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Heather Evans has it tattooed on her arm: Nine to Zero. It commemorates the unanimous vote of the Washington State Supreme Court in 2018 to abolish the death penalty. Evans, a University of Washington (UW), Seattle socio-legal scholar, had collaborated with a small team to research racial inequities in the state’s application of the death penalty and was getting to see the real-life consequences of her work.
Evans grew up in Luis Lopez, a poor rural part of New Mexico that didn’t even have a school or a store. She finished high school but didn’t go to community college until she was in her mid-20s. As Evans pursued two bachelor’s degrees, a master’s and then a PhD in sociology at UW, she sometimes despaired about the student loans she had racked up. But whenever she wondered whether she was really meant to be in academia, her partner would say, “nine to zero,” and she would get back on track.
These days Evans is an Acting Assistant Professor in UW’s Department of Rehabilitation Medicine as well as the Research Director of the Northwest ADA Center, which serves people with disabilities in Oregon, Idaho, Alaska and Washington. She also works on a project for the Center for Rehabilitation Outcomes Research (CROR) at the Shirley Ryan AbilityLab, developing a decision aid designed to help people with disabilities decide when and whether to disclose their condition to an employer. (See related story).
It's a subject close to her heart. After living with a potpourri of symptoms that included numbness, neuropathic pain and heat sensitivity for almost a decade, Evans was finally diagnosed with multiple sclerosis when she was in her early 30s. With medication, the progression of the disease has slowed. Today, she always carries a cane with her and often uses a motorized wheelchair to get around during the summers.
Evans’ research focuses on how institutions, in particular the law and legal structures, affect marginalized groups in ways that replicate or disrupt social stratification. To help support herself while she was working on her dissertation, Evans did contract work for social justice groups. One group was looking into the fines and fees that inmates in the Washington state penal system were charged as part of their conviction. In some counties, the debt was turned over to debt-collection firms, which charged interest rates as high as 33%. The interest started accruing as soon as prisoners started serving their sentences, frequently adding up to large amounts by the time they were released.
Because many former inmates could never afford to pay off the debt, they were deemed to have not completed their sentences and therefore weren’t allowed to vote. Evans and her collaborators were able to show the negative effect of high interest rates on former inmates. The state legislature then passed a law capping interest rates on legal debt and amended the law to allow former prisoners to vote. “Every time you do a piece of research and see a law change, that is so exciting,” Evans says.
Mark Harniss, PhD, Associate Professor in Rehabilitation Medicine, Director of the Center for Technology and Disability Studies, and Director of the UW Disability Studies Program says it’s a pleasure to work with Evans. “Heather brings her whole self to the work, and she walks her talk as someone who identifies as having a disability. She is a good mentor for those of us who haven’t had that experience, and she is a very popular teacher at the university. She’s great.”
Evans has always been a multi-tasker, juggling her adjunct teaching gig with multiple research projects and contract work. Now that she is in her late 40s, she dreams of slowing down a bit and having more financial security. “I’d like to keep doing what I’m doing but with a little more money and job security. The five-jobs-at-a-time thing is getting old. I need to get it down to about two jobs,” she laughs. “I may not have a lot of disposable income but I do have access to so many resources. And I have good healthcare. That’s a big incentive.”