Research

Research Agenda

My research sits at the intersection of law, public policy, and criminal justice organizations, with a focus on how criminal justice reforms are implemented within complex institutional environments. I am broadly interested in how legal interventions shape organizational behavior, particularly when reforms are externally imposed and must be translated into practice. Across projects, my work engages questions of policy implementation, institutional capacity, and accountability, drawing on insights from criminal justice, implementation science, and organizational studies.

My primary research project focuses on correctional health reform, where policy change is frequently driven by courts and litigation. I examine how prisons and jails respond—or fail to respond—to reform mandates, with particular attention to healthcare delivery and the governance of correctional health systems. This work analyzes court involvement as an ongoing organizational influence that structures authority, monitoring, and compliance over time, shaping the prospects for meaningful reform.

Substantively, my research contributes to scholarship on law, criminal justice policy implementation, and governance. Methodologically, my work uses mixed methods, including analysis of legal and policy documents, qualitative interviews with practitioners, and quantitative analysis of administrative data. Together, this research seeks to clarify when and how legal interventions function as effective mechanisms for organizational change, and what their limits reveal about governance in criminal justice institutions.

Current project

Correctional healthcare litigation and consent decree implementation

This line of research examines how courts and litigation are used to reform healthcare delivery in prisons and jails. Across projects, I study how consent decrees and settlement agreements are designed, implemented, and monitored, with attention to the organizational and governance processes that shape compliance and reform. Collectively, this work seeks to assess how court interventions influence institutional practices and, over time, health-related outcomes in correctional settings.

Selected publications

Jackson-Green, B., Yuhm, J., & Vu, J. (2026). Court-Managed Policy Change: A Content Analysis of Prison Healthcare Consent Decrees and Settlement Agreements. Social Sciences, 15(1), 13. https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci15010013

Jackson-Green, B. (2024). Healthcare Litigation in Corrections: Framing rights and pursuing care. In N. Link, M. Novisky, & C. Fahmy (Eds.) Handbook on Contemporary Issues in Health, Crime and Punishment. Routledge.

Heisterkamp, B., Jackson-Green, B.,Oshiro, G., & Buckley, A. (2024). Prison Arts Collective: Arts Research Process and Collaboration in Carceral Settings. In A. Buckley (Eds.), Higher Education and the Carceral State: Transforming Together. Routledge.

Mesghina, A., Wong, J. T., Davis, E. L., Lerner, B. S., Jackson-Green, B. J., & Richland, L. E. (2021). Distressed to Distracted: Examining Undergraduate Learning and Stress Regulation During the COVID-19 Pandemic. AERA Open, 7(1). 1-  20. https://doi.org/10.1177/23328584211065721 

Alencar, E. C. N., and Jackson-Green, B. (2021). Applying Synthetic Control Method to Estimate the Impact of the Lava Jato Operation on the Worldwide Governance Indicators in Brazil. Journal of White Collar and Corporate Crime. https://doi.org/10.1177/2631309X211017874