Kasey Henricks
Assistant Professor
Criminology, Law, and Justice
Pronouns: He/Him/His
Contact
Building & Room:
BSB 4078
Email:
About
Kasey Henricks is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Criminology, Law, and Justice at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He likes to pursue big questions through small things. Looking to often overlooked objects of the everyday, from parking citations to lottery tickets, Kasey’s research agenda uncovers how race and class inequalities are reproduced over time through reconfigurations of public finance under late capitalism. More specifically, he has a publication record that follows a two-fold examination of 1) how seemingly face-neutral modes of raising revenue yield disparate consequences in who pays for social services and 2) the ways in which raced and classed antagonisms ideologically shape, and become shaped by, conflicts over state finance. His work documents various predatory developments in private-public “partnerships,” alongside the erosion of a social safety net, through the emergence of piecemeal revenue systems during the past half-century, showing how raced and classed dynamics are implicated in a transformation of state finance that has become increasingly regressive and upwardly redistributive to capital interests across the globe.
Although Kasey never earned a high school diploma, he completed a PhD with distinction in the discipline of Sociology at Loyola University Chicago. He also holds a bachelor’s degree from Austin Peay State University and an associate’s from Chattanooga State Technical Community College. Prior to arriving at UIC, he was a faculty member of the University of Tennessee at Knoxville and an affiliate scholar at the Appalachian Justice Research Center. He has held fellowships at the American Bar Foundation, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Crime, Security, and Law, KWI Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities, and UIC’s Institute for Research on Race & Public Policy, and his research has been supported by funders like the National Science Foundation, Russell Sage Foundation, and Chicago Community Trust. Some of his work has been recognized with awards from the American Sociological Association, Society for the Study of Social Problems, Association of Black Sociologists, Association for Humanist Sociology, Southern Sociological Society, Eastern Sociological Society, and Southwestern Sociological Association.
Selected Publications
Henricks, Kasey, Chris D. Poulos,* Iván Arenas, Ruben Ortiz,* and Amanda E. Lewis. 2022. 475,106 Mistakes: The Cost of Erroneous Parking Tickets. Institute for Research on Race & Public Policy.
- 2023 Publication Award, Section on Sociological Practice and Public Sociology, American Sociological Association
Henricks, Kasey and Ruben Ortiz.* 2022. “Individuals in Default or the System? Race and Ethnicity, Stratification Views on Legal Debt, and Desire for Escalating Punishment.” Sociology of Race & Ethnicity8(1):6-25.
Henricks, Kasey. 2020. “The Verticality of White Space: Depths of Ticketing Exposure and Concealment in Chicago’s 42nd Ward.” American Behavioral Scientist 64(14):1975-1994.
Henricks, Kasey. 2018. “‘I’m Principled Against Slavery, but …’: Colorblindness and the Three-Fifths Debate.” Social Problems 65(3):285-304.
- 2015 James E. Blackwell Distinguished Graduate Student Paper Award, Section on Racial and Ethnic Minorities, American Sociological Association
Henricks, Kasey and David G. Embrick. 2017. State Looteries: Historical Continuity, Rearticulations of Racism, and American Taxation. Routledge.
(* indicates collaborations with graduate students)
Notable Honors
2021, Junior Scholar Award, Southern Sociological Society
2018, Recognition of Excellence for Editorial Service and Public Engagement, Society for the Study of Social Problems
2017, Described Kasey’s research as “lengthy”, The Chicago Sun-Times