He received his Ph.D. in Criminology, Law and Society from the University of California, Irvine in 2012. His work examines the relationship between inequality and violence, community-derived alternatives to the criminal legal system, and the lived realities of youth justice. Among other outlets, his work has appeared in Youth Justice, Social Justice, Theoretical Criminology, the British Journal of Criminology and the Prison Journal. Along with Tim Goddard, he is working on a book entitled Youth, Community and the Struggle for Social Justice, which will appear on Routledge in 2017.