Jaqueline Lepe (she/her) is a PhD candidate in Sociology at UC Berkeley. Her dissertation examines California’s shift to community-based youth justice under Senate Bill 823, focusing on how frontline juvenile justice bureaucrats shape the policy’s implementation, to illuminate patterns of resistance and co-optation within the penal system. Drawing on enactive ethnography, interviews, and archival research, she shows how efforts at systemic reform through decarceration are often undermined by frontline bureaucrats committed to punitive logics.

As a first-generation Latina sociologist with prior juvenile justice involvement, Jaqueline is dedicated to mentoring system-impacted youth. During her fieldwork, she served as a college instructor, tutor, and mentor to incarcerated youth in a Southern California juvenile detention facility.

Jaqueline’s research has received support from the National Science Foundation, along with UC Berkeley’s Chancellor’s Fellowship and the UC President’s Pre-Professoriate Fellowship. She holds an M.A. from UC Berkeley and a B.A. from UC Santa Barbara.