Tammi Arford received her PhD in Sociology from Northeastern University. Her broad areas of scholarly interest are deviance and social control; critical criminology; penology; alternatives to incarceration; knowledge, power and resistance; gender; and social/criminological theory. Her most recent research focuses on the processes and practices of censorship in state prison libraries. This research elucidates the relationships between organizational goals, penal philosophies, and prisoners’ access to reading materials. The research also examines the purposes and functions of the prison library, the role of the prison librarian, and the various ways that librarians support and/or resist censorship.

She is also a co-investigator on a three-year multidisciplinary study funded by the National Institute of Mental Health. The project, “The Meaning and Impact of Limited Literacy in the Lives of People with Serious Mental Illness,” explores the ways in which limited literacy affects access to and success within the mental health system. She is interested in pursuing further research about a variety of mechanisms of control employed by the ‘criminal justice’/punishment system both inside and outside the prison, as well research about the role of reading and literacy in the lives of currently and formerly incarcerated individuals.