Overview
I study how the way state power is legitimized shapes inequalities within communities. My book “The Policing Machine: Enforcement, Endorsements, & the Illusion of Public Input” (2024, University of Chicago Press) is about how police resist institutional reforms by cultivating political capital from the community constituents they empower.
My research has appeared in journals like the American Journal of Sociology, Criminology, Law & Society Review, and Social Problems. It has won awards from the American Sociological Association, American Society of Criminology, and Law & Society Association, and has been supported by the Russell Sage Foundation and an NSF CAREER Award. I have a Sociology PhD from Yale University and a J.D. from NYU Law School.
Personal website: http://www.tonykcheng.com
Current Appointments & Affiliations
Recent Publications
State Actors as Hard-to-Reach Populations
Journal Article Qualitative Sociology · January 1, 2025 Vulnerable populations may be hard-to-reach, but so too are state actors. Classic strategies of accessing the hard-to-reach, devised in reference to the vulnerable, do not translate well to state actors because their inaccessibility lies in their instituti ... Full text Open Access CiteIntersectional Burdens: How Social Location Shapes Interactions with the Administrative State
Journal Article Rsf · September 1, 2024 Administrative decisions mediate whether the millions who turn to the state for social services annually can access the assistance they need. We introduce the concept of intersectional burdens-which describes how a person's social location (including race, ... Full text Open Access CiteThe Policing Machine Enforcement, Endorsements, and the Illusion of Public Input
Book · 2024 In The Policing Machine, Tony Cheng reveals the stages of that resistance, offering a close look at the deep engagement strategies that NYPD precincts have developed with only subsets of the community in order to counter any truly ... ... Open Access CiteRecent Grants
CAREER: Elite Wealth in Big City Policing
ResearchPrincipal Investigator · Awarded by National Science Foundation · 2024 - 2029View All Grants