There’s a big gap between what the general public thinks criminologists do and what we actually do. Most people assume we work in forensics, consult on detective cases, or spend our days profiling serial killers.
That’s understandable. The media leans hard into that image, and some criminologists do work in forensic-adjacent fields. But I’m an academic criminologist: someone who studies crime, criminals, and criminal justice systems as social phenomena.
The real question is whether that training produces a distinctive way of thinking, and whether it affects how we interpret the world beyond our research.
I think it does in subtle and often difficult-to-detect ways.
We expect measurment to be incomplete
One of the first things criminology teaches you is that official crime statistics are not accurate reflections of reality. They are outputs of a reporting and recording process shaped by incentives, institutions, and omission.
People and organizations don’t report crimes for many reasons: shame, distrust of police, fear of retaliation, or the belief that nothing will be done. Law enforcement agencies do not record everything they encounter. Even when data were collected, it passes through multiple institutional filters before it becomes “official.”
The practical effect is not total skepticism, but caution. It means asking how the data were produced before treating it as gospel. When I see a headline about crime rates dropping, my first instinct is not to accept or reject it. It’s to ask what system generated that number, what it excludes, and how this information is being used and to what end.
That habit generalizes. In other domains, such as health data, economic indicators, and organizational metrics, I tend to ask the same questions.
We resist single-cause explanations
Crime is rarely caused by a single factor. Poverty matters, but it is neither necessary nor sufficient. Plenty of poor people never commit crimes, and many wealthy people do. Neighborhood conditions matter. But so does individual history, opportunity, peer networks, and the presence or absence of capable guardians. The relationships are layered, conditional, and context-dependent.
When the drunk at the end of the bar confidently blames crime on a single factor, I cringe. Not because the take is unsophisticated, but because monocausal explanations are almost always wrong. Criminological training makes you skeptical of that kind of reasoning wherever you encounter it.
We know that similar-looking things are not always the same
Jails and prisons look alike to most people. They’re not. Jails are locally operated and typically hold people awaiting trial, or those convicted of less serious offenses serving less than a year. Prisons are state or federally run, hold people convicted of more serious crimes, and incarcerate them for a year or more. The distinction matters enormously for policy, research, and the people inside them. Municipal police departments and the FBI both enforce laws, but their missions, cultures, and legal authorities are fundamentally different.
This habit of slowing down to ask whether two apparently similar things are actually comparable proves useful everywhere. Categories that look coherent from the outside are often messier on the inside.
We think about public safety differently
Criminologists tend to be more realistic about risk than the general public. We know that fear of crime and actual crime rates are loosely coupled at best. People are often most afraid of crimes that are least likely to affect them, and relatively unconcerned about those that are statistically more likely. We also know that public safety is produced by many institutions simultaneously: families, schools, communities, economies, and yes, police. Thus, relying on law enforcement to solve what are fundamentally social problems is, from a criminological standpoint, inappropriate.
Preceeding with Caution
None of this makes criminologists better decision-makers in their own lives. We are perfectly capable of making bad choices, holding inconsistent beliefs, and falling for the same cognitive shortcuts as everyone else. Training sharpens certain analytical instincts, but it doesn’t immunize you against being human.
Are you an academic criminologist? Do you find that your training, teaching, scholarship, or service changes how you see things outside your field? I’d be curious to hear what you’d add to this list and how it has affected you.
If these questions interest you, then I encourage you to explore my Letters to a Young Criminologist, a book written for undergraduate and graduate students and early-career academics in this increasingly popular academic field/discipline, and just about anyone trying to navigate a career as a criminologist who wants to learn more about its dynamics.
Painting: “The School of Athens” (1511)
Artist: Raphael
https://jeffreyianross.com/wp-content/uploads/Screenshot-2026-04-24-at-11.06.13-PM.png702886Jeffrey Ian Rosshttps://jeffreyianross.com/wp-content/uploads/jeffrey-ian-ross-logo-04.pngJeffrey Ian Ross2026-04-26 05:01:032026-04-28 02:34:26How to Think Like a Criminologist
For nearly 30 years, students and early-career academics have asked me the same questions about building a career in academic criminology: How do you choose a research agenda? How do you navigate tenure? How do you balance teaching, research, and service? What works? What doesn’t?
I’ve answered these questions in office hours, at conferences, over coffee, and in email threads. But I’ve also asked my own questions of mentors, colleagues, administrators, and fellow criminologists at different career stages. Those conversations shaped how I understood the field and navigated my own career.
Letters to a Young Criminologist collects what I’ve learned from three decades as a corrections worker, government researcher, and academic criminologist. It offers the practical advice I wish someone had given me when I started, and the insights I gained from asking questions of people who’d already been through it.
The book is written mostly for undergraduate students, graduate students, and early-career academics in criminology and criminal justice. But it’s also relevant to practitioners in law enforcement, corrections, probation, parole, and the courts who are considering academic work or want to understand how the academic side of the field operates.
It’s not theory. It’s practical guidance drawn from experience, research, and hundreds of conversations, both the questions I’ve been asked and the ones I’ve asked others.
If you’re navigating an academic criminology career or thinking about starting one, this book is meant for you.
https://jeffreyianross.com/wp-content/uploads/Screenshot-2026-04-05-at-12.57.00-AM.png456480Jeffrey Ian Rosshttps://jeffreyianross.com/wp-content/uploads/jeffrey-ian-ross-logo-04.pngJeffrey Ian Ross2026-04-05 04:58:382026-04-05 12:08:59After Three Decades, Here’s What I Wish Someone Had Told Me
My recent article, published in The Prison Journal, documents how the United States Federal Bureau of Prisons (FBOP) violates the Nelson Mandela Rules. These standards, adopted by the United Nations in 2015, outline the international minimum standards for humane detention.
Drawing on government reports, bipartisan congressional investigations, peer-reviewed research, and investigative journalism, the study identifies fourteen distinct violations across three domains: accommodation standards, healthcare services, and solitary confinement practices.
These aren’t isolated incidents. They’re longstanding patterns that expose federal inmates to conditions that fall well below what the international community considers minimally acceptable.
What the Mandela Rules Require
The Rules, named after the former South African president and anti-apartheid crusader who spent 27 years in prison, establish 122 standards that correctional systems in UN member states should meet. These standards also emphasize human dignity and basic rights for people deprived of their liberty.
The rules aren’t aspirational. They represent what the international community agreed constitutes the basic conditions for humane detention.
The Violations: Three Categories
Accommodation failures. Federal prisons routinely engage in double and triple bunking in cells designed for single occupancy. While the Supreme Court ruled that double-bunking doesn’t violate the U.S. Constitution, constitutional permissibility doesn’t equal compliance with international standards.
The problem extends beyond crowding. Multiple facilities have documented issues with broken toilets, inadequate heating and cooling, pest infestations, and contaminated drinking water. Investigations have found rat fur, arsenic, and copper in prison water supplies at levels exceeding EPA standards. In one case, inmates in New York experienced stomachaches after Hurricane Ida contaminated their water supply in 2021.
Food quality raises additional concerns. Cost-cutting measures, including outsourcing food services to private corporations like Aramark, have led to meals contaminated with vermin. A 2017 CDC study found that prison inmates are 6.4 times more likely to contract a food-related illness than the general population.
Healthcare deficiencies. The Mandela Rules require that prisoners receive healthcare equivalent to community standards. Federal prisons frequently fall substantially short of this benchmark.
Among federal inmates with persistent medical problems, nearly 14% received no medical examination since incarceration. After serious injuries or assaults, 7.7% of inmates didn’t receive a medical examination. Perhaps most troubling: 21% of inmates who required prescription medication for chronic conditions stopped taking their medication after incarceration. This was not by choice, but because the medication wasn’t provided.
Mental health services present their own crisis. The Federal Bureau of Prisons faces chronic shortages of qualified mental health professionals, resulting in delayed assessments, limited ongoing treatment, and inadequate care for complex psychiatric conditions. The gap between stated policy and actual practice is substantial. Facilities have written policies requiring mental health evaluations and treatment, but investigations consistently document that these policies aren’t followed.
Solitary confinement abuses. The Mandela Rules define solitary confinement as confining prisoners for 22 hours or more per day without meaningful human contact. The rules prohibit “prolonged solitary confinement”—anything exceeding 15 consecutive days.
Federal prisons regularly place inmates in solitary confinement for months or years, far exceeding international standards. Perhaps most disturbing: the Bureau places inmates with mental illness or suicidal ideation into solitary confinement, ostensibly for their protection. This practice directly violates international prohibitions and has been shown to worsen mental health conditions rather than ameliorate them.
Why This Matters Beyond Prisons
These violations have consequences beyond the individuals experiencing them.
For extradition cases: European courts increasingly refuse to extradite individuals to the United States based on concerns about prison conditions. The documented violations strengthen legal arguments that extradition would expose individuals to inhuman or degrading treatment prohibited under European human rights law.
For international credibility: Systematic human rights violations in federal prisons undermine U.S. credibility in international forums and its ability to advocate for human rights abroad.
For domestic reform: While U.S. courts have established that certain practices don’t violate constitutional minimums, international standards provide additional leverage for legal challenges and policy reform.
The Path Forward
The study makes the following recommendations: eliminate overcrowding, provide healthcare equivalent to community standards, strictly limit solitary confinement to 15 days maximum, establish independent oversight, and increase transparency through public reporting.
These aren’t radical proposals. They’re minimum standards that most democratic countries already meet. Countries like Norway, Germany, and the Netherlands demonstrate that humane correctional practices are achievable and compatible with public safety.
What’s required is political will. Congress must provide adequate funding and pass oversight legislation. The Department of Justice must prioritize reform and establish accountability. The FBOP must move beyond policy statements to actual implementation.
What Standards Should We Uphold?
The ultimate question is one of values: What standards of human dignity do we wish to uphold as a democratic society?
The gap between current federal prison practices and international standards is substantial. Closing it will require sustained effort, adequate resources, and fundamental shifts in correctional culture. The path forward is clear. What remains uncertain is whether the United States possesses the political will to take it.
https://jeffreyianross.com/wp-content/uploads/Screenshot-2026-03-20-at-11.38.19-AM.png5781508Jeffrey Ian Rosshttps://jeffreyianross.com/wp-content/uploads/jeffrey-ian-ross-logo-04.pngJeffrey Ian Ross2026-03-26 04:32:262026-03-26 04:41:48How U.S. Federal Prisons Fail International Human Rights Standards
How to Think Like a Criminologist
/by Jeffrey Ian RossThere’s a big gap between what the general public thinks criminologists do and what we actually do. Most people assume we work in forensics, consult on detective cases, or spend our days profiling serial killers.
That’s understandable. The media leans hard into that image, and some criminologists do work in forensic-adjacent fields. But I’m an academic criminologist: someone who studies crime, criminals, and criminal justice systems as social phenomena.
The real question is whether that training produces a distinctive way of thinking, and whether it affects how we interpret the world beyond our research.
I think it does in subtle and often difficult-to-detect ways.
We expect measurment to be incomplete
One of the first things criminology teaches you is that official crime statistics are not accurate reflections of reality. They are outputs of a reporting and recording process shaped by incentives, institutions, and omission.
People and organizations don’t report crimes for many reasons: shame, distrust of police, fear of retaliation, or the belief that nothing will be done. Law enforcement agencies do not record everything they encounter. Even when data were collected, it passes through multiple institutional filters before it becomes “official.”
The practical effect is not total skepticism, but caution. It means asking how the data were produced before treating it as gospel. When I see a headline about crime rates dropping, my first instinct is not to accept or reject it. It’s to ask what system generated that number, what it excludes, and how this information is being used and to what end.
That habit generalizes. In other domains, such as health data, economic indicators, and organizational metrics, I tend to ask the same questions.
We resist single-cause explanations
Crime is rarely caused by a single factor. Poverty matters, but it is neither necessary nor sufficient. Plenty of poor people never commit crimes, and many wealthy people do. Neighborhood conditions matter. But so does individual history, opportunity, peer networks, and the presence or absence of capable guardians. The relationships are layered, conditional, and context-dependent.
When the drunk at the end of the bar confidently blames crime on a single factor, I cringe. Not because the take is unsophisticated, but because monocausal explanations are almost always wrong. Criminological training makes you skeptical of that kind of reasoning wherever you encounter it.
We know that similar-looking things are not always the same
Jails and prisons look alike to most people. They’re not. Jails are locally operated and typically hold people awaiting trial, or those convicted of less serious offenses serving less than a year. Prisons are state or federally run, hold people convicted of more serious crimes, and incarcerate them for a year or more. The distinction matters enormously for policy, research, and the people inside them. Municipal police departments and the FBI both enforce laws, but their missions, cultures, and legal authorities are fundamentally different.
This habit of slowing down to ask whether two apparently similar things are actually comparable proves useful everywhere. Categories that look coherent from the outside are often messier on the inside.
We think about public safety differently
Criminologists tend to be more realistic about risk than the general public. We know that fear of crime and actual crime rates are loosely coupled at best. People are often most afraid of crimes that are least likely to affect them, and relatively unconcerned about those that are statistically more likely. We also know that public safety is produced by many institutions simultaneously: families, schools, communities, economies, and yes, police. Thus, relying on law enforcement to solve what are fundamentally social problems is, from a criminological standpoint, inappropriate.
Preceeding with Caution
None of this makes criminologists better decision-makers in their own lives. We are perfectly capable of making bad choices, holding inconsistent beliefs, and falling for the same cognitive shortcuts as everyone else. Training sharpens certain analytical instincts, but it doesn’t immunize you against being human.
Are you an academic criminologist? Do you find that your training, teaching, scholarship, or service changes how you see things outside your field? I’d be curious to hear what you’d add to this list and how it has affected you.
If these questions interest you, then I encourage you to explore my Letters to a Young Criminologist, a book written for undergraduate and graduate students and early-career academics in this increasingly popular academic field/discipline, and just about anyone trying to navigate a career as a criminologist who wants to learn more about its dynamics.
Painting: “The School of Athens” (1511)
Artist: Raphael
After Three Decades, Here’s What I Wish Someone Had Told Me
/by Jeffrey Ian RossFor nearly 30 years, students and early-career academics have asked me the same questions about building a career in academic criminology: How do you choose a research agenda? How do you navigate tenure? How do you balance teaching, research, and service? What works? What doesn’t?
I’ve answered these questions in office hours, at conferences, over coffee, and in email threads. But I’ve also asked my own questions of mentors, colleagues, administrators, and fellow criminologists at different career stages. Those conversations shaped how I understood the field and navigated my own career.
Letters to a Young Criminologist collects what I’ve learned from three decades as a corrections worker, government researcher, and academic criminologist. It offers the practical advice I wish someone had given me when I started, and the insights I gained from asking questions of people who’d already been through it.
The book is written mostly for undergraduate students, graduate students, and early-career academics in criminology and criminal justice. But it’s also relevant to practitioners in law enforcement, corrections, probation, parole, and the courts who are considering academic work or want to understand how the academic side of the field operates.
It’s not theory. It’s practical guidance drawn from experience, research, and hundreds of conversations, both the questions I’ve been asked and the ones I’ve asked others.
If you’re navigating an academic criminology career or thinking about starting one, this book is meant for you.
Letters to a Young Criminologist is available April 17, 2026.
How U.S. Federal Prisons Fail International Human Rights Standards
/by Jeffrey Ian RossMy recent article, published in The Prison Journal, documents how the United States Federal Bureau of Prisons (FBOP) violates the Nelson Mandela Rules. These standards, adopted by the United Nations in 2015, outline the international minimum standards for humane detention.
Drawing on government reports, bipartisan congressional investigations, peer-reviewed research, and investigative journalism, the study identifies fourteen distinct violations across three domains: accommodation standards, healthcare services, and solitary confinement practices.
These aren’t isolated incidents. They’re longstanding patterns that expose federal inmates to conditions that fall well below what the international community considers minimally acceptable.
What the Mandela Rules Require
The Rules, named after the former South African president and anti-apartheid crusader who spent 27 years in prison, establish 122 standards that correctional systems in UN member states should meet. These standards also emphasize human dignity and basic rights for people deprived of their liberty.
The rules aren’t aspirational. They represent what the international community agreed constitutes the basic conditions for humane detention.
The Violations: Three Categories
Accommodation failures. Federal prisons routinely engage in double and triple bunking in cells designed for single occupancy. While the Supreme Court ruled that double-bunking doesn’t violate the U.S. Constitution, constitutional permissibility doesn’t equal compliance with international standards.
The problem extends beyond crowding. Multiple facilities have documented issues with broken toilets, inadequate heating and cooling, pest infestations, and contaminated drinking water. Investigations have found rat fur, arsenic, and copper in prison water supplies at levels exceeding EPA standards. In one case, inmates in New York experienced stomachaches after Hurricane Ida contaminated their water supply in 2021.
Food quality raises additional concerns. Cost-cutting measures, including outsourcing food services to private corporations like Aramark, have led to meals contaminated with vermin. A 2017 CDC study found that prison inmates are 6.4 times more likely to contract a food-related illness than the general population.
Healthcare deficiencies. The Mandela Rules require that prisoners receive healthcare equivalent to community standards. Federal prisons frequently fall substantially short of this benchmark.
Among federal inmates with persistent medical problems, nearly 14% received no medical examination since incarceration. After serious injuries or assaults, 7.7% of inmates didn’t receive a medical examination. Perhaps most troubling: 21% of inmates who required prescription medication for chronic conditions stopped taking their medication after incarceration. This was not by choice, but because the medication wasn’t provided.
Mental health services present their own crisis. The Federal Bureau of Prisons faces chronic shortages of qualified mental health professionals, resulting in delayed assessments, limited ongoing treatment, and inadequate care for complex psychiatric conditions. The gap between stated policy and actual practice is substantial. Facilities have written policies requiring mental health evaluations and treatment, but investigations consistently document that these policies aren’t followed.
Solitary confinement abuses. The Mandela Rules define solitary confinement as confining prisoners for 22 hours or more per day without meaningful human contact. The rules prohibit “prolonged solitary confinement”—anything exceeding 15 consecutive days.
Federal prisons regularly place inmates in solitary confinement for months or years, far exceeding international standards. Perhaps most disturbing: the Bureau places inmates with mental illness or suicidal ideation into solitary confinement, ostensibly for their protection. This practice directly violates international prohibitions and has been shown to worsen mental health conditions rather than ameliorate them.
Why This Matters Beyond Prisons
These violations have consequences beyond the individuals experiencing them.
For extradition cases: European courts increasingly refuse to extradite individuals to the United States based on concerns about prison conditions. The documented violations strengthen legal arguments that extradition would expose individuals to inhuman or degrading treatment prohibited under European human rights law.
For international credibility: Systematic human rights violations in federal prisons undermine U.S. credibility in international forums and its ability to advocate for human rights abroad.
For domestic reform: While U.S. courts have established that certain practices don’t violate constitutional minimums, international standards provide additional leverage for legal challenges and policy reform.
The Path Forward
The study makes the following recommendations: eliminate overcrowding, provide healthcare equivalent to community standards, strictly limit solitary confinement to 15 days maximum, establish independent oversight, and increase transparency through public reporting.
These aren’t radical proposals. They’re minimum standards that most democratic countries already meet. Countries like Norway, Germany, and the Netherlands demonstrate that humane correctional practices are achievable and compatible with public safety.
What’s required is political will. Congress must provide adequate funding and pass oversight legislation. The Department of Justice must prioritize reform and establish accountability. The FBOP must move beyond policy statements to actual implementation.
What Standards Should We Uphold?
The ultimate question is one of values: What standards of human dignity do we wish to uphold as a democratic society?
The gap between current federal prison practices and international standards is substantial. Closing it will require sustained effort, adequate resources, and fundamental shifts in correctional culture. The path forward is clear. What remains uncertain is whether the United States possesses the political will to take it.
The full research article, “Do the conditions inside the United States Federal Bureau of Prisons facilities violate the Nelson Mandela Rules on detention? (is available to download and appears in The Prison Journal 2026).