Kayla Martensen
Assistant Professor
Education
Ph.D., Criminology, Law and Justice, University of Illinois-Chicago (2024)
Research Interests
Punishment and Society, Juvenile Justice, Abolition, Race and Ethnicity, Gender, State Violence, Qualitative Methods
Research Statement:
My research interests relate to issues around state violence, structural inequities, and transformative possibilities, focusing on the gendered and racial implications of state and social punishment. My current work broadly examines contemporary carceral reforms that exacerbate racial and gendered inequalities through therapeutic-legal interventions. My specific research explores contemporary “community-based” juvenile justice reforms, focusing on how these reforms interact with community-based service sectors to reshape juvenile justice practices. I explore how community services, often seen as diversions and alternatives to incarceration, can perpetuate carceral logic by becoming extensions of the carceral state. Using qualitative methods grounded in abolition feminist thought, I analyze the collaboration between the juvenile justice division and community-based service sector as a microcosm of the collusion between the carceral and social welfare states, revealing how these reforms contribute to what I term the “web of detainment.” This concept illustrates the entanglement of carceral and community-based systems, challenging the notion that carceral community interventions are inherently liberatory. My work critically examines current reform practices while contributing to developing practices that challenge state violence and structural inequities while focusing on transformative possibilities.Recent/Select Publications:
Martensen, K. (2022). Prison is not Feminist, Service is not Liberation: Punishment, Service and a Web of Detainment. In Bierria, A., Caruthers, J. &, Lober, B. (Eds.) Abolition Feminisms: Feminist Ruptures Against the Carceral State. Haymarket Books.
Richie, B., Kanuha, V.K. & Martensen, K. (2021). Colluding with and Resisting the State: Organizing Against Gender Violence in the U.S. Feminist Criminology, 16(3), 247-265. https://doi.org/10.1177/1557085120987607
Richie, B. and Martensen, K. (2020). Resisting Carcerality, Embracing Abolition: Implications for Feminist Social Work Practice. Affilia, 35(1), 12-16. https://doi.org/10.1177/0886109919897576
Awards:
Beth E. Richie Justice Advocacy Award 2024
University of Illinois Chicago
Feminist Criminology Graduate Research Scholarship 2020
Division of Feminist Criminology
American Society of Criminology
Institute of Race and Public Policy 2019
Emerging Scholars Program
University of Illinois Chicago
