Prof. Michaela Soyer, PhD

Michaela Soyer is Associate Professor at Hunter College City University of New York. She is a qualitative sociologist and criminologist and the author of three books focused on juvenile offenders. Her most recent work »The Price of Freedom. Criminalization and the Management of Outsiders in Germany and the United States« (UC Press 2023), is a qualitative comparative case study of the juvenile and criminal justice systems in both countries. Michaela Soyer’s research has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the National Institute of Justice, the Gerda Henkel Foundation and the Humboldt Foundation. 

During her Humboldt Research Fellowship at the Fritz Bauer Institute, she is working on her new research project about »career criminals« who were sent to concentration camps during the Nazi Regime.

Current Research Project

Reestablishing Deviance – An investigation of the life course of »career criminals« from the Weimar Republic to the Federal Republic of Germany. 

Selected publications

• A Dream Denied. Incarceration, Recidivism and Young Minority Men in America, University of California Press, 2016.
• Lost Childhoods. Poverty, Violence, And Trauma In The Post-Welfare Era, University of California Press, 2018.
• The Price of Freedom: Criminalization and Management of »Outsiders« in Germany and the United States, University of California Press, 2023.