Michelle Phelps

she/her

[email protected]

Sociology

1035 Social Sciences Building

267 19th Ave S
Minneapolis, MN 55455

Curriculum Vitae

Collegiate Affiliation

Professor,

Sociology

Links

Personal Website

Prof. Phelps’ research is in the sociology of punishment, focusing in particular on the punitive turn in the U.S. She is the co-author of Breaking the Pendulum: The Long Struggle Over Criminal Justice (Oxford, 2017) and the author of The Minneapolis Reckoning: Race, Violence, and the Politics of Policing in America (Princeton, 2024), winner of the 2025 Minnesota Book Prize for Minnesota Non-Fiction.

For more detailed and up-to-date information, please find her personal website at: www.michellesphelps.com.

Educational Background & Specialties

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Educational Background

Ph.D.: Sociology and Social Policy, Princeton University, 2013
M.A: Sociology, Princeton University, 2010
B.A: Psychology, University of California, Berkeley, 2005

Specialties

Punishment, Policing, Prisons
Inequality, Race and Racism
Social Movements
Mixed Methods Research, Qualitative Research

Publications

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Publications

Michelle S. Phelps. 2024. The Minneapolis Reckoning: Race, Violence, and the Politics of Policing in America. Princeton University Press.
Phelps, Michelle S., H.N. Dickens, and De Andre’ T. Beadle. 2023. “Are Supervision Violations Filling Prisons? The Role of Probation, Parole, and New Offenses in Driving Mass Incarceration.” Socius 9: 1–3
Piehowski, Victoria and Michelle S. Phelps. 2023. “Strong-arm Sobriety: Addressing Precarity through Probation.” Law & Social Inquiry 48(2): 489-516. (First Published Online Sept. 5, 2022.)
Phelps, Michelle S., Ingie Osman, Chris E. Robertson, and Rebecca Shlafer. 2022. “Beyond ‘Pains’ and ‘Gains’: Untangling the Health Consequences of Probation.” Health & Justice 10, Article no. 29.
Phelps, Michelle S., Anneliese Ward, and Dwjuan Frazier. 2021. “From Police Reform to Police Abolition? How Minneapolis Activists Fought to Make Black Lives Matter.” Mobilization: An International Quarterly (Special Issue on the Black Lives Movement) 26(4): 421–441.
Phelps, Michelle S., Christopher E. Robertson, and Amber Joy Powell. 2021. “‘We're still dying quicker than we can effect change’: #BlackLivesMatter and the Limits of 21st-Century Policing Reform.” American Journal of Sociology 127(3): 867-903.
Powell, Amber Joy and Michelle S. Phelps. 2021. “Gendered Racial Vulnerability: How Women Confront Crime and Criminalization.” Law & Society Review 55(4): 429-451. (First Published Online July 30, 2021.)
Phelps, Michelle S. and Amber M. Hamilton. 2022. “Visualizing Injustice or Reifying Racism? Images in the Digital Media Coverage of the Killing of Michael Brown.” Sociology of Race and Ethnicity 8(1): 160-175. (First Published Online June 9, 2021.)
Phelps, Michelle S. and Ebony L. Ruhland. 2022. “Governing Marginality: Coercion and Care in Probation.” Social Problems 69(3): 799–816. (First Published Online Jan. 6, 2021.)
Winkelman, Tyler N.A., Michelle S. Phelps, Kelly Lyn Mitchell, Latasha Jennings, and Rebecca J. Shlafer. 2020. “Physical Health and Disability Among U.S. Adults Recently on Community Supervision.” Journal of Correctional Health Care 26(2): 129-137.
Page, Joshua, Michelle Phelps, and Philip Goodman. 2019. “Consensus in the Penal Field? Revisiting Breaking the Pendulum.” Law & Social Inquiry 44(3): 822-827.
Rubin, Ashley and Michelle S. Phelps. 2017. “Fracturing the Penal State: State Actors and the Role of Conflict in Penal Change.” Theoretical Criminology 21(4): 422-440.
Goodman, Philip, Joshua Page, and Michelle Phelps. 2017. Breaking the Pendulum: The Long Struggle Over Criminal Justice. Oxford University Press.
Goodman, Philip, Joshua Page, and Michelle Phelps. 2015. “The Long Struggle: An Agonistic Perspective on Penal Development.” Theoretical Criminology 19(3): 315-335.
Phelps, Michelle S. 2013. “The Paradox of Probation: Community Supervision in the Age of Mass Incarceration.” Law & Policy 35(1-2): 51-80.
Phelps, Michelle S. 2011. “Rehabilitation in the Punitive Era: The Gap between Rhetoric and Reality in U.S. Prison Programs.” Law & Society Review 45(1): 33-68.

Awards

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Awards

Minnesota Book Awards, Emilie Buchwald Award for Minnesota Nonfiction, 2025
Joan Petersilia Outstanding Article Award, American Society of Criminology, 2023
Cooperman Summer Interdisciplinary Award, Dept. of Sociology, University of Minnesota, 2022
Public Sociology Award, Dept. of Sociology, University of Minnesota, 2021
Talle Faculty Research Award, , College of Liberal Arts, University of Minnesota, 2020
Faculty Mentoring Award, Dept. of Sociology, University of Minnesota, 2019
Center for Urban and Regional Affairs Faculty Interactive Research Program Award, 2018

Courses

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Courses

Soc 3101 - Sociological Perspectives on the American Criminal Justice System
Soc 4105 - Punishment and Corrections
SOC 4125 - Policing America
Soc 8190 - Law, Crime, and Deviance Special Topics (Race, Crime, & Punishment)