Nikki Jones is Professor of African American Studies at UC-Berkeley. Her work examines the experiences of Black women, men, and youth with the criminal legal system, policing, and violence. Professor Jones is the author of Between Good and Ghetto: African American Girls and Inner-City Violence (2010) and The Chosen Ones: Black Men and the Politics of Redemption (2018), which received the 2020 Michael J. Hindelang Outstanding Book Award from the American Society of Criminology.

Her current research efforts are focused on the systematic analysis of video records that document routine encounters between police and civilians, with a focus on encounters that involve the police and Black youth in high-surveillance neighborhoods. These records are housed in the Justice Interaction Lab in the Department of African American Studies at UC-Berkeley. Professor Jones is also a faculty affiliate with the Center for Race and Gender; the Department of Women and Gender Studies; and the Center for the Study of Law and Society at UC Berkley.