About

Andrea Leverentz is a Professor of Sociology and the Head of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at NC State University. She holds a PhD and MA in Sociology from the University of Chicago and a BA in Sociology from Tulane University. Her research broadly focuses on issues related to community, crime, and incarceration, including the impact of crime and incarceration on individuals and communities. Her most recent book, *Intersecting Lives: How Place Shapes Reentry* (2022), examines how neighborhood and place influence reentry experiences and shape community life. Her first book, *The Ex-Prisoner’s Dilemma* (2014), explores how women negotiate narratives of reentry and desistance, considering their roles as women, Black women, mothers, daughters, sisters, romantic partners, and employees. She also co-edited a volume on prisoner reentry and reintegration. Her current research investigates how place-based tourist identities interact with narratives of crime.

Research topics

• Criminology
• Sociology
• Political Science
• Social Science
• Psychology
• Gender studies
• Law
• Geography

Selected publications

• Roadblocks to Cultivating Change

  The International Journal of Restorative Justice · 2025-05-06 · 1 citations

  article

  Abstract In this article, we explore challenges to the creation of restorative universities. Drawing upon interviews with staff, faculty, and administrators at one US university campus, we discuss how loose coupling in higher education (Weick, 1976), and the nature of higher education as a porous institution (Ellis, 2021), make establishing a restorative campus difficult. In our analysis, we explore how divergent understandings of restorative justice, challenges related to the use of mandates around restorative approaches, lack of coordination across campus, and policies that contradict restorative approaches, intersect to create institutional barriers to system-wide implementation of restorative approaches. We also note potential windows of opportunity for embedding restorative justice approaches across university campuses.

  PublisherDOI

• Contextual Dynamics in Interviewing in Institutional Settings

  2025-04-23

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Qualitative researchers can use interviews to foster meaning-making around topics of interest. Narratives, observations, and context cues all matter in this meaning-making and its interpretation. Researchers must be attuned to these varied dimensions of the interview context (including their own role in shaping this context) and to draw on all these dimensions in interpreting interview data. In this chapter, I illustrate how paying attention to multiple dimensions of the interview process shaped my understanding of these data. In this chapter, I look at interviews conducted with currently and formerly incarcerated individuals across different types of institutional settings (e.g., correctional facilities, shelters, halfway houses). Each type of setting fosters a certain dynamic, including power dynamics, how interview participants responded to me as the researcher, what other social interactions the setting fostered (or did not foster), and how these shaped the meaning-making in interviews across settings.

  PublisherDOI

• Review of “Purgatory Citizenship: Reentry, Race, and Abolition.”

  Social Forces · 2024-08-08

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• AGING IN JAIL: CHALLENGES AND IMPROVEMENTS

  Innovation in Aging · 2023-12-01

  articleOpen access

  Abstract The increase in incarcerated older people has created challenges in correctional facilities, including settings ranging from large prisons to smaller county jails. Aging while incarcerated brings a new dimension of difficulties for older people, and to the correctional system as a whole. The resources and environments are unsuitable for an aging population and ultimately result in greater health complications. The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated existing challenges experienced by older adults. To further assess the issues that incarcerated older people face, researchers from UMass Boston partnered with a local jail to determine the current needs and deficiencies experienced by older men. Focus groups were conducted in person with incarcerated older men regarding their experiences, opinions on having a unit specifically for older adults, and institutional changes that occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic. Zoom interviews were also carried out with staff. These conversations suggest that older incarcerated men encounter unique conditions that challenge their well-being. Such challenges include limited access to medical care and proper diets, lack of environmental accommodations, and inadequate exercise opportunities. These challenges exacerbate the burden of being in jail and can lead to higher risks of chronic illness. As well they have potential implications for the communities to which the men are released. Older men and jail staff were receptive to creating a unit specifically for older adults as a means of remedying some of these challenges. This poster offers policy suggestions to improve correctional facilities that better align with the unique needs of incarcerated older people.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Interview Location as Data

  Qualitative Sociology · 2023-11-07 · 6 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Frontmatter

  2022-06-10

  book-chapterOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Four. The South End: Returning to a “Gentrified” Neighborhood

  2022-06-10

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Two. Bouncing and the Black Box of Reentry’s Neighborhood Effects

  2022-06-10

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Five. South Boston: Returning to a “White” Neighborhood

  2022-06-10

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• <i>After Prison: Navigating Adulthood in the Shadow of the Justice System</i>. By David J. Harding and Heather M. Harris. New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2020. Pp. xv+333. $37.50 (paper).

  American Journal of Sociology · 2022-01-01

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

Recent grants

• The Influences of Place in the Community Reintegration of Former Prisoners

  NSF · $305k · 2013–2017

Frequent coauthors

• Damian J. Martinez

  2 shared

• Johnna Christian

  2 shared

• Carl Fulwiler

  Harvard University

  2 shared

• Elsa Y. Chen

  Santa Clara University

  2 shared

• Laura S. Guy

  Norton Healthcare

  2 shared

• Stephanie W. Hartwell

  Wayne State University

  2 shared

• Xiaogang Deng

  2 shared

• Debra A. Pinals

  2 shared

Labs

• Research and EngagementPI

Education

• PhD, Sociology

  University of Chicago

  2006

• BA, Sociology

  Tulane University

  1995