In her research, she studies the neighborhood conditions of mass imprisonment and the enduring racial disparities in incarceration, using prison records to understand spatial inequalities in incarceration in historical perspective across Massachusetts cities and neighborhoods. Keenly interested in data visualization and spatial methods, Simes focuses on describing the prison boom through mapping to understand the broad impacts of incarceration on communities. Simes received her B.A. from Occidental College, and her M.A. and Ph.D. in sociology from Harvard University.