Faculty

My overall research focuses on the historical and contemporary transformations of punishment and social control. I am interested in how race, gender, and class inequalities are reconstituted by policing, surveillance, incarceration and mass supervision. My current and future research engages with contemporary criminal justice reforms that seek to either challenge or replace formal state social control with community control initiatives (e.g., alternatives to incarceration, community policing) or private social control institutions (e.g., private detention facilities, security, and surveillance). I am particularly interested in contributing to critical scholarship and activism on the damaging consequences of non-carceral sanctions such as misdemeanor arrests, probation and other forms of community supervision. My dissertation project examined the role of lower criminal courts, probation and third party community supervision in the lives of working-class youth of color in New York City. I am expanding this research into a book length project that will contribute to how scholars and activists understand youth violence in the late neoliberal era.

There is a strong link between my research and teaching interests. Both are informed by an interdisciplinary approach that brings together sociology and critical scholarship on policing, punishment and social control to place criminal justice system transformations within the wider socio-historical, economic and political forces that shape American life.

• Soc 456 Punishment & Society
• Soc 449: Juvenile Justice

Past courses include: Introduction to CJ; Criminology; Social Deviance; Media, Crime, Sex and Violence; Carceral Crisis: Race, Class and Punishment in America and Crime and Punishment in Popular Culture

Peer Reviewed Journals

• Kurti, Z and Jarrod Shanahan. 2018. “Rebranding Mass Incarceration: The Lippman Commission and ‘Carceral Devolution’ in New York City” Social Justice: A Journal of Crime, Conflict and World Order 45 (2/3) pp. 23-50 

Book Reviews

• Kurti, Z. 2018. Critical Reflection on George S. Rigakos “Security/Capital: A Theory of Pacification” Abolition: A Journal of Insurgent Politics.
• Kurti, Z. 2017. Review of Zeynep Gonen’s "Politics of Crime in Turkey: Izmir Public Order Police and Criminalization of the Urban Poor" Meltem: Journal of the Izmir Mediterranean Academy

Public Sociology and Pedagogy

• “The Dangerous Seduction of Reform: A Review of Prison By Any Other Name” with Jarrod Shanahan Brooklyn Rail (October 2020) https://donate.brooklynrail.org/2020/10/field-notes/The-Dangerous-Seduction-of-Reform-a-review-of-Prison-by-Any-Other-Name
• “Prelude to a Hot American Summer” with Jarrod Shanahan Brooklyn Rail (July/August 2020) https://brooklynrail.org/2020/07/field-notes/Prelude-to-a-Hot-American-Summer
• “So Are White People”: A Discussion of Race, Class and Police Violence” with Tanzeem Ajmiri and Jarrod Shanahan Hard Crackers: Journal of Everyday Life (August 2020) https://hardcrackers.com/white-people-discussion-race-class-police-violence/
• “From New York to Salt Lake City, There’s no Such Thing as a Nice Prison” with Brinley Froelich and Jarrod Shanahan Verso (blog), March 2020, Blog https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/4595-from-new-york-to-salt-lake-city-there-s-no-such-thing-as-a-nice-prison
• “Managing Urban Disorder in the 1960s: The New York City Model” With Jarrod Shanahan Gotham Center for New York City (blog), January 7, 2020, History https://www.gothamcenter.org/blog/managingurbandisorder?fbclid=IwAR37rxC7nAlFxDyT-m5itBysIVTzHqPvLFmdgkV4v5Qy1vr136Abv-B9M
• “Central Park Five Syllabus: A Supplementary Reading List” with Odilka Santiago September 2019. https://abolitionjournal.org/central-park-five-syllabus/
• “Meek Mill’s Case Is Not about One Judge, One Courtroom” with Jarrod Shanahan  Jacobin (August 2019) https://www.jacobinmag.com/2019/08/meek-mill-probation-free-meek-docuseries-criminal-justice
• “Why the Bronx Burned: Interview with Decade of Fire Filmmakers” Jacobin August 2019. https://www.jacobinmag.com/2019/08/decade-of-fire-film-south-bronx-nyc
• “Sociology of NYC Mixtape” NYU Prison Education Program, Wallkill Journal, March 12, 2019, https://nyunews.com/wallkilljournal/2019/03/12/sociology-of-nyc-mixtape/
•  “Cuomo’s ‘Carceral Humanism’” with William G. Martin Jacobin November 16, 2018 https://jacobinmag.com/author/zhandarka-kurti
• “Building a Kinder Justice System: Youth Experiences with Incarceration” December 2018. Abolition Journal https://abolitionjournal.org/building-a-kinder-justice-system-youth-experiences-with-incarceration/
• #NYCStripperStrike: Race, Class and Women’s Work” with Tanzeem Ajmiri Hard Crackers: Journal of Everyday Life (July 2018) https://hardcrackers.com/nycstripperstrike-race-class-womens-work/
• “Probation and Second Chances in the Era of the Jobless Future” March 2017. Brooklyn Rail https://brooklynrail.org/2018/03/field-notes/Second-Chances-in-the-Era-of-the-Jobless-Future