Pesticides,Prisoners,and Policy

Over the last few decades, a steady stream of books decry the decline of the public intellectual in modern life, while academics continue to express the desire to “make a difference” by producing research that contributes to the amelioration of social problems. In this context, this article draws on basic and applied research on transgender prisoners in California as a case study to address larger questions about the pursuit of knowledge, the creation of policy, the prompting of praxis, and the promise of justice. The empirical research on transgender prisoners in prisons for men presented in this article begins with a decidedly specific policy question (how to keep transgender prisoners safe from sexual assault in prison) and ends with basic research that interrogates the social organization and workings of gender (how is gender accomplished among transgender prisoners in prisons for men). Reviewing this research and presenting a few instructive digressions referred to as “sidebars” leads to two conclusions: (1) The line between basic and policy work cannot be effectively erased (nor should it be), and (2) basic and applied research can be treated as productively interdependent (i.e., take us to new research paths and generate new insights). By operating side-by-side, basic and policy research can provide us with general and particularistic understandings of social processes and structures that ultimately help us make a difference in the lives of those who suffer the most from systems of inequality, in this case transgender women subject to state authority.