Department of Sociology

Like the wall Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump wants to build along the United States-Mexico border, this election cycle is dividing couples up in a major way.

Are police making too many stops for minor issues, and could the number of violent confrontations between police and civilians be reduced by reducing the number of confrontations over all?

New research debunks the sexist stereotype that women grow bitter and jaded after separating from their husbands.

A good measure of how highly a government values “public safety” is the amount spent incarcerating people; a good measure of how little it values people is how much it costs an individual to be impris

Americans often pay for their crimes twice — first with a prison sentence, then with a lifetime of debt many will never be able to escape.

The College of Arts & Sciences awarded its 2016 Graduate Medal to three exceptional graduate students.

The United States has reinstated a broad system of debtors’ prisons, in effect making it a crime to be poor. Alexes Harris, associate professor of sociology at the UW, is quoted.

"A debtor’s prison of court fines and fees needs to be reformed," writes The Seattle Times Editorial Board. Alexes Harris, associate professor of sociology at the UW, is quoted.

UW professor Alexes Harris' new book examines how fines and fees keep people imprisoned long after their sentence is through.

This year, the annual Airbnb conference, OpenAir, will focus on a different challenge for the company and the tech industry: diversity and inclusion.

A new book by the UW's Alexes Harris (sociology) chronicles how scores of former inmates and the people they harmed are jointly cheated by a cyclical and cynical state-sponsored debt spiral.

Airbnb banned a host in North Carolina Wednesday after he used racist language to tell a woman who had just booked a room she was not welcome because she was black.

One sentence in a 1986 mass-market magazine continues to sway court cases involving sex offenders.

Statisticians at the University of Washington developed the first model for projecting population that factors in the vagaries of migration.

When convicted of a crime in America, it's not just prison time you may face — there are fines, fees and other cash penalties, too. And when you get out, they'll be waiting.