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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.
Urban Street Ethnography Interruptus
/by Jeffrey Ian RossEvery semester, for almost a decade, I close out the term, by giving my undergraduate students, enrolled in my Contemporary Criminal Justice System class, the option of conducting a very basic urban street ethnography. Almost all of my students have graduated from a two year program in Criminal Justice from a local community college. Some […]
Prison Tropes “R” Us: Why it’s so damn hard to reform correctional facilities in the United States and what can we do change this state of affairs
/by Jeffrey Ian RossLots of things are standing in the way of reforming correctional facilities, the controversial practices that occur inside them, and the people who work there. This is not because we haven’t accumulated a respectable amount of peer-reviewed research that provides advice on all manner of ways to improve jails and prisons. And it’s not simply […]
Bring on the enablers: Why are so many Republicans still making illogical arguments against the impeachment of Trump by the Senate?
/by Jeffrey Ian RossYou have seen and heard them, the familiar faces of the Republican Party; Cruz, Gaetz, Jordan, Rubio and the rest of the so-called Freedom Caucus. They are the same politicians who argued in Congress, and in front of the American people, to reject the results of the electoral college. Despite the fact that their actions […]