Current Projects​
  • Barak, Maya, and Gould, J. “Capital defense attorneys.” In B. Fleury-Steiner and A. Sarat (Eds.), The Elgar Companion to Capital Punishment and Society, Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd. (Invited)   

Books​
  • Barak, Maya. 2023. The Slow Violence of Immigration Court: Procedural Justice on Trial. New York: NYU Press.
  • Gould, Jon B. and Maya Barak. 2019. Capital Defense: Inside the Lives of America's Death Penalty Lawyers. New York: NYU Press.

Featured Publications​
  • Barak, Maya, Mellinger, H., and Lowrey-Kinberg, B. “‘They say it’s a crime for us to be here’: Latinx reflections on the myth of the ‘criminal immigrant’ in the Trump era.” Latino Studies. (Accepted)
  • Barak, Maya and Gould, J. “Quality representation in the capital defense community.” In T. Peppers and J. Almallen (Eds.), The Death Penalty: A Postmortem, NYU Press, New York. (In Production)
  • Leon, K. and Barak, Maya. 2023. “MS-13, gang studies, and crimes of the powerful.” In S. Wilson and J. Ortiz (Eds.), Critical and Intersectional Gang Studies, Routledge, 2023.
  • ​Mellinger, H., Lowrey-Kinberg, B., and Barak, Maya. 2023 “Methodological and practical considerations for cross-cultural focus groups.” Qualitative Criminology, 2023, (https://www.qualitativecriminology.com/pub/hrv0ab6c/release/1).
  • Barak, Maya. 2022. “Protest movement and legitimacy in democracy.” In L. Cao (Ed.), Understanding Legitimacy in Criminal Justice:Conceptual and Measurement Challenges, Springer, New York, 2022, pp. 77-92.
  • Barak, Maya. 2021. “Can You Hear Me Now? Attorney Perceptions of Interpretation, Technology, and Power in Immigration Court.” Journal on Migration and Human Security (https://doi.org/10.1177/23315024211034740).
  • Barak, Maya. 2021. "A Hollow Hope? The Empty Promise of Rights in the U.S. Immigration System"/ "¿Una promesa vacía? La ilusión de “los derechos” en el sistema migratorio de los Estados Unidos." Las Cadenas Que Amamos: Una panorámica sobre el retroceso de Occidente a todos los niveles.
  • Barak, Maya. 2021. “Family Separation as State-Corporate Crime.” Journal of White Collar and Corporate Crime Vol. 2(2), 2021, pp. 109-121 (https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/2631309X20982299). (2021 Outstanding Article or Book Chapter Award, Division of White-Collar and Corporate Crime, American Society of Criminology)
  • Lowrey-Kinberg, B., Barak, Maya, and Mellinger, H. 2020. “Perceptions of Justice among Guatemalan-Mayans and Latinos of South Florida: A Call for Further Study of Procedural Justice in Minority Communities.” Social Justice: A Journal of Crime, Conflict & World Order Vol. 47(1/2), 2020, pp. 171-193.
  • Barak, Maya, Leon, K., and Maguire, Edward. 2020. “Conceptual and Empirical Obstacles in Defining MS-13: Law-Enforcement Perspectives.” Criminology and Public Policy (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1745-9133.12493).
  • Leon, K. and Barak, Maya. 2020. “The Salvadorian Willie Horton: MS-13, Electoral Politics and Racialized Rear Mongering.” Citizen Critics (https://citizencritics.org/2019/07/the-salvadoran-willie-horton-ms-13-electoral-politics-and-racialized-fear-mongering/).
  • Barak, Maya. 2019. "Before, With, and Against the Internet: Legal Consciousness and Our Digital Selves." #DigPINS (https://umd.digpins.org/week-1-posts/before-with-and-against-the-internet-legal-consciousness-and-our-digital-selves/).
  • Barak, Maya. 2018. “Popular Media and the Death Penalty: A Critical Discourse Analysis of the Death Penalty in Film.” In Routledge Handbook on Capital Punishment, edited by Gavin Lee and Robert Bohm. NY: Taylor and Francis.
  • Tyler, David H., Maya Barak, Edward R. Maguire, and William Wells. 2018. “The Effects of Procedural Injustice on the Use of Violence Against Police by Occupy Wall Street Protesters.” Police Practice and Research: An International Journal 19: 138-152.
  • Maguire, Edward R., Maya Barak, William Wells, and Chuck Katz. 2018. “Attitudes toward the Use of Violence Against Police among Occupy Wall Street Protesters.” Policing: A Journal of Policy and Practice: 1-17.
  • Barak, Maya. 2017. “Motherhood and Immigration Policy: How Immigration Law Shapes Central Americans’ Experience of Family.” In Forced Out and Fenced In: Immigration Tales from the Field, edited by Tanya Golash-Boza. New York: Oxford University Press.
  • Barak, Maya. 2017. “Fairness and the Law: Central American Experiences in U.S. Immigration Court.” In Emerging Voices: Critical Social Research by European Group Postgraduate and Early Career Researchers. United Kingdom: European Group Press.
  • Maguire, Edward R., Maya Barak, Karie Cross, and Kris Lugo. 2016. “Attitudes among Occupy DC Participants about the Use of Violence against Police.” Policing & Society: 1-15. doi:10.1080/10439463.2016.1202247.
  • Barak, Maya. 2015. “Collaborative State and Corporate Crime: Fraud, Unions and Elite Power in Mexico.” In Routledge International Handbook on the Crimes of the Powerful, edited by Gregg Barak. NY: Taylor and Francis.
  • Barak, Maya. 2014. “Re-Imagining Punishment: An Exercise in ‘Intersectional Criminal Justice.’” In Laws 3(4): 693-705.
  • Johnson, Robert, Laura Caitlin Kanewske, and Maya Barak. 2014. “Death Row Confinement and the Meaning of Last Words.” In Laws 3: 141-152.
  • Johnson, Robert, Max Looper, and Maya Barak. 2013 “Thinking About Human Dignity in the American Prison Context: Some Preliminary Reflections on a Special Class of Migrants and Refugees.” In Sicurezza e Scienze Sociali (Security and Social Studies) 1(1): 173-182.

Featured Past Projects​
  • Assessing the Transnational Criminal Capacity of MS-13 in the U.S. and El Salvador - National Institute of Justice (NIJ)-funded collaborative, multi-year investigative project focusing on the MS-13 gang in the U.S. and El Salvador. The project’s objective is to provide law enforcement officials with a more comprehensive understanding of MS-13. Findings will shape new policies and practices, provide suggestions for the allocation of resources, and better inform the work of law enforcement agencies as they design and implement intervention and prevention strategies.  

Consulting Projects
  • Best Practices in Honduran Policing - Consulting project with USAID and Arizona State University (2017-2018).

Dissertation
  • Maya Barak. 2016. "A Reciprocal Approach to Legal Consciousness and (Procedural) Justice: Central American Experiences in Immigration Court." PhD dissertation, Department of Justice, Law & Criminology, School of Public Affairs, American University.

Learn more about my work in my extended biography, found here.