Bryan L. Sykes
Chancellor’s Fellow
Inclusive Excellence Term Chair Professor
Faculty Assistant to the Provost
Director of Graduate Studies
Associate Professor of Criminology, Law and Society
Ph.D. Sociology and Demography, University of California-Berkeley
(949) 824-9583
blsykes@uci.edu
3317 Social Ecology II
Research Areas
Demography, Criminology, Population Health, Quantitative & Mixed Methods, Computational Methods, Law & Society, and Social Inequality
Curriculum Vitae
Autobiography
I am an Inclusive Excellence Term Chair Associate Professor and Chancellor’s Fellow in the Department of Criminology, Law and Society (and, by courtesy, Sociology and Public Health); a Faculty Affiliate in The Center for Demographic and Social Analysis (CDASA) and The Center for Biotechnology and Global Health Policy at the University of California-Irvine; a Research Affiliate in the Center for Demography and Ecology (CDE) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and an External Affiliate in the Center for Studies in Demography and Ecology (CSDE) at the University of Washington; a Member of the Scholars Strategy Network (SSN) and the Racial Democracy, Crime and Justice Network (RDCJN) at Rutgers University; and an Associate Editor for Science Advances (the Open Access version of Science) and Co-Editor-in-Chief of Sociological Perspectives. I have been a National Science Foundation Minority Post-Doctoral Research Fellow in the Department of Sociology at the University of Washington; a Visiting Scholar in the Department of Demography at UC-Berkeley, the Institute for Research on Poverty (IRP) at UW-Madison, and the Brooks School of Public Policy at Cornell University; and a Research Associate at the National Economics Research Associates (in the Sampling and Survey Division), the National Board of Medical Examiners (in Operations Research), and Nickerson & Associates LLC (in Statistical and Econometric Analysis).
My research focuses on demography and criminology, broadly defined, with particular interests in population processes (e.g., fertility, mortality, enumeration), mass incarceration, global population health, social inequality, law & society, and research methodology. I apply and develop demographic, statistical, and mixed methodologies to understand changing patterns of inequality — nationally and abroad. My research has appeared in general and multidisciplinary science, social science, and medical journals.
I am currently collaborating on four projects. First, I am leading a $1.61M research study — a randomized control trial (RCT) or field experiment — in six California counties, exploring the effects of economic, socioeconomic, and informational inequality on court-order compliance, in the case of hidden monetary sanctions in the criminal legal system (see Shadow Costs for more details). The second project explores the limits of mixed-methods, or dual design studies, in social science research. The third project assesses how mass incarceration has affected measures of social inequality and demographic processes (fertility, mortality, nuptiality, enumeration, and morbidity) among subpopulations with the highest risk of criminal justice contact in America, which has led to the development of new demographic methods for multiple-partner fertility; new statistical methods for estimating mortality in differential population environments; and new sampling weights for national surveys that exclude marginal populations. The final project investigates how national, regional, and global patterns of mortality, morbidity, and injuries have changed over time.
Selected Publications
Verma, Anjuli and Bryan L. Sykes. 2022. “Beyond the Penal Code: The Legal Capacity of Monetary Sanctions in the Corpus of California Law.” RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences 8(1): 36-62.
Sykes, Bryan L., Meghan Ballard, Andrea Giuffre, Rebecca Goodsell, Daniela Kaiser, Vicente Celestino Mata, and Justin Sola. 2022. “Robbing Peter to Pay Paul: Public Assistance, Monetary Sanctions, and Financial Double-Dealing in America.” RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences 8(1): 148-178.
The Global Burden of Disease 2019 Police Violence US Subnational Collaborators. 2021. “Fatal Police Violence by Race and State in the USA, 1980–2019: A Network Meta-Regression.” The Lancet 398 (10307): 1239-1255. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(21)01609-3
Sykes, Bryan L. and Amy K. Bailey. 2020. “Institutional Castling: Military Enlistment and Mass Incarceration in the United States.” RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences 6(1): 30-54.
Maroto, Michelle and Bryan L. Sykes. 2020. “The Varying Effects of Incarceration, Conviction, and Arrest on Wealth Outcomes Among Young Adults.” Social Problems 67(4): 698-718.
Sykes, Bryan L., Anjuli Verma, and Black Hawk Hancock. 2018. “Aligning Sampling and Case Selection in Quantitative-Qualitative Research Designs: Establishing Generalizability Limits in Mixed-Method Studies.” Ethnography 19(2): 227-253.
Hancock, Black Hawk, Bryan L. Sykes, and Anjuli Verma. 2018. “The Problem of ‘Cameo Appearances’ in Mixed-Methods Research: Implications for 21st-Century Ethnography.” Sociological Perspectives 61(2): 314-334.
The Global Burden of Disease 2017 Population and Fertility Collaborators. 2018. “Population and Fertility by Age and Sex for 195 Countries and Territories 1950-2017: A Systematic Analysis for the Global Burden of Disease 2017.” The Lancet 392: 1995–2051.
The Global Burden of Disease 2016 Firearms Collaborators. 2018. “Deaths from Firearms in 195 Countries 1990 to 2016: A Systematic Analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2016.” Journal of the American Medical Association 320(8): 792-814.
The Global Burden of Disease 2016 Alcohol Use Collaborators. 2018. “Alcohol Use and Burden for 195 Countries and Territories, 1990–2016: A Systematic Analysis from the Global Burden of Disease Study 2016.” The Lancet 392: 1015-1035.
Martin, Karin, Bryan L. Sykes, Sarah Shannon, Frank Edwards, and Alexes Harris. 2018. “Monetary Sanctions: Legal Financial Obligations in the Criminal Justice System.” Annual Review of Criminology 1: 471-495.
Sykes, Bryan, Alex R. Piquero, and Jason Gioviano. 2017. “Racial Discrimination and Parental Perceptions of Safety in American Neighborhoods and Schools.” Sociological Forum 32 (S1): 952-974.
The Global Burden of Disease U.S. Collaborators. 2017. “The State of U.S. Health 1990-2016: Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors among U.S. States.” Journal of the American Medical Association
Sykes, Bryan L. and Michele Maroto. 2016. “A Wealth of Inequalities: Mass Incarceration, Employment, and Racial Disparities in Household Wealth, U.S. 1996-2011.” RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences 2(6): 129-152.
The Global Burden of Disease 2015 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) Collaborators. 2016. “Measuring the Health-Related Sustainable Development Goals in 188 Countries: A Baseline Analysis from the Global Burden of Disease Study 2015.” The Lancet 388 (10053): 1813-1850.
Pettit, Becky and Bryan L. Sykes. 2015. “Civil Rights Legislation and Legalized Exclusion: Mass Incarceration and the Masking of Inequality.” Sociological Forum 30 (S1): 589-611.
Sykes, Bryan L. and Becky Pettit. 2015. “Severe Deprivation and System Inclusion Among Children of Incarcerated Parents in the United States After the Great Recession.” RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences 1(2): 108-132.
Sykes, Bryan L. and Becky Pettit. 2014. “Mass Incarceration, Family Complexity, and the Reproduction of Childhood Disadvantage.” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 654: 127-149.
The Global Burden of Disease Obesity Collaborators. 2014. “Global, Regional, and National Prevalence of Overweight and Obesity in Children and Adults During 1980-2013: A Systematic Analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2013.” The Lancet 384 (9945): 766-781.