Katie Quinn

Kaitlyn (Katie) Quinn (she/her/hers) joins the Sociology Department in the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs in fall 2024 as a tenure-track assistant professor. She will teach classes for the integrated learning major in law, society and policy, including Criminology; Criminal Justice, and Gender, Crime and Justice.

Prior to joining Syracuse University, Quinn was an assistant professor in the Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of Missouri-St. Louis (UMSL) where she taught the Sociology of Punishment and Crime and Justice in a Globalized World. Prior to joining the faculty at UMSL, she was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Toronto and a research associate at the University of Nottingham.

Quinn’s research focuses on how nonprofit organizations and adjacent community actors participate in criminal justice processes and contend with criminal justice problems, especially as they relate to gender and crime. Her current projects draw on qualitative research methods to advance scholarly understandings of how punishment operates in and through communities, demonstrate how and why helping relationships can reproduce and/or contest existing social inequalities, and account for variegation and contestation beneath the veneers of penal stability and consensus.

Her research focuses on Canada, the U.S. and the U.K. She has published in a range of leading journals, including Punishment & Society, British Journal of Criminology, and Voluntas.

Quinn’s research has been supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, Ontario Graduate Scholarships and the American Society of Criminology Division on Women and Crime.

Quinn received a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Toronto in 2021, an M.A. in sociology from the University of Alberta in 2015 and a B.A. in philosophy from Washington State University in 2013.

"Intersecting Institutions of Criminal Justice and Injustice Partnership", Sponsored by Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (via the University of Alberta).

"Early Career Workshop Travel Award", Sponsored by Law and Society Association.

"Department of Sociology Graduate Program Award", Sponsored by University of Toronto.

"Ontario Graduate Scholarship", Sponsored by Province of Ontario.

"Faculty of Arts & Science Doctoral Completion Award", Sponsored by University of Toronto.

"Faculty of Arts & Science Fellowship", Sponsored by University of Toronto.

"Graduate Fellowship", Sponsored by University of Toronto .

• Journal Articles
  • Quinn, K., "Bridging Divides or Reinforcing Distance? The Interplay of Individual and Organizational Factors in Shaping Volunteers’ Relationships with Criminalized Women." Social Problems, 2024.
  • Quinn, K., Buck, G. and Tomczak, P., "Mobilizing Metaphors in Criminological Analysis: A Case Study of Emotions in the Penal Voluntary Sector." British Journal of Criminology, 2024.
  • Tomczak, P., Quinn, K., Traynor, C. and Wainwright, L., "(Re)constructing Prisoner Death Investigations: A Case Study of Suicide Investigations from England and Wales." Law & Social Inquiry, 2023.
  • Goodman, P., Quinn, K., "The Palimpsest of Outdoor Penal Labor in California, 1915-2000." Howard Journal of Crime and Justice, 2023.
  • Quinn, K., Goodman, P., "Shaping the Road to Reentry: Organizational Variation and Narrative Labor in the Penal Voluntary Sector." Punishment & Society, 2022.
  • Quinn, K., Tomczak, P. and Buck, G., "'How You Keep Going': Voluntary Sector Practitioners’ Story-lines as Emotion Work." British Journal of Sociology, 2022.
  • Buck, G., Tomczak, P. and Quinn, K., "This is How it Feels: Activating Lived Experience in the Penal Voluntary Sector." British Journal of Criminology, 2021.
  • Quinn, K., "Dispositions that Matter: Investigating Criminalized Women’s Resettlement through Their (Trans)Carceral Habitus." Criminology & Criminal Justice, 2021.
  • Quinn, K., Tomczak, P., "Practitioner Niches in the (Penal) Voluntary Sector: Perspectives from Management and the Frontlines." Voluntas: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations, 2021.
  • Tomczak, P., Quinn, K., "Practitioner Emotions in the Penal Voluntary Sector: Voices from England and Canada." British Journal of Social Work, 2020.
• Book Chapters
  • Quinn, K., Canossini, E., "'Clean Body, Clean Mind, Clean Job': The Role of Penal Voluntary Sector Organizations in Constructing 'Good' Carceral Citizens." In Cultures of Citizenship in the Twenty-First Century. Transcript Publishing, 2023.
  • Quinn, K., Schneiderhan, E., "Leaving the Sequestered Byway: A Forward Look at Sociology’s Morals and Practice." In Handbook of the Sociology of Morality. Springer, 2023.
  • Schneiderhan, E., Quinn, K., "Jane Addams and the Return to Settlement Sociology: Inspiration for How to Help Others in the Digital Age." In The Oxford Handbook of Jane Addams. Oxford University Press, 2022.
  • Quinn, K., Tomczak, P., "Emotional Labour in the Penal Voluntary Sector." In Emotional Labour in Criminal Justice and Criminology. Routledge, 2020.
  • Quinn, K., Canossini, E. and Evans, V., "Carceral Imaginaries in Science Fiction: Toward a Palimpsestic Understanding of Penality." In The Palgrave Handbook of Incarceration in Popular Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, 2020.
• Blogs
  • Quinn, K., Fourth CRIMVOL Virtual Working Paper Session (Event Summary). , 2020.
  • Quinn, K., The Politics of Helping: Understanding Practice in the Penal Voluntary Sector. , 2019.
• Book Reviews
  • Quinn, K., "Review of Liam Martin’s "Halfway House: Prisoner Reentry and the Shadow of Carceral Care"." Punishment & Society, 2023.
  • Quinn, K., "Review of François Bonnet’s "The Upper Limit: How Low-Wage Work Defines Punishment and Welfare"." Labour/Le Travail, 2021.

Syracuse University Project Advance, "Downstate Workshop: Sociology of Punishment" (December, 2024)

Syracuse University Project Advance, "Upstate Workshop: Sociology of Punishment" (December, 2024)

American Society of Criminology, "Settler Colonialism in the Penal Voluntary Sector" (November, 2024)

Quinn, K., Buck, G., Tomczak, P., Law and Society Association, "Mobilizing Metaphors in Criminological Analysis: A Case Study of Emotions in the Penal Voluntary Sector" (June, 2024)

American Society of Criminology, "Possibilities for Generative Justice in the Penal Voluntary Sector" (November, 2023)

American Society of Criminology, "Prisoner Reentry and the Penal Voluntary Sector: Contested Relationships Between Volunteers and Criminalized Women" (November, 2023)

Quinn, K., Canossini, E., American Society of Criminology, "“Clean Body, Clean Mind, Clean Job”: The Role of Penal Voluntary Sector Organizations in Constructing “Good” Carceral Citizens" (November, 2023)

Tomczak, P., Quinn, K., Traynor, C., Wainwright, L., European Society of Criminology, "“(Re)constructing Prisoner Death Investigations: A Case Study of Suicide Investigations from England and Wales" (September, 2023)

Law and Society Association, "Social Distance and Inequality in the Penal Voluntary Sector: Troubling Volunteers’ Relationships with Criminalized Women" (June, 2023)

Goodman, P., Quinn, K., Social Analysis of Penality across Boundaries Workshop Series, The Scottish Centre for Crime & Justice Research, "Agonism, Palimpsests, and Thinking about Penal Change" (February, 2023)

Quinn, K., Salole, A., McAleese, ., CRIMVOL: The International Criminal Justice Voluntary Sector Research Network, "Hidden Figures: A Manifesto for Naming the Penal Voluntary Sector" (2023)

American Society of Criminology, "'Good Intentions Pave Many Roads. Not All of Them Lead to Hell': Understanding Volunteers' Work with Criminalized Women in Canada" (November, 2022)

Goodman, P., Quinn, K., Law and Society Association, "The Palimpsest of Outdoor Penal Labor in California 1915-2000" (July, 2022)

Buck, G., Tomczak, P., Quinn, K., British Society of Criminology, "Lived Experience in the Penal Voluntary Sector" (June, 2022)

Quinn, K., Tomczak, P., Buck, G., Canadian Sociological Association, "All of the Bits that Actually Make a Difference’: Examining the Voluntary Sector’s Capacity for Social Problem Solving in Criminal Justice" (May, 2021)

Canadian Sociological Association, "Power and Inequality in the Penal Voluntary Sector: Examining Relationships Between Volunteers and Criminalized Women" (May, 2021)

Tomczak, P., Quinn, K., Traynor, ., Wainwright, L., Hyde, S., Prisoner Death Investigations: Improving Safety in Prisons and Societies?, "The Absence of Systemic Contextual Hazards in Prisoner Death Investigations" (2021)

Quinn, K., Goodman, P., Centre for Criminological Research at the University of Alberta, "Becoming Ideal: Organizational Variation and the Penal Subject" (November, 2020)

Annual Meetings of the Criminology Consortium, "'A Field of Wanting to Help': How Diverse Forms of Expertise are Mobilized in Efforts to Help Criminalized Individuals" (October, 2020)

Quinn, K., Tomczak, P., Annual Meetings of the Criminology Consortium, "Emotional Labour in Criminal Justice and Criminology" (October, 2020)

European Society of Criminology, "Dispositions that Matter: Investigating Criminalized Women’s Resettlement through Their (Trans)Carceral Habitus" (September, 2020)