Tucker Reyes is a PhD student in the Department of Sociology at the University at Buffalo. His research centers on law and culture and how this intersection shapes inequality. He has studied the historical progression of the welfare state and public assistance programs and the legal stigmatization of the “undeserving” versus the “deserving poor.” His current research examines the legal history of lending practices in the early twentieth-century U.S. He is also working on collaborative projects examining how at-risk youth conceptualize punishment and the degree to which sociodemographic factors influence social mobility and indebtedness across the life course.