Frank Edwards

Frank Edwards studies fatal police violence and how the politics of Black exploitation and Native elimination jointly structure the operation of U.S. social policy systems. He earned his Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Washington.

Publications:

• Frank Edwards, Sarah C.M. Roberts, Kathleen S. Kenny, Mical Raz, Matty Lichtenstein, and Mishka Terplan.Medical Professional Reports and Child Welfare System Infant Investigations: An Analysis of National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System Data.Health Equity.Oct 2023.653-662.http://doi.org/10.1089/heq.2023.0136

• American Indian and Alaska Native overexposure to foster care and family surveillance in the US: A quantitative overview of contemporary system contact; https://doi.org/10.1016/j.childyouth.2023.106915

• Administrative Burdens in Child Welfare Systems Frank Edwards, Kelley Fong, Victoria Copeland, Mical Raz, Alan Dettlaff RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences September 2023, 9 (5) 214-231; DOI: https://doi.org/10.7758/RSF.2023.9.5.09

Accomplishments:

• Award for best article on Race and Racism, Law and Society Association 2021

My work explores the causes and consequences of the social distribution of state violence. One set of projects draws attention to child protection systems as key sites of state violence and racial stratification. This work shows that American child protection systems are tightly intertwined with carceral and welfare policy systems, and that racism and settler colonialism play a central role in explaining the spatial and social distribution of family separation. A second set of projects uses novel data and methods to provide detailed statistical analyses of the prevalence and distribution of police violence in the US.