Courtney’s research examines three interconnected domains: historical anti-Black violence; its contemporary manifestations—especially anti-Black racism and oppressive conditions within policing and the criminal legal system; and transitional justice efforts designed to address these histories and their legacies.
“The unbearable whiteness and patriarchy of traditional archives demand that new archives for [B]lack lives emerge and sustain themselves as spaces and sites for trauma, transcendence, and transformation.”
– Dr. Jarrett Drake
01. Histories of Anti-Black Violence & Their Legacies
The first project centers on documenting historical anti-Black violence and its legacies, with a particular focus on Louisiana, where Courtney was born and raised. The centerpiece of Echols’s research agenda is the Louisiana Racial Violence Archive (LRVA), a digital repository that documents twentieth-century anti-Black violence, and resistance to such, across her home state. Over nearly a decade, she has mined physical archives, online databases, newspapers, books, and the records of organizations such as CORE and the NAACP to assemble a dataset centered on Black experiences and strategies of resistance.
By fusing previously scattered accounts with newly uncovered sources, the LRVA offers a “collection of collections,” providing a richer, more accessible map of racial terror than traditional archives allow. Designed as both a scholarly resource and a public tool for reckoning, the archive will soon incorporate interactive features that let community members geolocate events and contribute stories—especially those long suppressed—so that collective memory becomes a shared, ongoing act of knowledge-making.
Echols, Courtney M. and Meghan Ballard. 2024. “The Archive as a Site: The Issues, Challenges, and Benefits of Conducting Archival Research on Anti-Black Violence and Black Resistance in the United States.” In Communities of Practice and Ethnographic Fieldwork:Creating Supportive Research Experiences,edited by Lee Cabatingan, Susan Coutin, and Deyanira N. Martinez. New York, NY: Routledge.
Echols, Courtney M. 2022. “Anti-Blackness is the American Way: Assessing the Relationship Between Chattel Slavery, Lynchings, & Police Violence During the Civil Rights Movement.” Race and Justice 14, no. 2 (2024): 217-232.
Echols, Courtney M. “Histories of Anti-Black Violence & Contemporary Black Death in the Murder Capital of America.” Under Review.
Echols, Courtney M. “Refining Slavery, Reproducing Carcerality: The Changing Dynamics of Racist Violence, Policing, and White Supremacist Culture in Mid-20th Century Louisiana.” Under Review.
Echols, Courtney M. and Bryan L. Sykes. “Contemporary Incarceration: An Integrative Assessment of the Direct and Indirect Effects of Racially Violent Histories.” In preparation for Social Forces.
02. Racism, State Violence, & The Criminal Legal System
Courtney’s scholarship maps the circuitry of racism and state violence coursing through every stage of the contemporary criminal legal system from the hidden costs of rehabilitation programs to “data-driven” policing practices and beyond. This work further illuminates that racism is not an aberration but the organizing logic of a criminal legal regime built on violence.
A.) Shadow Costs
Since 2022, Courtney has served as a Research Assistant and Project Lead on Dr. Bryan L. Sykes, $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 rehabilitation program completion, as a study of monetary sanctions and hidden financial punishments in the criminal legal system.
Sykes, Bryan L., Echols C.M., Mata, V.M., Pacheco, J. & Royal J. “Racketeering Rehabilitation: Shadow Costs, Criminal Court Referrals, and Rehabilitation Program Providers in Los Angeles County.” in preparation for Social Forces.
Sykes, Bryan L., Echols C.M., Mata, V.M., Pacheco, J. & Royal J. “Triaging the Search for Treatment: Shadow Costs, Rehabilitation Program Providers, and Sequencing Information Inequality in the California Criminal Legal System.” in preparation for Social Problems.
Sykes, Bryan L., Echols C.M., Mata, V.M., Pacheco, J. & Royal J.. “Rehabilitation Market Enclosure: Shadow Costs, Valuation Inequality, and County-Level Variation in Court- Ordered Treatment Program Pricing.” in preparation for Law & Society Review.
B.)Race, Space, & Policing
Part of Courtney’s research on contemporary manifestations of anti-Blackness investigates a decade-long, data-driven predictive policing program in Los Angeles and its relationship to police violence and gentrification. This work draws on over 9,000 pages of LAPD documents obtained via public records requests, newspaper articles and city documents about the program, and databases of targeted individuals and addresses obtained via litigation. Courtney also draws on over three years (2017-2019) of participant observation at LA City Council and Police Commission meetings.
Related Works:
Echols, Courtney M. “ ‘Data-Driven’ Displacement: The Role of Predictive Policing Technology in Gentrifying Black Communities and Safeguarding White Entitlement to Property and Space.” Manuscript under review.
Echols, Courtney M. “Abolish ‘Data-Driven’ Policing: An Analysis of the Relationship between Racial Capitalism and the Racist Violence of a ‘Data-Driven’ Policing Program in Los Angeles.” In preparation for The Journal of Gender, Race & Justice.
Garcia, Jamie, and Courtney M. Echols. 2021. “Automation of Banishment: New Technologies, Old Patterns.” In Automating Banishment: The Surveillance and Policing of Looted Land. Accessed June 3, 2025. https://automatingbanishment.org/.
Echols, Courtney M. 2018. “Crime Data: A Biased and Racist Social Construct.” In Before the Bullet Hits the Body: Dismantling Predictive Policing in Los Angeles. Stop LAPD Spying Coalition.
In collaboration with Dr. Nancy Rodriguez, Courtney’s work also explores how incarceration deepens racial disparities as well as how it reshapes the bonds between incarcerated individuals and their loved ones.
Related Works:
Echols, Courtney M., and Nancy Rodriguez. Forthcoming. “Understanding the Relationship between Race and Ethnicity, Probation Officers’ Recommendations, and Juvenile Court Outcomes.” In Research Handbook on Race, Crime, and Justice, edited by Kelly Welch. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar.
Echols, Courtney M., and Nancy Rodriguez. 2025. “Who Should Go Home from Detention? The Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Probation Officers’ Recommendations to the Court.” Crime & Delinquency, 1–30.
Williams, Kirk, and Courtney M. Echols. “Testing for Racial and Ethnic Bias When Assessing Intimate Partner Violence Defendants.” Manuscript under review.
Echols, Courtney M., and Nancy Rodriguez. “Locked In, Holding On: First-Person Insights into the Relational Costs of Incarceration.” Manuscript in preparation.
Courtney’s third research strand investigates the need for, and potential impact of, transitional justice initiatives aimed at redressing historical anti-Black violence in what is now known as the United States, with particular attention to her home state of Louisiana.
Over the last few decades, a surge of initiatives has sought to confront the United States’ legacy of violence against Black communities. While the removal of Confederate monuments is perhaps the most visible, other measures—including truth commissions, reparations, chattel slavery apologies, street and building renamings, reopened civil-rights cold cases, memorial projects, and institutional reforms—have gained ground. Such actions constitute transitional justice: a concerted effort to reckon with a past defined by slavery, lynching, and Jim Crow, and to replace it with a future committed to human rights. Courtney’s third research strand is guided by three objectives:
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Engagement. Engage directly with community members who were harmed by racial violence during the Civil Rights Movement in order to gain a more in depth understanding of the meaning this population attaches to such events, what it is they need from transitional justice processes.
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Preservation. Preserve the narratives of historically marginalized individuals whose voices are absent or underrepresented in both the written records as well as the discussions around transitional justice processes.
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Documentation and Analysis. Document and analyze transitional-justice initiatives across the state to gauge their capacity to repair historic anti-Black violence and its legacies.
Central to this work is the Louisiana Transitional Justice Database, a digital repository spanning 1985-2025. An initiative enters the database if it seeks to provide redress, raise awareness, commemorate victims, or reshape collective understanding of anti-Black histories in Louisiana. To date, the database hosts more than 1,000 entries, including truth and reconciliation commissions, street re-namings, memorials, prosecutions of long-ignored crimes, reparations, and formal apologies.
