Join us on April 9 for our 2025 Innis Alumni Lecture, “Can ‘Ex-Cons’ Help Improve the Criminal Justice System?“, with Professor Jeffrey Ian Ross (BA ’85 Innis). The criminal justice system struggles with entrenched issues that demand a fundamental re-evaluation. What if we used the voices of well-educated formerly incarcerated individuals to drive meaningful reform? Drawing from the Convict Criminology perspective, which amplifies the voices of those who have lived experience, this talk will explore how CJS reform could be improved by incorporating their expertise.
After the lecture, Professor Scot Wortley from the Centre for Criminology & Sociolegal Studies will join to moderate the discussion and Q&A.
Innis Town Hall, 2 Sussex Ave
Register for this free event below
Jeffrey Ian Ross, Ph.D. is a Professor in the School of Criminal Justice, College of Public Affairs, and a Research Fellow in the Center for International and Comparative Law, and the Schaefer Center for Public Policy at the University of Baltimore. He has been a Visiting Professor at Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Germany, and University of Padua, Italy.
Ross has researched, written, and lectured primarily on corrections, policing, political crime, state crime, crimes of the powerful, violence, street culture and crime and justice in American Indian communities for over two decades. His work has appeared in many academic journals and books, as well as popular media. He is the author, co-author, editor, or co-editor of several books including most recently, Introduction to Convict Criminology (2024).
Ross is a respected subject matter expert for local, regional, national and international news media. He has made live appearances on CNN, CNBC, Fox News Network, MSNBC, and NBC. Additionally Ross has written op-eds for The (Baltimore) Sun, the Baltimore Examiner, The (Maryland) Daily Record, The Gazette, The Hill, Inside Higher Ed, and The Tampa Tribune.
From 1995-1998, Ross was a Social Science Analyst with the National Institute of Justice, a division of the U.S. Department of Justice. In 2003, he was awarded the University of Baltimore’s Distinguished Chair in Research Award. Ross is the co-founder of Convict Criminology, and the former co-chair/chair of the Division of Critical Criminology and Social Justice (2014-2017) of the American Society of Criminology. In 2018, Ross was given the Hans W. Mattick Award, “for an individual who has made a distinguished contribution to the field of Criminology & Criminal Justice practice,” from the University of Illinois at Chicago. In 2020, he received the John Howard Award from the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences’ Division of Corrections. The award is the ACJS Corrections Section’s most prestigious award, and was given because of his “outstanding research and service to the field of corrections.” In 2020, he was honored with the John Keith Irwin Distinguished Professor Award from the ASC Division of Convict Criminology. During the early 1980s, Jeff worked for almost four years in a correctional institution.
Dr. Wortley has been a Professor at the Centre of Criminology and Sociolegal Studies, University of Toronto since 1996. His academic career began in 1993 as a researcher with the Commission on Systemic Racism in the Ontario Criminal Justice System. Over the past twenty-five years Professor Wortley has conducted numerous studies on various issues including youth violence and victimization, street gangs, illegal firearms, crime prevention programming, public perceptions of the police and criminal courts, and racial disparity within the Canadian criminal justice system. In 2007, he was appointed by Metropolis to the position of National Priority Leader for research on Immigration, Justice, Policing and Security. Professor Wortley has also served as Research Director for several government commissions including the Ontario Government’s Roots of Youth Violence Inquiry. In 2017 Professor Wortley worked with Ontario’s Anti-Racism Directorate to develop standards and guidelines for the collection and dissemination of race-based data within the public sector. Professor Wortley has recently led two major investigation into possible racial bias within policing for both the Nova Scotia and Ontario Human Rights Commissions. He, along with Professor Akwasi Owusu-Bempah, is currently heading an investigation into racial bias within the Toronto Transit Commission and an investigation into police use of force in Canada.