Toward Justice

Dr. Kristi Holsinger is Professor and Chair of the Criminal Justice and Criminology department at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, where she has been on faculty since 1999. She received her Masters and Doctoral degrees in Criminal Justice from the University of Cincinnati. Her primary research interests include policies and practices related to girls and women in correctional systems as well as innovations in teaching. Each fall, she teaches a mentoring course in collaboration with the Jackson County Family Court, in which students mentor and develop programming for incarcerated girls. Dr. Holsinger's book, Teaching Justice: Solving Social Justice Problems through University Education was published in 2012. She has more than 30 academic articles, and has delivered more than 50 conference presentations. She is an active member of the American Society of Criminology and its Division on Women and Crime, and the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences.


Dr. Lori Sexton is Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice and Criminology at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. She earned her Ph.D. in Criminology, Law and Society from the University of California, Irvine, and an M.A. in Criminology from the University of Pennsylvania. Her research focuses primarily on prisons and punishment, with a secondary focus on marginalized populations and intersectionality. She has worked on numerous studies of incarcerated populations, including two studies focusing specifically on transgender prisoners. Her work has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the National Institute of Justice, and the Fletcher Jones Foundation. Findings from her research have informed criminal justice policy, and practice through publication in peer-reviewed journals and books, inclusion in testimony to legislative bodies and for civil legal proceedings, and incorporation into trainings for criminal justice practitioners.