Elizabeth Beck

Elizabeth Beck is a professor in the School of Social Work at the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies. Her major research interests are in the areas of the anti-oppression/liberation, mass incarceration, and restorative justice.

Dr. Beck has authored 30 peer-reviewed articles, one law review article, numerous book chapters and three books. Her first book, “In the Shadow of Death: Restorative Justice and Death Row Families,” published by Oxford University Press, received the American Library Association CHOICE Award for Outstanding Academic Title of 2007. She has an edited volume, “Social Work and Restorative Justice:  Skills for Dialogue, Peacemaking, and Reconciliation,” also published by Oxford University Press. Her 2018 book, “The Homelessness Industry a Critique of US Social Policy,” published with Lynne Rienner Press, explores the way in which the United States produces the condition of homelessness through neoliberal policy and the medicalization of a social justice issue. She is proud of her 2022 article Restorative justice inside prison: enacting the promise of emancipatory Pedagogy found in the Contemporary Justice Review. The article was co-written with three students who are incarcerated.

From 2006-2010 she was the principal investigator (PI) of the Georgia Council for Restorative Justice, examining Defense-Initiated Victim Outreach, a restorative justice strategy often used in death penalty cases. Since 2011, she has served as PI of the Professional Excellence and its Child Welfare Training Collaborative.

Dr. Beck is involved in several community-based initiatives. She teaches in Phillips State Prison with the Common Good Atlanta program.  She has also consulted on numerous capital cases, served as an expert in state and federal cases, and provided training to hundreds of capital defense teams.