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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 preferring individual social science disciplines is a bad practice: Two cheers for interdisciplinary approaches
/by Jeffrey Ian RossThe social science fields, more specifically the academic departments in which they are located, the ones I know best, are funky beasts. Although there is a demand for scholars who work in a specific area to do interesting research, there is also often a blind loyalty to hiring candidates who have graduated in the social […]
Be mindful of the “lived experience fallacy” and its cousin, “those who are closest to the problem are in the best position to change it”
/by Jeffrey Ian RossOccasionally I hear and see the comment (also known as approach, axiom, principle, and statement), often in activist circles, that although somebody may be considered an expert on a subject (e.g., poverty, discrimination, criminal victimization, etc.), because they don’t have lived (or direct) experience of something (e.g., a problem, situation, series of events, persons, etc.), […]
Contextualizing the publication of my ROUTLEDGE HANDBOOK OF STREET CULTURE
/by Jeffrey Ian RossDespite its 2021 publication date, almost four months have passed since my Routledge Handbook of Street Culture was released. Thus now is probably as a good a time as any to reflect on the goals and process connected to this project. What is Street Culture? In you want a definition, street culture refers to “the […]