Provine

Doris Marie Provine

Professor Emerita of Justice and Social Inquiry, Arizona State University-Tempe
Areas of Expertise:

About Doris

Provine's research focuses on immigration, crime and justice, and their interaction. Overarching themes in Provine's writings include citizenship and belonging. Provine serves on the boards of the Arizona Advocacy Network and Foundation, the ACLU Emeritus Council, and is President of the Tempe Artists Guild. She is active in local politics.

In the News

"Arizona Residents are the Winners with Supreme Court Voter Registration Ruling," Doris Marie Provine (with Sam Wercinski), AZCapitolTimes, June 21, 2013.
"Immigration Federalism: What Policy Prevails?," Doris Marie Provine (with Monica W. Varsanyi and Paul G. Lewis and Scott Decker), Migration Information Source, October 9, 2012.
Guest to discuss the U.S. Department of Justice lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of SB 1070 on PBS’ Arizona Horizon with Ted Simons, Doris Marie Provine (with Evelyn Cruz), July 7, 2010.
"Migrant Issue Needs a Blend of Compassion, Law," Doris Marie Provine, Arizona Republic, June 14, 2009.

Publications

"The Morality of Law: The Case against Deportation of Settled Immigrants" in Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights: Emerging Possibilities for Social Transformation, edited by LaDawn Hagland and Robyn Stryker (University of Pennsylvania Press, under review).
Demonstrates how the law has created a great divide between citizens and non-citizens that obscures the considerable capacity of American domestic law for forgiveness (e. g. bankruptcy legislation). Viewed in this light, forgiveness for illegal border crossing and visa overstays is no outlier. Rather it is compatible with the practical drive in American law for getting past previous wrong-doing.
"Why Do (Some) City Police Departments Enforce Immigration Law? Political, Demographic, and Organizational Influences on Local Choices" (with Paul Lewis, Monica W. Varsanyi, and Scott Decker). Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory 23, no. 1 (2013): 1-25.
Looks at the role of local police departments in enforcing national immigration legislation, and finds that immigrant-supportive city policy commitments and the presence of a Hispanic police chief are associated with less intensive immigration enforcement by local police.
"A Multilayered Jurisdictional Patchwork: Immigration Federalism in the United States" (with Monica W. Varsanyi, Paul G. Lewis, and Scott Decker). Law & Policy 34, no. 2 (2012): 138-158.
Focuses on the immigration-related demands currently being placed on local police in the United States, and the emergence of what we call a “multilayered jurisdictional patchwork” (MJP) of immigration enforcement.
"The Criminalization of Immigrants as a Racial Project" (with Roxanne D. Doty). Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice 27, no. 3 (2011): 261-277.
Argues that contemporary policy responses to unauthorized immigration reinforce racialized anxieties by (a) focusing attention on physically distinctive and economically marginalized minorities – a Latinos in particular – who are defined as the nation’s immigration “threat,” (b) creating new spaces of enforcement within which racial anxieties flourish and become institutionalized; and thereby (c) racializing immigrant bodies while structurally overemphasizing Latino arrests and deportations.
"Race and Inequality in the War on Drugs" Annual Review of Law and Social Science 7 (2011): 41-60.
Considers how the “war on drugs” approach came to be adopted in the United States and why it persists despite its evident shortcomings.
"Unequal under Law: Race in the War on Drugs " (University of Chicago Press, 2007).
Narrates how decades of both manifest and latent racism helped shape a punitive U.S. drug policy whose onerous impact on racial minorities has been willfully ignored by Congress and the courts.