Jessica T. Simes is Associate Professor of Sociology at Boston University.

Her scholarship examines how mass incarceration, policing, and prison conditions shape social inequality and population health in the United States.

She is the author of Punishing Places: The Geography of Mass Imprisonment (University of California Press, 2021), which was awarded the 2022 Robert E. Park Best Book Award from the American Sociological Association Community and Urban Sociology Section. Excerpts from her book are available at Inquest and UC Press Blog, and the book has been reviewed in American Journal of Sociology, Public Books, and Sociology of Race and Ethnicity. Her next book co-authored with Claudia Anderson and Bruce Western, Solitary Confinement: Institutional Harm and Inequality in American Prisons, examines nearly two decades of prison records and relies on original longitudinal survey data of men living in solitary confinement. 

Jessica Simes is a recipient of a National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development Program (CAREER) Award, a five-year grant in support of early-career faculty who have the potential to serve as academic role models in research and education.

Jessica's research has been published in a wide range of academic outlets, including Annual Review of Sociology, PLOS One, Science Advances, Journal of Urban Health, City & Community, Social Service Review, Criminology, and Journal of Quantitative Criminology. Her work has received awards from the American Sociological Association and the Society for the Study of Social Problems. Her research has been supported by grants from National Science Foundation, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Arnold Ventures, and the Social Science Research Council. Her work is featured in The New York Times, TIME, The Atlantic, CityLab, The Appeal, and GovTech, among other outlets.

Jessica received her B.A. in Sociology from Occidental College, and her M.A. and Ph.D. in Sociology from Harvard University.

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