Dr. Karen Snedker

Karen A. Snedker is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Chapman University. Karen is the author of Therapeutic Justice: Crime, Treatment Courts and Mental Illness (Palgrave 2018), as well as numerous articles in journals including The American Journal of Sociology, Crime and Delinquency, Social Science Research, Teaching Sociology, and Contexts. Karen also serves on the editorial board for Society and Mental Health. Her co-authored book (with Jennifer McKinney, Seattle Pacific University) on homelessness, Roofless: Partnerships, Self-Governance, and Community in a Tent Camp, is forthcoming with Rutgers University Press. 

RECENT ARTICLES

Snedker, Karen A., Jennifer McKinney and Charles C. Lanfear. 2025. “A Tent Census: How Counting Tents Informs an Understanding of Unsheltered Homelessness in Seattle.” Socius. 11: 1–16.  DOI: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/23780231251338651

Snedker, Karen A., Andria Fredriks and Emily Nye. 2023. “Counting Tents: Faculty-Student Collaboration in Real-World Projects.” Teaching Sociology. 51:371-280. Pre-published November 2, 2022, DOI: 10.1177/0092055X221134125

Snedker, Karen A. 2022. “Mental Health Courts.” Pp. 659-684 in Handbook of Issues in Criminal Justice Reform in the United States, edited by Cynthia Calkins and Elizabeth L. Jeglic. New York: Springer. 

Snedker, Karen. 2022. “Therapeutic Jurisprudence in Practice: Applying Goffman’s Dramaturgical Approach to Mental Health Courts.” Pp. 39-53 in Justice Outsourced: The Therapeutic Jurisprudence Implications of Judicial Decision-Making by Nonjudicial Officers, edited by Kelly Frailing and Michael Perlin. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.