from Reconstruction to the present, with a particular focus on how agricultural labor markets, migration, and struggles over land and labor have affected incarceration and racial and class inequality in incarceration. He has also written on the causes and effects of environmental inequality and inequality in death from infectious disease.

His current work is focused on understanding long-run patterns in the Black and White incarceration rates since slavery, particularly why the Black incarceration rate was lower in the South than in the North for much of the 20th century, why it was lowest in the South’s cotton belt, and why it began to increase in the early 1970s. This work aims to clarify the relationship between incarceration and slavery, peonage, and broader shifts in the agricultural economy in the United States. A short overview can be found here.