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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.
The Damaging Effects of International Perceptions of American Correctional Facilities on the United States
/by Jeffrey Ian RossIn our interconnected globalized world, no country operates in isolation. That’s why governments and their citizens outside the United States watch what happens within our borders, form impressions, and make decisions that can have both subtle and overt impacts on how they engage with us. One American policy area that’s frequently reviewed is the field […]
Gun buyback programs as symbolic politics
/by Jeffrey Ian RossRecently a number of jurisdictions in the United States have gained attention for implementing and championing the use of gun buyback programs. These crime reduction initiatives, which have been around since the 1970s, offer a nominal amount of money, gift certificates, or free tickets (to a sporting event or movie) to people willing to turn […]
Differentiating “talking to” from “talking with”
/by Jeffrey Ian RossI’m neither a linguist nor a semantician, and I make lots of mistakes with the English language. However, I firmly believe that the words and expressions we use should not only approximate what we mean, but should also be as precise as possible. Thus, I find myself intrigued (or rather, confused) when people use the […]