Biography

Natalie Pifer is an Associate Professor and Chair of the Criminology and Criminal Justice department. Dr. Pifer researches punishment, prisons, and policing. She uses a variety of methods in her work –including interviewing, ethnographic observation, and archival analysis – to understand how criminal justice laws and policies are negotiated, implemented, and experienced on the ground. Substantively, her research examines the criminal justice system’s relationship to public health issues, including extreme conditions of confinement, gun control laws, and policing and punishing vulnerable groups such as the mentally ill, the disabled, and the unsheltered.