During 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 people.
It was maybe a month into the job. Business was slow; not many radio calls, street pickups had died down. A bunch of cabbies were parked in front of a bar on Queen East, hoping to take someone home who was calling it quits for the night.
I decided to join them.
Around midnight, when I was at the front of the queue, the bar door swung open and out stumbled a guy. He was about my height but maybe weighed 35 pounds more. Visibly drunk. Thick arms. Ruddy complexion. Missing a few teeth. His nose looked like it had been broken at least twice and hadn’t set right either time.
I could tell he was a brawler. The kind who didn’t give a fuck who he picked a fight with or whether he got knocked out cold at the end of it. He’d just get up and do it again the next night.
He might have been from Down East. Probably a Newfie.
He looked at me, swaying slightly, then stumbled toward my cab. I hadn’t yet learned to keep the doors locked until I was sure I wanted the passenger. He climbed into the back seat, closed the door, and slumped against it.
“Where to?”
He mumbled an address I couldn’t quite make out. I asked him to repeat it. He said something that might have been a street name or might have been him telling me to fuck off. Hard to say.
“Look, I need an address or I can’t take you.”
He said nothing. Just sat there, eyes half-closed.
“Hey. You need to give me an address or get out.”
I looked at him in the rearview mirror. He had that flat, mean stare drunks get when they’ve decided you’re the problem.
“Fuck you,” he said clearly.
I turned around in my seat.
“Yo. Get out of the car.”
There was a solitary police cruiser parked maybe twenty feet away, right in front of the bar. I could see the officers inside, drinking coffee, bullshitting with each other.
I got out of the cab and walked over to them. Tapped on the window. One of them rolled it down.
“I got a guy in my back seat who won’t get out. He’s drunk, won’t give me an address, and he’s refusing to leave. Can you help me?”
The cop looked at me.
Then looked past me at my cab. Then looked back at me.
The window rolled back up.
I stood there for a moment, watching them go back to their coffee and chit-chat. Then I walked back to my cab, opened the back door, and stood outside the car with some distance from the would-be passenger. The kind of guy who’d done this a hundred times before and didn’t care how it ended. I figured I’d wait him out. I stood there. Cars passed. Nobody looked twice.
Eventually, he growled something incoherent, crawled out of the cab, and predictably left the door open. When he was a good six feet from the taxi, I rushed into the cab, turned on the ignition, and drove a few car lengths ahead, stopped long enough to close the rear door, and then booked.
I drove. I replayed the cops’ faces. The dismissiveness. The indifference.
The Toronto police viewed cab drivers the same way they viewed the fares we transported. We were part of the ecosystem they patrolled, not separate from it. We weren’t people they felt obliged to help. We were the trash collectors.
Photo By Little Gamma Ray
https://jeffreyianross.com/wp-content/uploads/Beck-Taxi-2026-07-13-at-4.59.07-PM.png417622Jeffrey Ian Rosshttps://jeffreyianross.com/wp-content/uploads/jeffrey-ian-ross-logo-04.pngJeffrey Ian Ross2026-07-19 04:58:552026-07-19 13:00:58Trash Collectors
Many 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 a handful of independent meetings have occurred where scholars presented papers on graffiti and street art.
Unlike large annual meetings held in hotels or convention centers with multiple simultaneous sessions, these graffiti and street art conferences are typically smaller and last a couple of days.
Thus there are more opportunities for interaction among participants than with the larger conferences. Moreover, these meetings often include joint dinners and one or more graffiti and street art tours organized as part of the program.
Over the past two decades, scholars, including professors and graduate students, have presented papers at these gatherings. Occasionally, graffiti writers and street artists attend and present on their work too.
Four conferences have done so with some regularity. They are reviewed below.
NUART Plus
The NUART Plus scholarly conference grew out of the NUART street art festival in Stavanger, Norway. Founded in 2001 by Martyn Reed, NUART later expanded to Aberdeen, Scotland, where a related festival and NUART Plus program, with the assistance of Susan Hansen, were also developed. The symposium became one of the leading international forums for scholarly and critical discussion of street art, bringing together academics, artists, curators, journalists, and activists. NUART also publishes Nuart Journal, a peer-reviewed publication dedicated to street art research and criticism.
Although the Stavanger archive documents eight NUART Plus symposia between 2012 and 2019, earlier scholarly gatherings may have occurred. Following a pandemic-related interruption, NUART Plus returned to Aberdeen in 2022. As of June 2026, no publicly available information indicates that a future NUART Plus symposium has been scheduled.
TAG
The TAG Conference (“Name Writing in Public Space”) is one of the principal international scholarly gatherings devoted specifically to graffiti writing and tagging. Founded in 2017 by Javier Abarca and an evolving network of collaborators, the conference does not follow a fixed annual schedule. Meetings are organized periodically when a host institution and local organizing team are in place. Past conferences have been held in Amsterdam, Berlin, Cologne, Groningen, Hamburg, Linz, New York City, and Vienna, bringing together researchers, artists, writers, and practitioners to discuss the history, theory, and contemporary practice of name writing in public space. The conference has also generated scholarly publications, including edited volumes drawn from conference presentations. Recent sponsored Art & Place conferences also include graffiti and street art papers.
Art and the City
Founded in 2018 by Tijen Tunali, Art and the City is an interdisciplinary conference series exploring the relationships among art, aesthetics, and urban politics. The conference aims to facilitate dialogue and collaboration among scholars working at the intersections of art, culture, and the urban environment, and has served as a platform for broader scholarly projects, including exhibitions, special journal issues, edited books, and grant-funded research. Since its founding, conferences have been held in Aarhus, Amman, Göttingen, Nice, Nicosia, and Tours. More recently, Vittorio Parisi and Konstantinos Avramidis, both graffiti and street art scholars, have co-organized the most recent two editions of Art and the City with Tunali, bringing a stronger graffiti dimension to the program.
Unlike the TAG Conference and NUART Plus, which focus primarily on graffiti, street art, and related forms of urban visual expression, Art and the City takes a broader approach, encompassing urban art, public space, architecture, visual culture, and urban studies.
Urban Creativity
Since 2014, the Urban Creativity conference series has brought together scholars, artists, and practitioners interested in graffiti, street art, urban visual culture, and related subjects. Organized primarily through the efforts of Pedro Soares Neves and affiliated with the University of Lisbon and related institutions, the conference is typically held in Lisbon in late June or early July. Participants come from a range of disciplines and countries, and European scholars have generally been well represented. Presentations are delivered in person and, in some years, online as well.
The conference is part of a broader Urban Creativity research and publishing network overseen by Neves. Participants are often invited to submit revised versions of their papers to associated journals, edited volumes, and other publications devoted to graffiti, street art, and urban culture. Like Art and the City, Urban Creativity takes a wider view than the TAG Conference, encompassing street art, public art, urban interventions, creative cities, and related forms of artistic engagement with urban space.
Scholars wishing to present a paper at these conferences are best advised to periodically check the websites for each of these conferences, as schedules and locations can change. Reaching out directly to the organizers is also worth doing if you want to stay current or explore participation.
Combined, these events, like the recently established Routledge book series Advances in Graffiti and Street Art Research, contribute to the maturation of graffiti and street art scholarship.
https://jeffreyianross.com/wp-content/uploads/IMG_1530.jpg622598Jeffrey Ian Rosshttps://jeffreyianross.com/wp-content/uploads/jeffrey-ian-ross-logo-04.pngJeffrey Ian Ross2026-07-05 11:09:132026-08-08 13:18:49Conferences Shaping Graffiti and Street Art Scholarship
Although 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 classes. But every semester, I need to decide which movies to assign because not all films are equally useful. Some do a much better job of illustrating criminological concepts and stimulating discussion than others.
In general, I avoid documentaries. Although many are excellent, I find that students are more willing to engage with narrative films and more likely actually to watch them.
Depending on the course, I typically require students to watch three or four movies during the semester and devote at least some class time to discussing them.
Films also give a course something that readings rarely provide: a shared reference point. Many students don’t complete all of their assigned readings. A movie, however, is more likely to hold their attention and give everyone who shows up to class that day something concrete to discuss.
Before the rise of streaming services and online instruction, I owned a DVD collection of relevant movies and frequently screened them during class. Today, things are more complicated. Licensing restrictions, asynchronous instruction, and varying student access to streaming platforms can make screening films more challenging. Nevertheless, I continue to find that movies remain one of the most effective ways to increase student engagement with course material.
Not every film belongs in every course. The entries below reflect the classes where I have found each film most useful. Some appear on multiple syllabi; others fit a narrower set of topics. Instructors teaching different courses will naturally draw from this list differently.
Another caveat is in order. The following are not necessarily the “best crime movies” ever made. Rather, they are films I have found particularly effective in helping students understand important criminological and criminal justice issues.
The Films
1. Cop Land (1997)
Starring Sylvester Stallone, this movie remains an excellent introduction to police culture, corruption, loyalty, and accountability. The film explores the difficulties of challenging misconduct both from within and outside a law enforcement organization and raises important questions about the so-called “blue wall of silence.”
Best suited for: Introduction to Criminal Justice, Policing, Police Deviance and Corruption
2. The Shawshank Redemption (1994)
This film, starring Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman, raises issues surrounding wrongful conviction, institutional corruption, prisonization, and the psychological effects of long-term incarceration. The movie enables discussions about hope, adaptation, and what it means to maintain identity under conditions of total institutionalization.
Best suited for: Introduction to Criminal Justice, Corrections, Punishment, and Society
3. American Me (1992)
Directed by and starring Edward James Olmos, American Me traces gang involvement from adolescence through adulthood and imprisonment. The film illustrates how prison gangs emerge, maintain power, and shape criminal behavior both inside and outside correctional institutions. It also raises questions about race, identity, and the relationship between street organizations and prison culture that go beyond what most textbooks cover.
Best suited for: Gangs, Corrections, Race, and Crime
4. Dead Man Walking (1995)
This movie, starring Sean Penn and Susan Sarandon, explores the emotional impact of violent crime on victims’ families, questions of offender accountability, and the moral and legal controversies surrounding the death penalty, and the impact of people who want to assist those behind bars.
Best suited for: Corrections, Punishment and Society, Criminal Law, Introduction to Criminal Justice
5. Serpico (1973)
Based on the experiences of New York City police officer Frank Serpico, this film examines the challenges faced by whistleblowers within law enforcement. Starring Al Pacino, the movie remains one of the most powerful portrayals of how institutional loyalty can be weaponized against the people most committed to doing their jobs honestly.
Best suited for: Policing, Police Deviance and Corruption, Criminal Justice Ethics
6. American History X (1998)
This film examines radicalization, hate groups, violence, and the social factors that draw young people into extremist movements. Starring Edward Norton, it also provides one of the more nuanced portrayals of desistance available in popular film: the conditions under which people change, and the obstacles they face when they try to.
Best suited for: Criminological Theory, Gangs, Victimology, Introduction to Criminology
7. The Godfather (1972)
This film, which is overfifty years old, is about Italian-American organized crime and remains relevant. It does. The Godfather is still the most effective single film for introducing students to the structure, norms, internal discipline, and economic logic of criminal organizations. It illustrates concepts including hierarchy, loyalty, succession, and the relationship between legitimate and illegitimate enterprise, concepts that transfer directly to contemporary discussions of organized crime, whether the subject is the mafia, cartels, or other criminal networks.
Best suited for: Organized Crime, Introduction to Criminology, White-Collar and Corporate Crime
8. Brubaker (1980)
Starring Robert Redford as a reform-minded warden who goes undercover as a prisoner to investigate conditions at a rural Arkansas prison, Brubaker is one of the most instructive films available on the realities of correctional administration, institutional resistance to reform, and the gap between official policy and daily practice. It raises questions about power, accountability, and the limits of what individuals can accomplish inside bureaucratic institutions, questions that remain as relevant today as when the film was made.
Best suited for: Corrections, Correctional Administration, Punishment, and Society
9. The Killing Fields (1984) and Hotel Rwanda (2004)
In general, these two films can be used interchangeably. The Killing Fields documents the Khmer Rouge genocide in Cambodia. Hotel Rwanda examines the 1994 Rwandan genocide and the international community’s failure to intervene. Both films push students to think beyond street crime and consider the most serious harms governments and political actors can commit. They also raise productive questions about bystander responsibility, international law, and the conditions under which ordinary people participate in extraordinary violence.
Best suited for: State Crime, Human Rights and Justice, Comparative Criminal Justice, Crimes of the Powerful
Final Thoughts
Admittedly, some of these films are now several decades old and lack the visual style of more contemporary cinema. Newer releases, however, rarely engage criminological and criminal justice themes with the same depth. With few exceptions, contemporary crime narratives are increasingly tropish in their portrayals of crime, criminality, and criminal justice organizations.
This means that instructors may need to prepare students for what they are about to watch. Why? Because they sometimes struggle with the pacing and visual style of older films. That’s understandable. A film from 1973, however, can depict police corruption in entirely current ways.
No film is perfect. They contain inaccuracies, stereotypes, or dramatic exaggerations. The goal of narrative films is not documentary accuracy. It’s to use film as a starting point for discussion, analysis, and critical thinking about crime and criminal justice.
What films do you use in your criminology or criminal justice classes? I’d be interested to hear what’s worked for you.
If you’re teaching or considering criminology or criminal justice and want to think more broadly about how the profession works, my Letters to a Young Criminologist was written for you.
Photo Credit
Title: Vintage Film Projector
Photographer: StockCake
https://jeffreyianross.com/wp-content/uploads/Screenshot-2026-06-19-at-9.48.41-AM.png7281306Jeffrey Ian Rosshttps://jeffreyianross.com/wp-content/uploads/jeffrey-ian-ross-logo-04.pngJeffrey Ian Ross2026-06-21 09:42:432026-06-21 12:33:36Eleven Films I use in my Criminology and Criminal Justice Classes
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 people.
It was maybe a month into the job. Business was slow; not many radio calls, street pickups had died down. A bunch of cabbies were parked in front of a bar on Queen East, hoping to take someone home who was calling it quits for the night.
I decided to join them.
Around midnight, when I was at the front of the queue, the bar door swung open and out stumbled a guy. He was about my height but maybe weighed 35 pounds more. Visibly drunk. Thick arms. Ruddy complexion. Missing a few teeth. His nose looked like it had been broken at least twice and hadn’t set right either time.
I could tell he was a brawler. The kind who didn’t give a fuck who he picked a fight with or whether he got knocked out cold at the end of it. He’d just get up and do it again the next night.
He might have been from Down East. Probably a Newfie.
He looked at me, swaying slightly, then stumbled toward my cab. I hadn’t yet learned to keep the doors locked until I was sure I wanted the passenger. He climbed into the back seat, closed the door, and slumped against it.
“Where to?”
He mumbled an address I couldn’t quite make out. I asked him to repeat it. He said something that might have been a street name or might have been him telling me to fuck off. Hard to say.
“Look, I need an address or I can’t take you.”
He said nothing. Just sat there, eyes half-closed.
“Hey. You need to give me an address or get out.”
I looked at him in the rearview mirror. He had that flat, mean stare drunks get when they’ve decided you’re the problem.
“Fuck you,” he said clearly.
I turned around in my seat.
“Yo. Get out of the car.”
There was a solitary police cruiser parked maybe twenty feet away, right in front of the bar. I could see the officers inside, drinking coffee, bullshitting with each other.
I got out of the cab and walked over to them. Tapped on the window. One of them rolled it down.
“I got a guy in my back seat who won’t get out. He’s drunk, won’t give me an address, and he’s refusing to leave. Can you help me?”
The cop looked at me.
Then looked past me at my cab. Then looked back at me.
The window rolled back up.
I stood there for a moment, watching them go back to their coffee and chit-chat. Then I walked back to my cab, opened the back door, and stood outside the car with some distance from the would-be passenger. The kind of guy who’d done this a hundred times before and didn’t care how it ended. I figured I’d wait him out. I stood there. Cars passed. Nobody looked twice.
Eventually, he growled something incoherent, crawled out of the cab, and predictably left the door open. When he was a good six feet from the taxi, I rushed into the cab, turned on the ignition, and drove a few car lengths ahead, stopped long enough to close the rear door, and then booked.
I drove. I replayed the cops’ faces. The dismissiveness. The indifference.
The Toronto police viewed cab drivers the same way they viewed the fares we transported. We were part of the ecosystem they patrolled, not separate from it. We weren’t people they felt obliged to help. We were the trash collectors.
Photo By Little Gamma Ray
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 a handful of independent meetings have occurred where scholars presented papers on graffiti and street art.
Unlike large annual meetings held in hotels or convention centers with multiple simultaneous sessions, these graffiti and street art conferences are typically smaller and last a couple of days.
Thus there are more opportunities for interaction among participants than with the larger conferences. Moreover, these meetings often include joint dinners and one or more graffiti and street art tours organized as part of the program.
Over the past two decades, scholars, including professors and graduate students, have presented papers at these gatherings. Occasionally, graffiti writers and street artists attend and present on their work too.
Four conferences have done so with some regularity. They are reviewed below.
NUART Plus
The NUART Plus scholarly conference grew out of the NUART street art festival in Stavanger, Norway. Founded in 2001 by Martyn Reed, NUART later expanded to Aberdeen, Scotland, where a related festival and NUART Plus program, with the assistance of Susan Hansen, were also developed. The symposium became one of the leading international forums for scholarly and critical discussion of street art, bringing together academics, artists, curators, journalists, and activists. NUART also publishes Nuart Journal, a peer-reviewed publication dedicated to street art research and criticism.
Although the Stavanger archive documents eight NUART Plus symposia between 2012 and 2019, earlier scholarly gatherings may have occurred. Following a pandemic-related interruption, NUART Plus returned to Aberdeen in 2022. As of June 2026, no publicly available information indicates that a future NUART Plus symposium has been scheduled.
TAG
The TAG Conference (“Name Writing in Public Space”) is one of the principal international scholarly gatherings devoted specifically to graffiti writing and tagging. Founded in 2017 by Javier Abarca and an evolving network of collaborators, the conference does not follow a fixed annual schedule. Meetings are organized periodically when a host institution and local organizing team are in place. Past conferences have been held in Amsterdam, Berlin, Cologne, Groningen, Hamburg, Linz, New York City, and Vienna, bringing together researchers, artists, writers, and practitioners to discuss the history, theory, and contemporary practice of name writing in public space. The conference has also generated scholarly publications, including edited volumes drawn from conference presentations. Recent sponsored Art & Place conferences also include graffiti and street art papers.
Art and the City
Founded in 2018 by Tijen Tunali, Art and the City is an interdisciplinary conference series exploring the relationships among art, aesthetics, and urban politics. The conference aims to facilitate dialogue and collaboration among scholars working at the intersections of art, culture, and the urban environment, and has served as a platform for broader scholarly projects, including exhibitions, special journal issues, edited books, and grant-funded research. Since its founding, conferences have been held in Aarhus, Amman, Göttingen, Nice, Nicosia, and Tours. More recently, Vittorio Parisi and Konstantinos Avramidis, both graffiti and street art scholars, have co-organized the most recent two editions of Art and the City with Tunali, bringing a stronger graffiti dimension to the program.
Unlike the TAG Conference and NUART Plus, which focus primarily on graffiti, street art, and related forms of urban visual expression, Art and the City takes a broader approach, encompassing urban art, public space, architecture, visual culture, and urban studies.
Urban Creativity
Since 2014, the Urban Creativity conference series has brought together scholars, artists, and practitioners interested in graffiti, street art, urban visual culture, and related subjects. Organized primarily through the efforts of Pedro Soares Neves and affiliated with the University of Lisbon and related institutions, the conference is typically held in Lisbon in late June or early July. Participants come from a range of disciplines and countries, and European scholars have generally been well represented. Presentations are delivered in person and, in some years, online as well.
The conference is part of a broader Urban Creativity research and publishing network overseen by Neves. Participants are often invited to submit revised versions of their papers to associated journals, edited volumes, and other publications devoted to graffiti, street art, and urban culture. Like Art and the City, Urban Creativity takes a wider view than the TAG Conference, encompassing street art, public art, urban interventions, creative cities, and related forms of artistic engagement with urban space.
Scholars wishing to present a paper at these conferences are best advised to periodically check the websites for each of these conferences, as schedules and locations can change. Reaching out directly to the organizers is also worth doing if you want to stay current or explore participation.
Combined, these events, like the recently established Routledge book series Advances in Graffiti and Street Art Research, contribute to the maturation of graffiti and street art scholarship.
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 classes. But every semester, I need to decide which movies to assign because not all films are equally useful. Some do a much better job of illustrating criminological concepts and stimulating discussion than others.
In general, I avoid documentaries. Although many are excellent, I find that students are more willing to engage with narrative films and more likely actually to watch them.
Depending on the course, I typically require students to watch three or four movies during the semester and devote at least some class time to discussing them.
Films also give a course something that readings rarely provide: a shared reference point. Many students don’t complete all of their assigned readings. A movie, however, is more likely to hold their attention and give everyone who shows up to class that day something concrete to discuss.
Before the rise of streaming services and online instruction, I owned a DVD collection of relevant movies and frequently screened them during class. Today, things are more complicated. Licensing restrictions, asynchronous instruction, and varying student access to streaming platforms can make screening films more challenging. Nevertheless, I continue to find that movies remain one of the most effective ways to increase student engagement with course material.
Not every film belongs in every course. The entries below reflect the classes where I have found each film most useful. Some appear on multiple syllabi; others fit a narrower set of topics. Instructors teaching different courses will naturally draw from this list differently.
Another caveat is in order. The following are not necessarily the “best crime movies” ever made. Rather, they are films I have found particularly effective in helping students understand important criminological and criminal justice issues.
The Films
1. Cop Land (1997)
Starring Sylvester Stallone, this movie remains an excellent introduction to police culture, corruption, loyalty, and accountability. The film explores the difficulties of challenging misconduct both from within and outside a law enforcement organization and raises important questions about the so-called “blue wall of silence.”
Best suited for: Introduction to Criminal Justice, Policing, Police Deviance and Corruption
2. The Shawshank Redemption (1994)
This film, starring Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman, raises issues surrounding wrongful conviction, institutional corruption, prisonization, and the psychological effects of long-term incarceration. The movie enables discussions about hope, adaptation, and what it means to maintain identity under conditions of total institutionalization.
Best suited for: Introduction to Criminal Justice, Corrections, Punishment, and Society
3. American Me (1992)
Directed by and starring Edward James Olmos, American Me traces gang involvement from adolescence through adulthood and imprisonment. The film illustrates how prison gangs emerge, maintain power, and shape criminal behavior both inside and outside correctional institutions. It also raises questions about race, identity, and the relationship between street organizations and prison culture that go beyond what most textbooks cover.
Best suited for: Gangs, Corrections, Race, and Crime
4. Dead Man Walking (1995)
This movie, starring Sean Penn and Susan Sarandon, explores the emotional impact of violent crime on victims’ families, questions of offender accountability, and the moral and legal controversies surrounding the death penalty, and the impact of people who want to assist those behind bars.
Best suited for: Corrections, Punishment and Society, Criminal Law, Introduction to Criminal Justice
5. Serpico (1973)
Based on the experiences of New York City police officer Frank Serpico, this film examines the challenges faced by whistleblowers within law enforcement. Starring Al Pacino, the movie remains one of the most powerful portrayals of how institutional loyalty can be weaponized against the people most committed to doing their jobs honestly.
Best suited for: Policing, Police Deviance and Corruption, Criminal Justice Ethics
6. American History X (1998)
This film examines radicalization, hate groups, violence, and the social factors that draw young people into extremist movements. Starring Edward Norton, it also provides one of the more nuanced portrayals of desistance available in popular film: the conditions under which people change, and the obstacles they face when they try to.
Best suited for: Criminological Theory, Gangs, Victimology, Introduction to Criminology
7. The Godfather (1972)
This film, which is over fifty years old, is about Italian-American organized crime and remains relevant. It does. The Godfather is still the most effective single film for introducing students to the structure, norms, internal discipline, and economic logic of criminal organizations. It illustrates concepts including hierarchy, loyalty, succession, and the relationship between legitimate and illegitimate enterprise, concepts that transfer directly to contemporary discussions of organized crime, whether the subject is the mafia, cartels, or other criminal networks.
Best suited for: Organized Crime, Introduction to Criminology, White-Collar and Corporate Crime
8. Brubaker (1980)
Starring Robert Redford as a reform-minded warden who goes undercover as a prisoner to investigate conditions at a rural Arkansas prison, Brubaker is one of the most instructive films available on the realities of correctional administration, institutional resistance to reform, and the gap between official policy and daily practice. It raises questions about power, accountability, and the limits of what individuals can accomplish inside bureaucratic institutions, questions that remain as relevant today as when the film was made.
Best suited for: Corrections, Correctional Administration, Punishment, and Society
9. The Killing Fields (1984) and Hotel Rwanda (2004)
In general, these two films can be used interchangeably. The Killing Fields documents the Khmer Rouge genocide in Cambodia. Hotel Rwanda examines the 1994 Rwandan genocide and the international community’s failure to intervene. Both films push students to think beyond street crime and consider the most serious harms governments and political actors can commit. They also raise productive questions about bystander responsibility, international law, and the conditions under which ordinary people participate in extraordinary violence.
Best suited for: State Crime, Human Rights and Justice, Comparative Criminal Justice, Crimes of the Powerful
Final Thoughts
Admittedly, some of these films are now several decades old and lack the visual style of more contemporary cinema. Newer releases, however, rarely engage criminological and criminal justice themes with the same depth. With few exceptions, contemporary crime narratives are increasingly tropish in their portrayals of crime, criminality, and criminal justice organizations.
This means that instructors may need to prepare students for what they are about to watch. Why? Because they sometimes struggle with the pacing and visual style of older films. That’s understandable. A film from 1973, however, can depict police corruption in entirely current ways.
No film is perfect. They contain inaccuracies, stereotypes, or dramatic exaggerations. The goal of narrative films is not documentary accuracy. It’s to use film as a starting point for discussion, analysis, and critical thinking about crime and criminal justice.
What films do you use in your criminology or criminal justice classes? I’d be interested to hear what’s worked for you.
If you’re teaching or considering criminology or criminal justice and want to think more broadly about how the profession works, my Letters to a Young Criminologist was written for you.
Photo Credit
Title: Vintage Film Projector
Photographer: StockCake