Brittany Friedman is an Assistant Professor of Sociology and Faculty Affiliate of the Program in Criminal Justice and the Center for Security, Race, and Rights. She is predominantly interested in critical approaches to power, domination, and social control. Her research interrogates this by examining how the racial and sociopolitical dynamics of penal policy affect punishment severity, incarceration conditions and outcomes, and the prison social system.
   
Her book manuscript, When Whiteness Kill: Carceral Necropolitics, Embodiment, & the Rise of the Black Guerilla Family (under contract w/ University of North Carolina Press: Chapel Hill), tackles this dilemma through an in-depth analysis of how extreme punishment and social control techniques perfected against black militant prisoners led to the rise of the Black Guerilla Family in California, setting the stage for the contemporary social order of prisons. This project is supported by the National Science Foundation, the American Society of Criminology, the Kellogg School of Management and featured in numerous academic and public outlets, including most recently: KPFK 90.7 FM Los Angeles, 89.3 FM Chicago, and Black Agenda Report. She is a regular contributor to Black Agenda Radio, discussing the latest research on the carceral state.