Reyna Hernandez is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Chicago in the Department of Sociology. Her research studies the effects of wrongful conviction and incarceration, specifically through the study of how formerly incarcerated exonerees understand, access, and mobilize law and policy after prison.
Hernandez’s proposed dissertation, titled “Seeking Reparations After Wrongful Incarceration: How Exonerees Experience, Navigate, and Mobilize Wrongful Conviction Compensation Statutes in Illinois and New York,” aims to examine the effects of wrongful conviction compensation statutes to find out how sociolegal mechanisms shape the post-incarceration experiences of the wrongfully convicted. She plans to utilize ethnography, content analysis, and visual methods to provide a deeper and more holistic understanding of existing literature on the topic.
Hernandez received her M.A. in Sociology from the University of Chicago and her B.A. in Criminology from the University of Texas at Dallas.