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About
Criminologist, Scholar, & Consultant
Jeffrey Ian Ross, Ph.D., is a criminologist at the University of Baltimore and co-founder of Convict Criminology. His approach is shaped by nearly a decade of work before entering academia, as a courier, cab driver, corrections worker, and union shop steward. It is further grounded in three decades of visiting correctional facilities across North America, Europe, and South America, researching the conditions inside them, and having conversations with convicts and correctional officers and administrators. It also draws on interviews with formerly incarcerated people outside those facilities, and on ethnographic fieldwork on street culture and on graffiti and street art internationally. Ross has published more than thirty books and shares his expertise on corrections, policing, political crime, street culture, and graffiti and street art through scholarship, public writing, speaking, media commentary, and consulting.
Trash Collectors
/by Jeffrey Ian RossDuring the late 1970s, I got my start driving cab for Beck Taxi in Toronto. Their business at the time was disproportionately located in the east end, above and below the Danforth. We got calls from the projects in Regent Park and the low-income housing at Main and Gerrard, but most business came from working-class […]
Conferences Shaping Graffiti and Street Art Scholarship
/by Jeffrey Ian RossMany academic organizations hold annual conferences where participants present papers to colleagues working in the same field. But no learned society that specializes in the scholarly area of graffiti and street art studies, that could hold annual meetings, exists. Although selected colleges and universities have held one-off conferences on this subject, over the past few decades […]
Eleven Films I use in my Criminology and Criminal Justice Classes
/by Jeffrey Ian RossAlthough textbooks, journal articles, and lectures are important, movies are one of the most effective teaching tools available to criminology and criminal justice instructors. They can communicate ideas, emotions, institutional realities, and ethical dilemmas in ways that the written word often struggles with. Throughout my teaching career, I have selectively incorporated narrative films into my […]