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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.
Do the signs of our time work?
/by Jeffrey Ian RossIf you live in an urban, suburban or even exurban environment you will encounter a number of signs. Signs may be so pervasive like the ones that are placed in subway cars or they may be intermittent, such as those placed beside interstate highways. Although signs are part of the visual landscape, most people ignore […]
Does where scholars live affect the subjects they choose to investigate?
/by Jeffrey Ian RossWhat motivates academics to choose certain topics, fields, issues, and questions for intense study? Numerous factors are typically at play here. Although serendipity may be an important motivation, in some cases the place where and circumstances under which a scholar grew up may affect investigators choice of research question to ask, answer or explore. Thus […]
Making the case for the creation a national Correctional Officer Integrity Database
/by Jeffrey Ian RossOver the past decade numerous incidents of police use of excessive and deadly force and deaths of unarmed citizens under questionable circumstances have captured the attention of the news media, politicians, experts, activists, and the general public. In many cases, when the news media and police oversight bodies look into the employment backgrounds of the […]