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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.
Won’t you be my mentor? Understanding the challenges of finding an appropriate graduate school mentor
/by Jeffrey Ian RossIf you are or were a graduate student, you may know or learned that your studies and career in academia would be best supported by an appropriate mentor. Ideally, this individual is a professor in the department and university in which you have enrolled to pursue your graduate school studies, and this particular scenario will […]
How can researchers improve street ethnographies?
/by Jeffrey Ian RossOver the past century, a considerable amount of ethnographic research has been conducted and published. Ethnographies are no longer the primary research technique of anthropologists, as other types of social scientists, and students and scholars of business, law, and technology are also doing this kind of work too. Moreover, there are numerous types of ethnography […]
What’s in a name? Exconvict, formerly incarcerated, or returning citizen?
/by Jeffrey Ian RossIn the field of corrections, there are lots of labels, names, and terms (many that I dislike) that the public frequently applies to people who are housed in, live in, and are processed by jails and prison. These terms are frequently used in a simplistic and dehumanizing manner. Take for example, the word offender. I […]