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Aziza Ahmed, EXAMINING THE FEMINIST WOMEN’S HEALTH MOVEMENT
Since beginning the LAPA fellowship I’ve been busy working on my book exploring the impact of feminist organizing on the AIDS response. I’ve started writing Chapter 2, currently titled “Dead But Not Disabled”: A Feminist Legal Struggle for Recognition. The rst part of the title is a slogan from the ACT-UP Women’s Caucus. It re ects their a empt to change the Social Security Administration de nition of disability to be more inclusive so that women with AIDS could receive bene ts. Feminists also sought to change the CDC de nition of AIDS-de ning illness. Feminists were successful in both cases. As I argue in the chapter, these were both pivotal moments in the course of the AIDS response because the change in the CDC de nition resulted in a shi in how HIV was surveilled revealing an epidemic amongst women while the change in the SSA de nition meant more women were able to get bene ts.
In order to write the chapter, I’ve been reexamining archival material I gathered from the Smithsonian and Radcli e collections on LGBT issues, HIV, and feminism. I’ve also been reading through oral history transcripts gathered by ACT-UP and the National Institutes for Health. Although I knew pieces of this story, pulling together a complete and detailed narrative has been a fascinating journey through the strategies and activism of this branch of the feminist women’s health movement.
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Jessica M. Eaglin, CRIMINAL RECORDS AND THE RISK OF MISUSE
My research examines representations of risk in the U.S. criminal justice system, with a speci c focus on data- driven sentencing reforms and mass incarceration. Here at LAPA, my research focuses on the production and dissemination of criminal records within the criminal justice system. My interest in the criminal records infrastructure arises from two angles of research. The rst angle concerns the proliferation of predictive technologies at various stages of the criminal justice process, from policing to pretrial detention to sentencing. These technologies rely heavily upon criminal records repurposed as a source of data for prediction. In a recently published article, Constructing Recidivism Risk, I examined the intersection of actuarial risk prediction tool construction process with sentencing policy to expose threats to sentencing that arise from tool use. (See SSRN LINK).
The second angle of research concerns public access to the criminal records infrastructure for private use. Among the many collateral consequences owing from a record, the denial of opportunities to secure housing and employment is gaining increasing social awareness. Yet as society increases awareness about threats owing from private use of criminal records databases, its use within the justice system remains prevalent and underscrutinized. In September 2017, I a ended a workshop hosted by Rutgers Institute for Information Policy and Law to discuss challenges presented by the existing criminal records infrastructure. Additionally, I a ended a Safety Advisory Board meeting at Uber Technologies, Inc. to discuss their ongoing commitment to raising awareness about the collateral consequences of criminal records. (h ps://www.uber.com/info/policy/ criminal-justice-reform/)