Dr Alexandra Cox

Profile

Alexandra Cox is a Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Essex. Her book, 'Trapped in a Vice: the Consequences of Confinement for Young People,' explores the consequences of a juvenile justice system that is aimed at promoting change in the lives of young people, yet ultimately relies upon tools and strategies that enmesh them in a system that they struggle to move beyond. The book explores the lives of the young people and adults in New York's justice system, revealing the ways that they struggle to manage the expectations of that system; these stories from the ground level of the justice system reveal the complex exchange of policy and practice. The book won the American Society of Criminology's Critical Criminology book award. Alexandra's newest book is a handbook on youth imprisonment, co-edited with Professor Laura Abrams of UCLA, and published by Palgrave Macmillan.

Research

Publications

Trapped in a Vice: The Consequences of Confinement for Young People: https://www.rutgersuniversitypress.org/trapped-in-a-vice/9780813570464/

Challenging the Logics of Reformism and Humanism in Juvenile Justice Rhetoric https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10612-019-09474-4

The Sociological Landscape of Youth Confinement https://compass.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/soc4.12937

Palgrave Handbook of Youth Imprisonment https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-68759-5 

Expertise