Simon Balto

I am a historian of the twentieth-century United States, with a particular focus and expertise in African American history. While I am interested in the history of social movements, urban history, and a range of other subjects, I am especially interested in the history of the criminal punishment system in the United States: how it’s been constructed; what and who gets criminalized and punished within it; what acts of harm are deemed non-criminal when committed by certain people; and how the institutions that constitute the system come to bear unevenly across society.