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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.
Why do some cities appear to have more graffiti and street art than others?
/by Jeffrey Ian RossCities and urban locations vary not only on their size, topography, the people who live, work, and visit there, the kinds of businesses they support, but on the types of structures that are built to enable the activities that occur in these locales. Most cities and urban locations also have considerable diversity in the types […]
Whose vacation is it anyways?
/by Jeffrey Ian RossSummer is here. It’s warm outside, many people think that COVID-19 has been beat, have cabin fever, disposable income, can take time off work, and want to travel and take a vacation. After the decision to travel has been made, then it’s time to make numerous choices about where to go, when to go, what […]
Misapplying appropriation, co-optation, commodification & fetishization
/by Jeffrey Ian RossThe recent social media discussion over the work and legacy of Frida Kahlo, while somewhat interesting and entertaining, is in many respects disappointing. Some criticism argues that, because Kahlo came from a privileged upper class family, was comparatively light-skinned, and was not purely indigenous, that she had minimal right to use the iconography, imagery, and […]