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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.
Portlandia Redux: How using uninvited federal LEOs to police public protest will backfire
/by Jeffrey Ian RossPortlandia, a satirical television series, makes fun of Portland’s often eccentric hipster community. It is fiction. But the deployment of heavily armed federal law enforcement officers (LEOs), coordinated by the Department of Homeland Security, many without organizational identification and dressed in military fatigues, is not. Though allegedly dispatched to protect federal property such as monuments […]
The time to act to stop the spread of COVID-19 in our nations’ correctional facilities is now
/by Jeffrey Ian RossThe United States now has the highest number of people who have contracted COVID-19, and the greatest number who have died as a result of it. But the distribution of people who have been affected is not even. Some people and settings are more vulnerable than others. Since the United States has the highest incarceration […]
If our essential workers are so important, why aren’t we properly protecting them?
/by Jeffrey Ian RossNo one can forget that we’re in a middle of a global pandemic. Despite the lack of cohesive federal policy, and the fact that our leaders flip flop on whether businesses and schools should open or close, we should wear masks or not, most rational, sane, and financially solvent people stay home as much as […]