Greetings. Thank you for taking time to visit professormichaelwelch.com.

By way of introduction, I am a Professor in the Criminal Justice program at Rutgers University (New Brunswick, NJ, USA) specializing in criminology, state crime, and human rights. For years, I have examined racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic disparities in the criminal justice system, especially as they have emerged in the war on crime, the war on drugs, the war on undocumented immigrants, and more recently the war on terror.

Those developments are explored in several of my journal articles and books, in particular Crimes of Power & States of Impunity: The U.S. Response to Terror (2009, Rutgers University Press), Scapegoats of September 11th: Hate Crimes and State Crimes in the War on Terror (2006, Rutgers University Press); Ironies of Imprisonment (2005, Sage Publications); Detained: Immigration Laws and the Expanding I.N.S. Jail Complex (2002, Temple University Press).

My work has taken a cultural turn with the book titled: Escape to Prison: Penal Tourism & the Pull of Punishment (2015, University of California Press), followed by a book titled: The Bastille Effect: Transforming Sites of Political Imprisonment (2022, University of California Press). Currently, I am wriing a book in progress Visions of Prisons: Wars, Walls & Watching.

This website describes my professional experience, research, and publishing activities. Please click PUBLICATIONS for access to those works on-line.

Check out my YouTube Channel at Professor Michael Welch https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBpCDH7vPWAXSzCSSsjjmlw

Should you have any questions or concerns, I invite you to contact me directly.