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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.











Enabling new ways of using urban pubic space during the COVID-19 pandemic
/by Jeffrey Ian RossShortly after the spring COVID-19 lockdown, my neighborhood in Washington DC resembled a ghost town. Bars, restaurants, and other retail stores started shutting down, while businesses, government offices, public libraries, schools, and parks were temporarily closed. At night it was eerie. The silence was punctuated by occasional sounds of ambulances or fire truck sirens taking […]
Trump gets COVID-19 and the world goes crazy
/by Jeffrey Ian RossThis past week we learned that not only did Hope Hicks, President Donald Trump’s former trusted advisor contract COVID-19, but so did Trump and many of the people whom he closely associated with during a recent Rose Garden ceremony. Predictably lots of people from the drunk at the end of the bar, to the army […]
Rebel without a clause: The trouble with copyright and trademarks in connection with graffiti and street art
/by Jeffrey Ian RossLast week, Banksy, the elusive British street artist, or more specifically Pest Control, the company that represents him, lost a trademark case in the European Union Intellectual Property Office. They argued that because Pest Control had not used the image that Banksy created in order to generate income, during a specific period in time, then […]