Creative work isn’t just about generating ideas; it’s about knowing which ones to keep and which ones to discard. Similar to what happens in artisanal butcher shops, most ideas don’t survive the grinder. Over the past year, Ross Industries put its provisional blog posts through that process week after week; trimming excess, cutting away what didn’t work, and refining what remained until only the strongest pieces made it to the showcase. What follows are the ten blog posts that resonated most across the various platforms on which this blog appears.
Vincenzo Ruggiero was a respected criminologist, influential scholar of political crime and penal abolitionism, and a generous colleague whose rigorous, provocative work shaped the field and deeply influenced my own scholarship. Beyond academia, his generosity and warmth were evident in years of shared conversations, meals, and memorable moments at conferences and time spent together in Tuscany. His passing represents a profound loss to criminology and criminal justice, and to the many colleagues, friends, his wife, and daughter whose lives he enriched through his intellect, humanity, and quiet wit.
It has been three decades since Controlling State Crime was published. The book aimed to redirect scholarly attention away from merely identifying state crimes toward the more complex challenge of how to deter, prevent, and control them. While the field has grown—particularly around resistance and crimes of the powerful—I argue that effective control remains the central, unresolved challenge. The anniversary offered an opportunity to revisit these arguments in light of contemporary political developments that make the book’s core questions very urgent.
Because the academic study of graffiti and street art is highly interdisciplinary, lacks dedicated programs, and has no formal home within major scholarly societies, researchers in the field often work in isolation. Since January 2023, John L. Lennon, PhD (University of South Florida), has addressed this gap by organizing a monthly Zoom-based Graffiti and Street Art Group. Scholars from around the world and at all career stages share research, discuss publications, and foster collaborations. Topics vary widely, participants have contributed to special journal issues, and the meet-up has built a sustaining community for an otherwise fragmented field.
My university students are increasingly worried as the Trump administration moves from rhetoric to dismantling federal agencies, programs, and cutting grants, leading to layoffs and the elimination of programs that underpin higher education, raising real fears about the future of the Department of Education and university education. The loss of DOE funding jeopardizes student aid and the stability of public colleges and universities. It also undermines the global competitiveness and prestige of American higher education. Students, faculty, and parents need to be civically engaged. This includes staying informed, advocating, supporting institutions, and voting, because political decisions have concrete consequences and passivity only deepens powerlessness.
During the June 2025 protests in Los Angeles, there was a noticeable increase in anti-ICE graffiti. This activity is part of the city’s long-standing tradition of graffiti and a recurring feature of contemporary political dissent. Concentrated around federal buildings and downtown infrastructure, the largely text-based and confrontational graffiti targeted ICE, President Trump, and local authorities, transforming urban space into a charged visual landscape of resistance. Rather than mere defacement, this work serves as an early-stage form of visual politics, documenting anger, solidarity, and temporary redefinitions of power in public space.
Despite producing scholarship in the field of corrections, I’ve never been comfortable with the term. While it was intended to humanize punishment, it ultimately obscures the realities of incarceration. The system is effective at punishment but largely fails at public safety, deterrence, and rehabilitation, making the idea that people are being “corrected” misleading. I continue to use the term pragmatically—as a widely understood shorthand—while urging readers to remain critical of what the word conceals, especially in a society where crimes of the powerful often go unpunished.
Decades of political rhetoric, media portrayals, and popular culture—now reinforced by Trump’s proposed and enacted policies—have unfairly demonized American inner cities as inherently dangerous. This narrative has fueled suburbanization, weakened urban tax bases, and justified policies that deepen inequality while ignoring structural causes. Such stereotypes oversimplify reality, overlook vibrant and diverse urban communities, and obscure comparable problems in suburban and rural areas. They demand sustained challenge and a more nuanced understanding of city life.
Despite significant investment in prison education, outcomes vary widely because research remains fragmented, methodologically weak, and rarely comparable across programs or countries. I propose creating a global database of correctional education programs and outcomes to identify what works, what doesn’t, and why. Beginning with crowdsourced data and expanding through institutional support, such a platform could replace anecdote with rigor, improve policy decisions, and significantly strengthen rehabilitation efforts worldwide.
This piece argues, somewhat humorously, that academic criminologists are difficult to shop for. They receive free books, are exhausted by true crime, and live with constant tension between theory and practice. Meaningful gifts, I suggest, should acknowledge these contradictions: signed classic texts, police ride-alongs, prison tours led by formerly incarcerated guides, or conference memorabilia that gently pokes fun at academic life. The post concludes with a warning against all true-crime gifts—most criminologists want a break from thinking about crime.
Trump’s second-term rhetoric and policies targeting free speech and DEI initiatives have intensified pressures on U.S. higher education, prompting some scholars to consider leaving for Canada or Europe. But emigrating is far more complex than media narratives suggest. This post outlines major obstacles, including language barriers, immigration hurdles, lower salaries, unfamiliar academic cultures, weak job markets (especially in the humanities), and entrenched local networks that disadvantage outsiders. Overseas academic jobs can be appealing, but they are scarce, competitive, and unstable—realities academics should weigh carefully before uprooting careers and families.
Most ideas at Ross Industries never make it this far. They get cut, trimmed, or sent back through the grinder. The posts above did what creative work must ultimately do: they held up once stripped of excess. As the year ahead takes shape, the process continues. In short, I will be focusing on what’s worth keeping and what should be discarded.
(No animals were harmed in the writing of this blog post.)
Photo Credit
Title: Alfa Modern manual meat grinder
https://jeffreyianross.com/wp-content/uploads/Screenshot-2025-12-26-at-1.22.13-PM-scaled.png12902560Jeffrey Ian Rosshttps://jeffreyianross.com/wp-content/uploads/jeffrey-ian-ross-logo-04.pngJeffrey Ian Ross2025-12-28 05:26:522025-12-28 05:34:52What Survived The Grinder This Year
The COVID pandemic accelerated the adoption of different classroom modalities. One of the most popular was the rise of asynchronous classes. They offered flexibility, reduced commuting, and made it easier for students with jobs or family obligations to complete their degrees. As long as the work was submitted on time, the model largely functioned.
But Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) has negatively affected the core assumptions that made this model viable: that submitted work reflects a student’s independent thinking. In asynchronous courses, it has become increasingly difficult to distinguish between students’ original work and that created by ChatGPT or other AI programs.
This issue is not primarily a cheating problem. It is a challenge to assess students’ work and their learning adequately. When AI can reliably produce summaries, reflections, and even passable analyses, written assignments lose much of their value as evidence of understanding. When students can simply go to AI and ask it for answers to quizzes, multiple-choice exams, etc., then little learning occurs.
The issue is especially pronounced in content-heavy courses, where instructors want students to understand specific ideas, concepts, or theories. Students may still be engaging with the material, but instructors can no longer be confident that the work they are grading demonstrates understanding and mastery of the subject matter.
Some instructors who teach asynchronous classes have modified the way they assess students’ learning by asking them to write assignments or essays that connect the course content to personal experience. That approach can limit AI use, but it does not work well when instructors want their students to master disciplinary content rather than reflection. Others have experimented with AI-permitted assignments, reframing coursework around prompting or critique. These strategies may be pedagogically interesting, but they do not solve the basic problem of evaluating individual learning in asynchronous environments.
The most reliable alternatives (e.g., oral exams, in-class tests, etc.) reintroduce exactly what asynchronous students thought they were avoiding. They also raise equity concerns for students who live out of state, overseas, or whose schedules make real-time participation difficult.
Higher education now faces a difficult tradeoff. Asynchronous courses expanded access and flexibility, but AI has exposed how weak their assessment models really are. Instructors and the educational institutions they work for will eventually have to choose between preserving convenience and enabling meaningful evaluation of learning. The future of asynchronous education isn’t its elimination, but its use will probably be more limited.
Illustration:
Title: Architecture of a generative AI agent
Creator: Marxav
https://jeffreyianross.com/wp-content/uploads/GenAI_Agent.png480744Jeffrey Ian Rosshttps://jeffreyianross.com/wp-content/uploads/jeffrey-ian-ross-logo-04.pngJeffrey Ian Ross2025-12-21 13:42:522025-12-21 13:42:52How AI Has Negatively Affected Asynchronous Learning
The holidays are fast approaching, and with them the annual tradition of buying gifts. Deciding what to purchase for the criminologist in your life can be challenging. As instructors, supervisors, mentors, colleagues, spouses, relatives, and friends, they are often a difficult lot to please.
They already get free books from publishers (mostly texts), and they are deeply tired of true crime. Although some of these suggestions may be more labor-intensive to secure than others, here are a few ideas beyond another Amazon gift card.
A Signed First Edition of Their Favorite Classic Book on Crime
Get them a book written by Cohen, Merton, or Young. Get it signed if you can. Watch them spend the next ASC conference casually showing it off to their homies at the hotel bar. They will be genuinely touched by the lengths you went to secure it, by what it signals about their respect for the canon, and how impressed they think their colleagues will be.
A Ring Doorbell System
Because they study and/or teach about crime all day but frequently live in gated communities or the leafy suburbs, they are probably concerned about package theft. They will present papers on mass incarceration at the morning panel, then check their phone during lunch to see whether that alert was the neighbor’s cat or an actual threat to their property.
Arrange a Police Ride-Along
It’s probably been years since they did a ride-along with the local police department, if they ever did one at all. They talk about “the streets” in classes, cite ethnographies about corner boys, and assign Code of the Street every semester. But the closest they get to the streets these days is taking their dog for a walk, or driving to campus or Whole Foods.
A Prison Tour With Someone Who Is Formerly Incarcerated
Not a warden. Not a “corrections professional.” Someone who did time and can explain what actually happens versus what they have come to believe from reading academic research.
A Framed Map with dots on the locations of the ASC Conferences They Attended
Atlanta four times. Philadelphia three times. Washington twice. They have seen the inside of more Marriott ballrooms than any human should. This gift says: I recognize that you have technically been to lots of major American cities.
A physical copy of Wilson & Kelling’s 1982 Broken Windows Article
They teach it every semester in their Crime and Public Policy seminar. They have relied on summaries for years. But now they might be finally motivated to read the piece without admitting they have never read the original in its entirety.
A Consultation With Someone Who Actually Reduced Crime
Not another academic. Not someone with a theory. Someone who ran a program that worked and has the data to prove it. Watch your criminologist carefully explain why it does not count: there was no randomization, the effect size is too small, or it is not generalizable. They need to be right more than they need solutions. This gift will remind them of that.
What Not to Buy
Anything true-crime related. No documentaries. No podcasts. No theories about who really did it. By the end of the fall semester, academic criminologists are probably tired. They just want to finish grading poorly written term papers and exams, and forget what they do to earn a living for a few weeks.
Photo
Title: Small Gift Boxes
Photographer: Thomas Sienicki
https://jeffreyianross.com/wp-content/uploads/Prezenty_EXP_096_ubt.jpg15072313Jeffrey Ian Rosshttps://jeffreyianross.com/wp-content/uploads/jeffrey-ian-ross-logo-04.pngJeffrey Ian Ross2025-12-14 16:23:362025-12-14 22:44:08What Should You Buy The Academic Criminologist in Your Life?
What Survived The Grinder This Year
/by Jeffrey Ian RossCreative work isn’t just about generating ideas; it’s about knowing which ones to keep and which ones to discard. Similar to what happens in artisanal butcher shops, most ideas don’t survive the grinder. Over the past year, Ross Industries put its provisional blog posts through that process week after week; trimming excess, cutting away what didn’t work, and refining what remained until only the strongest pieces made it to the showcase. What follows are the ten blog posts that resonated most across the various platforms on which this blog appears.
10. Good Food, Great Wine, and Unforgettable Conversations: A Tribute to Vincenzo Ruggiero (1951–2024)
Vincenzo Ruggiero was a respected criminologist, influential scholar of political crime and penal abolitionism, and a generous colleague whose rigorous, provocative work shaped the field and deeply influenced my own scholarship. Beyond academia, his generosity and warmth were evident in years of shared conversations, meals, and memorable moments at conferences and time spent together in Tuscany. His passing represents a profound loss to criminology and criminal justice, and to the many colleagues, friends, his wife, and daughter whose lives he enriched through his intellect, humanity, and quiet wit.
9. Reflections on the 30th Anniversary of CONTROLLING STATE CRIME
It has been three decades since Controlling State Crime was published. The book aimed to redirect scholarly attention away from merely identifying state crimes toward the more complex challenge of how to deter, prevent, and control them. While the field has grown—particularly around resistance and crimes of the powerful—I argue that effective control remains the central, unresolved challenge. The anniversary offered an opportunity to revisit these arguments in light of contemporary political developments that make the book’s core questions very urgent.
8. How a Monthly Meet-Up of Graffiti and Street Art Scholars Builds Community
Because the academic study of graffiti and street art is highly interdisciplinary, lacks dedicated programs, and has no formal home within major scholarly societies, researchers in the field often work in isolation. Since January 2023, John L. Lennon, PhD (University of South Florida), has addressed this gap by organizing a monthly Zoom-based Graffiti and Street Art Group. Scholars from around the world and at all career stages share research, discuss publications, and foster collaborations. Topics vary widely, participants have contributed to special journal issues, and the meet-up has built a sustaining community for an otherwise fragmented field.
7. My Students Are Afraid, and They Have Good Reason
My university students are increasingly worried as the Trump administration moves from rhetoric to dismantling federal agencies, programs, and cutting grants, leading to layoffs and the elimination of programs that underpin higher education, raising real fears about the future of the Department of Education and university education. The loss of DOE funding jeopardizes student aid and the stability of public colleges and universities. It also undermines the global competitiveness and prestige of American higher education. Students, faculty, and parents need to be civically engaged. This includes staying informed, advocating, supporting institutions, and voting, because political decisions have concrete consequences and passivity only deepens powerlessness.
6. Reflections on Graffiti From The LA Anti-ICE Protests
During the June 2025 protests in Los Angeles, there was a noticeable increase in anti-ICE graffiti. This activity is part of the city’s long-standing tradition of graffiti and a recurring feature of contemporary political dissent. Concentrated around federal buildings and downtown infrastructure, the largely text-based and confrontational graffiti targeted ICE, President Trump, and local authorities, transforming urban space into a charged visual landscape of resistance. Rather than mere defacement, this work serves as an early-stage form of visual politics, documenting anger, solidarity, and temporary redefinitions of power in public space.
5. Why I Use the Word “Corrections” (Even Though It Makes Me Uneasy)
Despite producing scholarship in the field of corrections, I’ve never been comfortable with the term. While it was intended to humanize punishment, it ultimately obscures the realities of incarceration. The system is effective at punishment but largely fails at public safety, deterrence, and rehabilitation, making the idea that people are being “corrected” misleading. I continue to use the term pragmatically—as a widely understood shorthand—while urging readers to remain critical of what the word conceals, especially in a society where crimes of the powerful often go unpunished.
4. The Never-Ending Demonization of the American Inner City
Decades of political rhetoric, media portrayals, and popular culture—now reinforced by Trump’s proposed and enacted policies—have unfairly demonized American inner cities as inherently dangerous. This narrative has fueled suburbanization, weakened urban tax bases, and justified policies that deepen inequality while ignoring structural causes. Such stereotypes oversimplify reality, overlook vibrant and diverse urban communities, and obscure comparable problems in suburban and rural areas. They demand sustained challenge and a more nuanced understanding of city life.
3. How a Global Database on Prison Education Could Improve Rehabilitation
Despite significant investment in prison education, outcomes vary widely because research remains fragmented, methodologically weak, and rarely comparable across programs or countries. I propose creating a global database of correctional education programs and outcomes to identify what works, what doesn’t, and why. Beginning with crowdsourced data and expanding through institutional support, such a platform could replace anecdote with rigor, improve policy decisions, and significantly strengthen rehabilitation efforts worldwide.
2. What Should You Buy the Academic Criminologist in Your Life
This piece argues, somewhat humorously, that academic criminologists are difficult to shop for. They receive free books, are exhausted by true crime, and live with constant tension between theory and practice. Meaningful gifts, I suggest, should acknowledge these contradictions: signed classic texts, police ride-alongs, prison tours led by formerly incarcerated guides, or conference memorabilia that gently pokes fun at academic life. The post concludes with a warning against all true-crime gifts—most criminologists want a break from thinking about crime.
1. Sobering Thoughts on Academics Considering Leaving the United States
Trump’s second-term rhetoric and policies targeting free speech and DEI initiatives have intensified pressures on U.S. higher education, prompting some scholars to consider leaving for Canada or Europe. But emigrating is far more complex than media narratives suggest. This post outlines major obstacles, including language barriers, immigration hurdles, lower salaries, unfamiliar academic cultures, weak job markets (especially in the humanities), and entrenched local networks that disadvantage outsiders. Overseas academic jobs can be appealing, but they are scarce, competitive, and unstable—realities academics should weigh carefully before uprooting careers and families.
Most ideas at Ross Industries never make it this far. They get cut, trimmed, or sent back through the grinder. The posts above did what creative work must ultimately do: they held up once stripped of excess. As the year ahead takes shape, the process continues. In short, I will be focusing on what’s worth keeping and what should be discarded.
(No animals were harmed in the writing of this blog post.)
Photo Credit
Title: Alfa Modern manual meat grinder
How AI Has Negatively Affected Asynchronous Learning
/by Jeffrey Ian RossThe COVID pandemic accelerated the adoption of different classroom modalities. One of the most popular was the rise of asynchronous classes. They offered flexibility, reduced commuting, and made it easier for students with jobs or family obligations to complete their degrees. As long as the work was submitted on time, the model largely functioned.
But Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) has negatively affected the core assumptions that made this model viable: that submitted work reflects a student’s independent thinking. In asynchronous courses, it has become increasingly difficult to distinguish between students’ original work and that created by ChatGPT or other AI programs.
This issue is not primarily a cheating problem. It is a challenge to assess students’ work and their learning adequately. When AI can reliably produce summaries, reflections, and even passable analyses, written assignments lose much of their value as evidence of understanding. When students can simply go to AI and ask it for answers to quizzes, multiple-choice exams, etc., then little learning occurs.
The issue is especially pronounced in content-heavy courses, where instructors want students to understand specific ideas, concepts, or theories. Students may still be engaging with the material, but instructors can no longer be confident that the work they are grading demonstrates understanding and mastery of the subject matter.
Some instructors who teach asynchronous classes have modified the way they assess students’ learning by asking them to write assignments or essays that connect the course content to personal experience. That approach can limit AI use, but it does not work well when instructors want their students to master disciplinary content rather than reflection. Others have experimented with AI-permitted assignments, reframing coursework around prompting or critique. These strategies may be pedagogically interesting, but they do not solve the basic problem of evaluating individual learning in asynchronous environments.
The most reliable alternatives (e.g., oral exams, in-class tests, etc.) reintroduce exactly what asynchronous students thought they were avoiding. They also raise equity concerns for students who live out of state, overseas, or whose schedules make real-time participation difficult.
Higher education now faces a difficult tradeoff. Asynchronous courses expanded access and flexibility, but AI has exposed how weak their assessment models really are. Instructors and the educational institutions they work for will eventually have to choose between preserving convenience and enabling meaningful evaluation of learning. The future of asynchronous education isn’t its elimination, but its use will probably be more limited.
Illustration:
Title: Architecture of a generative AI agent
Creator: Marxav
What Should You Buy The Academic Criminologist in Your Life?
/by Jeffrey Ian RossThe holidays are fast approaching, and with them the annual tradition of buying gifts. Deciding what to purchase for the criminologist in your life can be challenging. As instructors, supervisors, mentors, colleagues, spouses, relatives, and friends, they are often a difficult lot to please.
They already get free books from publishers (mostly texts), and they are deeply tired of true crime. Although some of these suggestions may be more labor-intensive to secure than others, here are a few ideas beyond another Amazon gift card.
A Signed First Edition of Their Favorite Classic Book on Crime
Get them a book written by Cohen, Merton, or Young. Get it signed if you can. Watch them spend the next ASC conference casually showing it off to their homies at the hotel bar. They will be genuinely touched by the lengths you went to secure it, by what it signals about their respect for the canon, and how impressed they think their colleagues will be.
A Ring Doorbell System
Because they study and/or teach about crime all day but frequently live in gated communities or the leafy suburbs, they are probably concerned about package theft. They will present papers on mass incarceration at the morning panel, then check their phone during lunch to see whether that alert was the neighbor’s cat or an actual threat to their property.
Arrange a Police Ride-Along
It’s probably been years since they did a ride-along with the local police department, if they ever did one at all. They talk about “the streets” in classes, cite ethnographies about corner boys, and assign Code of the Street every semester. But the closest they get to the streets these days is taking their dog for a walk, or driving to campus or Whole Foods.
A Prison Tour With Someone Who Is Formerly Incarcerated
Not a warden. Not a “corrections professional.” Someone who did time and can explain what actually happens versus what they have come to believe from reading academic research.
A Framed Map with dots on the locations of the ASC Conferences They Attended
Atlanta four times. Philadelphia three times. Washington twice. They have seen the inside of more Marriott ballrooms than any human should. This gift says: I recognize that you have technically been to lots of major American cities.
A physical copy of Wilson & Kelling’s 1982 Broken Windows Article
They teach it every semester in their Crime and Public Policy seminar. They have relied on summaries for years. But now they might be finally motivated to read the piece without admitting they have never read the original in its entirety.
A Consultation With Someone Who Actually Reduced Crime
Not another academic. Not someone with a theory. Someone who ran a program that worked and has the data to prove it. Watch your criminologist carefully explain why it does not count: there was no randomization, the effect size is too small, or it is not generalizable. They need to be right more than they need solutions. This gift will remind them of that.
What Not to Buy
Anything true-crime related. No documentaries. No podcasts. No theories about who really did it. By the end of the fall semester, academic criminologists are probably tired. They just want to finish grading poorly written term papers and exams, and forget what they do to earn a living for a few weeks.
Photo
Title: Small Gift Boxes
Photographer: Thomas Sienicki