Department of Sociology Faculty

Gennifer Furst

Gennifer Furst (Assistant Professor) received her B.A. in psychology (with a sociology minor) from Connecticut College and her M.A. in psychology (with a concentration in evaluation methodology) from Claremont Graduate University. She received her doctorate in criminal justice (with a concentration in corrections) from CUNY Graduate Center.

Dr. Furst’s research interests focus on issues of incarceration. She published the first national survey of prison-based animal programs in the US. Additionally, she is interested in race and the administration of criminal justice, the death penalty, the use of animals in the criminal justice system, and the relationship between drugs and crime.

She recently co-authored a book chapter examining how issues of race and ethnicity are incorporated in college criminology/criminal justice courses. Most recently, she had an article about how prison-based animal programs change participants published in a major reader about human-animal relations. A reader she edited as a supplement to Criminology texts was also recently published. She is currently designing a study to examine so-called sniffer dogs.

Prior to teaching full-time, Professor Furst worked at one of the country’s three independent prison monitoring agencies, The Correctional Association of New York. Before coming to WPU Professor Furst taught at CUNY, John Jay College and Bronx Community College, as well as The College of New Jersey.

Dr. Furst lives in beautiful northern Hudson County, NJ and enjoys spending her free time with her dog and cats, all of whom found her on the streets of the various cities where she has lived. She’s OK with being labeled “Crazy Cat Lady.” She enjoys listening to the sounds of Pearl Jam, particularly Eddie Vedder.

Selected Bibliography

Furst, G. 2009. "How Prison-Based Animal Programs Change Prisoner Participants." Pp. 293-302 in Between the Species: Readings in Human-Animal Relations, edited by A. Arluke and C. Sanders. Boston: Allyn & Bacon.

Furst, G., ed. 2009. Contemporary Readings in Criminal Justice. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Furst, G. and N. Phillips. 2008. "Incorporating Race/Ethnicity into Criminology/Criminal Justice Education." Pp. 57-68 in Teaching Race and Ethnicity in Higher Education: Perspectives from North America, edited by Emily Horowitz. Birmingham, UK: The Higher Education Academy Network.

Furst, G. 2007. "Prison-Based Animal Programs in the United States: Implications for Desistance." Prison Service Journal 172 (July):38-44.

Furst, G. 2007. "Without Words to Get in the Way: Symbolic Interaction in Prison-Based Animal Programs." Qualitative Sociology Review 3: 96-109.