Every Picture Tells a Story: Framing and Understanding the Activism of Convict Criminology

Authors

  • Jeffrey Ian Ross University of Baltimore
  • Grant Tietjen University of Washington - Tacoma

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18192/jpp.v33i1.7020

Abstract

Convict Criminology (CC) consists of three major initiatives. Although scholarship and mentoring have been dominant activities, understanding the activism/policymaking of CC is less well known. This paper reviews the primary United States based activities that CC has done in this area and suggests what it needs to do to assist the interests of individuals who arebehind bars and those who are formerly incarcerated, as well as work towards the mission of the CC organization as a whole. Some of the areas where CC has participated politically include the news-making we have done (i.e. interviews with the news media) and the periodic statements released on social media by the American Society of Criminology’s Division of Convict Criminology. This paper will also consider the notion of praxis as applied to CC, in that some members consider their research, public speaking, and mentorship to be political actions worthy to be considered political activity.

Author Biographies

Jeffrey Ian Ross, University of Baltimore

Jeffrey Ian Ross, PhD is a Professor in the School of Criminal Justice, College of Public Aff airs, 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-Universitä t Bochum in Germany and the University of Padua in Italy. Professor Ross has researched, written, and lectured primarily on corrections, policing, political crime, state crime, crimes of the powerful, violence, street culture, as well as crime and justice in American Indian communities for over two decades. His work has appeared in many academic journals and books, including most recently the Routledge Handbook of Street Culture (2021) and Convict Criminology for the Future (2021). 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. Professor 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 fi eld 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 fi eld 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.

Grant Tietjen, University of Washington - Tacoma

Grant E. Tietjen, PhD is an Associate Professor in the Criminal Justice Program at the School of Social Work and Criminal Justice at the University of Washington – Tacoma (UWT). He earned his PhD from the Department of Sociology at the University of Nebraska – Lincoln (UNL) in 2013. Dr. Tietjen has written, researched, and lectured on convict criminology, mass incarceration, class inequality, criminological theory, and pathways to correctional/postcorrectional education. He has published in multiple peer reviewed papers in journals and edited volumes, including most recently in Humanity and Society, Social Justice: A Journal of Crime, Conflict & World Order, and Criminal Justice Studies. He is the author of Justice Lessons: The Rise of the System Aff ect Academic Movement, with the University of California Press, slated for publication in 2024. Dr. Tietjen works closely with multiple System Affected Academic organizations, including Huskies Post Prison Pathways (HP3) at UWT and the Division Convict Criminology (DCC) in the American Society of Criminology (ASC). HP3 is a support program for formerly-incarcerated students. As part of UWT HP3, he is a member of the Steering Committee for this growing initiative. He has also been involved with the CC discipline since 2005, mentoring new CC members, and serving as the group’s Co-Chair from 2017-2019. During this time, Tietjen has worked with many other dedicated CC members to strengthen the CC organization. In 2020, he was appointed as the inaugural Chair of the newly formed American Society of Criminology Division of Convict Criminology, and currently serves as DCC Vice-Chair. Dr. Tietjen can be reached for questions at grantt5@uw.edu.

Downloads

Published

2023-11-16

Issue

Vol. 33 No. 1 (2024): Marking the 25th Anniversary of Convict Criminology

Section

ARTICLES