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We Are All Students

We Are All StudentsWe Are All StudentsWe Are All Students
  • Home
  • About
    • About WAAS
    • Zachary Psick
  • Information

Zachary Psick

Zachary Psick is a public scholar who supports formerly incarcerated UC Davis students.

Education

zepsick@ucdavis.edu | zpsick@gmail.com

University of California, Davis

PhD, Sociology, ABD

MA, Sociology, 2015

University of Minnesota, Twin Cities 

Graduate Certificate in Addiction Studies/Public Health, 2014

Hamline University, St Paul

BA, Communication Studies, 2011

Normandale Community College, Bloomington, MN

AA, Liberal Education, 2009


CV - Presentations and Publications

Research Focus



  • Mixed methods
  • Causes and consequences of crime and punishment
  • Health, mental health, addiction
  • Identity (re)construction
  • Aging and the life course
  • Access and inequality in education
  • Political and organizational decision making
  • The (re)production of inequality across the life course, generations, and institutions
  • How academics and policymakers contribute to social problems they believe they are solving
  • Click here for a podcast Interview about my research or search my name wherever you find podcasts

Zach Psick studies mass incarceration and the wars on drugs and crime at UC Davis.

PROJECTS

The Age of Mass Incarceration

Zachary Psick's dissertation research focuses on formerly incarcerated older adults leaving prison.

The Age of Mass Incarceration: 

The Entrenchment of the Carceral State in Our Communities


Keywords: aging, life course, reentry, mass incarceration, collateral consequences, health, inequality, dignity


My dissertation research examines the reentry process of formerly incarcerated people age 50 or older, focusing on factors related to long-term and late-life criminal justice contact. Most research on the reentry process focuses on younger people, it often conflates recidivism and reoffending, and it often focuses on individuals to the neglect of systemic factors that drive repeated returns to jail and/or prison. This limits our understanding of the factors driving both short- and long-term patterns of crime and punishment. I use official incarceration data from the National Corrections Reporting Program and qualitative data collected using participant observation and interviewing in Northern California to better understand how factors like important life events, stigma, the organization of social control systems, and the availability of community resources influence post-release outcomes and experiences.  


In short, my findings point to ways in which mass incarceration and the wars on drugs and crime that fuel it are far from over. 

Sin, Suffering, and the American Dream

Zach Psick has studied addiction and drug treatment as alternatives to incarceration.

Sin, Suffering, and the American Dream: Meaning and Opportunity in Evangelical Drug Rehab


Keywords: addiction, treatment, neoliberal social services, conversion, identity, recovery narratives


Conversion-based drug treatment has grown more prevalent since Charitable Choice opened the door to government funding of faith-based social services, now receiving unprecedented support and legitimacy within government, the media, and the public. Interactionist addiction scholarship suggests such programs might “work” by providing clients with a recovery narrative, allowing them to construct destigmatized recovery identities. We thicken this idea through our case study of Victory Center, a residential rehab and prison diversion program with close ties to the state. Using ethnography and interviewing, we show how radical identity reconstruction is instilled discursively within the context of firm institutional control and highly routinized, disciplined practice over the course of a year or more. 

Risk, Need, and Interinstitutionality

Risk, Need, and Interinstitutionality

Risk, Need, and Interinstitutionality

Zachary Psick studies the school to prison pipeline, which reproduces inequality.

Risk, Need, and Interinstitutionality: Explaining Pernicious Inequality in American Public Institutions


Keywords: school-to-prison pipeline, venue sorting, decision making, criminal risk assessment, racial disparities, juvenile incarceration, decision-making, 


Most social problems transcend institutional boundaries, obfuscating their origins and impeding efforts to solve them. This conceptual paper adds to a growing body of theorizing and research that underscores the need for analyses that look “beyond the walls” of organizations and institutions to see the ways exogenous forces shape micro-interactional and meso-level processes. Drawing primarily on socio-legal and neoinstitutionalist literatures, I argue that formal and informal links that allow resources, ideas, and cases to flow between organizations in separate institutions represent understudied pathways by which experiences and outcomes are produced, shaped, and sustained across life domains. I illustrate this phenomenon, which I call “interinstitutionality,” with an examination of linked inequality in the education and juvenile justice systems. 


In a companion paper, I test these ideas empirically. Research on social problems is often designed around logics and data that impede understanding of causal mechanisms that transcend institutional boundaries. Against this trend, I investigate linked inequality in the education and justice systems, conducting logistic regression and mediation analyses of survey data collected from public schools, alternative schools, and juvenile correctional facilities in order to better understand the factors that help explain why some children are sorted out of mainstream public schools. Framing my analyses around variables commonly used by both education and justice officials to inform sorting decisions, results indicate that material needs are more salient than "criminogenic risk" for understanding both sorting patterns and widespread inequities in the education and justice system. These findings have important implications for both research and policy.

We Are All Students

Risk, Need, and Interinstitutionality

Risk, Need, and Interinstitutionality

Zachary Psick informs the public about the needs and experiences of formerly incarcerated students.

We Are All Students


Keywords: public scholarship, digital humanities, incarceration, education, storytelling, community, democracy


We Are All Students (WAAS) is a public scholarship project that aims to: 1) inform the public about the interests and experiences of formerly incarcerated and other “system impacted” students whose lives, families, and communities have been affected by incarceration, deportation, or other forms of legal discrimination, 2) transform disparaging and false narratives about us and our communities into more empowering and accurate ones, and 3) help reform unjust education and incarceration policies and practices. As a “new media” organization, WAAS combines creative photography and storytelling with recent social scientific research and insights from the digital humanities. Currently, we are working on a social media campaign that conveys the social situations and experiences of those who attend higher education in the shadow of incarceration. We are also producing informational material about attending college with a felony conviction to help foster a “prison to school pipeline.”  Find WAAS on Instagram or TikTok, or see our Linktree for more information! 


"Settle your quarrels, come together, understand the reality of our situation, understand that fascism is already here, that people are already dying who could be saved, that generations more will die or live poor butchered half lives if you fail to act. Do what must be done, discover your humanity and your love in revolution. Pass on the torch. Join us. Give up your life for the people.” -George Jackson, Blood in My Eye

TEACHING AT UC DAVIS

SOC 150: (ABOLISH) CRIMINOLOGY

Sociological analysis of criminal behavior in relation to social structure and the criminalization process.

SOC 155: SOCIOLOGY OF LAW (LAW ≠ JUSTICE)

Law considered as social control; relation of legal institutions to society as affecting judicial decision making and administration of justice. Lawyers as an occupational group. Legal reform.

SOC 171: (GOVERNING THROUGH) VIOLENCE AND INEQUALITY

How systems of social inequality organize the practice of violence. Definitions of violence and issues affecting the social capacity for violence. Analysis and comparison of different forms of violence associated with race, class, gender relations and social organization.

FIRST YEAR SEMINAR: HEALTH, INEQUALITY, AND THE WAR ON DRUGS AND CRIME

Interdisciplinary, multimedia exploration of the most important social problems of our time. 

  • Miserable: (In)Sanity in Sick Societies
  • Prohibition: The Culture of Control in the Land of the Free
  • Propaganda: The Age of Information and the Edge of Civilization

PRESENTATIONS, PUBLICATIONS, and REPORTS 

  • Psick, Zachary and Axl Kaminski. 2023. "The Age of Mass Incarceration: The Entrenchment of the Carceral State in American Communities." Invited panelist: 50 Years of Mass Incarceration. Law and Society Association, San Juan, Puerto Rico.
  • Psick, Zachary. 2022. “The Age of Mass Incarceration: A Mixed Methods Study of Carceral Control into Later Life.” Global Meeting on Law and Society, Lisbon, Portugal. 
  • Psick, Zachary. 2021. “Racism in Policing: A Few Bad Apples?” Invited Panelist, Virtual Town Hall Discussion. Oakland Gay Men’s Choir Black Lives Matter Group. 
  • Psick, Zachary. 2020. “Hard Landings: Implications of a Weak Safety Net for Older Adults Leaving Jails and Prisons.” American Sociological Association, Virtual Round Table on Crime, Law, and Deviance.
  • Psick, Zachary. 2020. “Risk, Need, and Interinstitutionality: Explaining Pernicious Inequality in American Public Institutions.” Law and Society Association, Virtual Presentation.
  • Psick, Zachary. 2019. “Hard Landings: Implications of a Weak Safety Net for California’s Aging Criminal Justice Populations.” American Society of Criminology, San Francisco.  
  • Psick, Zachary. 2019. “Hard Landings: Implications of a Weak Safety Net for America’s Aging Criminal Justice Populations.” Law and Society Association, Washington DC.  
  • Psick, Zachary, Jonathan Simon, Rebecca Brown, and Cyrus Ahalt. 2017. “Older and Incarcerated: Policy Implications of Aging Prison Populations.” International Journal of Prisoner Health, 13(1): 57-63.
  • Psick, Zachary. 2017. “Aging Reentry Populations: Trends and Implications.” Regular Session: Prisoner Reentry: Trends and Desistance.” American Society of Criminology, Philadelphia. 
  • California Health Policy Strategies. 2017. “Reentry Health Policy Project: Meeting the Serious Medical and Mental Health Needs of Californians Leaving Jails and Prisons.” Final report prepared for LA Care and the California Health Care Foundation.
  • Psick, Zachary. 2017. “Risk, Need, and Learning Disorder: Interinstitutional Venue Sorting in a System of Juvenile Injustice.” Regular Session: Youth and Their Needs in Institutional Context. Law and Society Association, Mexico City. 
  • Psick, Zachary. 2016. “Risk, Need, and Inequality: Interinstitutional Venue Sorting in a System of Juvenile Injustice.” Regular session: Exploring Justice for Juveniles: Family Structure, Race, and Delinquency. American Society of Criminology, New Orleans.
  • Psick, Zachary. 2015. “Sin, Suffering, and the American Dream: Subjective Perceptions and/of Opportunity Structures in Conversion-Based Drug Rehab.” Regular session: Drug treatment effectiveness. American Society of Criminology, Washington DC.
  • Psick, Zachary. 2015. “Divergent Worlds, Converging Worlds: The Realities of Life on Probation and Parole.” Invited Panelist. Robina Institute of Criminal Law and Criminal Justice Annual Conference, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis.
  • Psick, Zachary. 2014. “Does Risk Affect Results?: Testing Strain and Control Theories Among Incarcerated and Non-incarcerated Youth.” Regular Session: Strain and Control Theories: Integration and Competition. American Society of Criminology, San Francisco.
  • Psick, Zachary and Gowan, Teresa. 2014. “Sin, Suffering, and the American Dream: An Ethnographic Discourse Analysis of Evangelical Drug Rehab.” Regular session: Narrative, Biography, and Culture. American Sociological Association, San Francisco.
  • Ericson, Becky. Eckberg, Deborah, Ruhland, Ebony, and Psick, Zachary. 2013. “An Examination of Racial Disparities in Charging and Diverting Juvenile Offenders: Final Report to the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office.” The Council on Crime and Justice. 
  • Psick, Zachary. 2011. “Assuming God: A Fantasy Theme Analysis of Evangelical Drug Rehab.” National Conference for Undergraduate Research, Ithaca.

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