Michelle S. Phelps

Associate Professor of Sociology
Michelle S. Phelps

Contact Information

Michelle Phelps is an associate professor in the department of sociology at the University of Minnesota. Her research is in the sociology of punishment, focusing in particular on the punitive turn in the United States. Her current work focuses on the rise of probation supervision as a criminal justice sanction and its relationship to mass incarceration. She has also examined a variety of criminal justice topics, including changes in rehabilitative programming in U.S. prisons since the 1970s, the recent decarceration trend and its implications for inequality, and inmates’ wellbeing across prison contexts. Together with Professors Joshua Page and Philip Goodman, she wrote Breaking the Pendulum: The Long Struggle Over Criminal Justice (2017, Oxford University Press). 

Read More