NCID-1349
Jay Borchert
Visiting Professor of Sociology
City University of New York (CUNY)
Education/Degree:
1 Sociology (University of Michigan)
About
Dr. Jay Borchert is currently a visiting professor in the Department of Sociology at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, at the City University of New York, as well as an Emerging Diversity Scholar at the National Center for Institutional Diversity at the University of Michigan. A survivor of over 50 arrests and 7 years behind bars across prisons in 3 sta,EST Dr. Borchert's research and advocacy focus on prisons, prisoners, prison staff and the law as subjects of intense social negotiation and conflict. Dr. Borchert returned to school two weeks after his release from prison in 2006 and went on to receive his BA in sociology from DePaul University (summa cum laude) in 2010, his master's (2010) and PhD (2016) each in sociology, from the University of Michigan. He is a founding member of the Formerly Incarcerated College Graduates Network, believes education is a human right for all, and fights every day for the abolition of our current system of criminal in-justice. While at Michigan, Dr. Borchert was a Rackham Merit Fellow, a Rackham Centennial Fellow, a Community of Scholars Fellow of the Institute for Research on Women and Gender, as well as a Mellon American Council of Learned Societies Dissertation Completion Fellow. From 2013-2016 he was a Visiting Scholar at the Center for the Study of Law & Society at UC Berkeley Law, Boalt Hall. During his time at Berkeley, he also taught social justice curricula at San Quentin State Prison. He was the 2015 winner of the Best Graduate Student Paper Award from the American Sociological Association, Section on Sexualities for his paper "A New Iron Closet: Failing to Extend the Spirit of Lawrence v. Texas to Prisons and Prisoners."
Current Work
A current project is a critical examination of prison healthcare across the US. The research seeks to examine the barriers for prisoners to access and negotiate quality healthcare information in order to engage crucial medical decision-making processes. States have increasingly relied upon private, for-profit medical care provision. These providers rely on ever more restrictive care directives and formularies, which limit the ability of prisoners to access quality care and to acquire knowledge about their medical conditions. The Supreme Court of the United States has determined that healthcare is a right for prisoners (Estelle v. Gamble 1976), but has chosen not to define what that care looks like on the ground. The work will attempt to better understand the realm of prison healthcare in order to produce both academic and policy relevant knowledge. Considering the near absence of critical, empirical work focusing on prisons, prison staff, and prisoners, there are myriad works to engage and Dr. Borchert looks forward to a long, fruitful career making the effects of our prisons policy and practice knowable in this era of mass incarceration.
Research Area Keyword(s)
law and society, Prisons and prisoners, public sociology, Punishment, Social theory