Areas of Expertise

• Mass incarceration
• Administrative segregation
• U.S. prisons
• Sentencing policy
• Punishment
• Social control

Key Findings

• Three distinct types of segregation exist: administrative segregation, disciplinary segregation and protective custody. MORE
• The most promising way to decrease our reliance on incarceration is to adopt an approach that will not only reduce our reliance on incarceration in the short term but also offer demonstrate crime prevention benefits in the long term. MORE
• Reinvesting in schools and community recreation areas offer an opportunity for altering the trajectories of youth residing disadvantaged communities. MORE
• For the first time in more than three decades, prison populations have begun to decline, largely due to cuts in state budgets that directly impact correctional budgets. MORE

Biography

Natasha Frost, Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Northeastern University, is an expert in mass incarceration, punishment and social control.

Frost is the Associate Dean for Graduate Studies for the College of Social Sciences and Humanities and continues to work with nonprofit, state and local agencies. She assessed state-level variations in punitiveness towards women for the Women’s Prison Association in New York, consulted with the Massachusetts State Parole Board, evaluated reentry programs, and conducted recidivism studies for Massachusetts correctional facilities. She is the Executive Officer for the American Society of Criminology and Chair of ASC’s Division on Corrections and Sentencing.

She has been published in numerous academic journals and is the co-author of The Punishment Imperative: The Rise and Failure of Mass Incarceration in America.

Frost received her Ph.D. in Criminal Justice from the City University of New York and B.A. in Psychology from Northeastern University.