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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.











Accessing the lived experience of others
/by Jeffrey Ian RossLived experience can be an excellent data source for scholarly research and career development. In particular, lived experiences can provide anecdotal evidence and inspiration for hypotheses that investigators may want to empirically test using different research techniques. It may also motivate and drive scholars’ passion to conduct research regarding a particular topic. That being said, […]
Reconceptualizing jobs, trades, professions and careers as a series of projects and experiments
/by Jeffrey Ian RossJobs, trades, professions and careers typically provide tangible (e.g., economic) and intangible benefits. But this approach to earning an income often comes with a considerable amount of unstated, unarticulated, unrealistic, poorly articulated and understood baggage. This baggage includes the numerous challenges and sacrifices that one must make to complete a course of studies, earn a […]
Blog posts I share with my incoming undergraduate criminology/criminal justice students
/by Jeffrey Ian RossAs the new semester begins, I often struggle with selecting content that I want my undergraduate criminology/criminal justice students to read. In addition to a core textbook and a handful of articles and book chapters, I share five blog posts with them. The first one, “What do gym memberships and higher education have in common?” […]