Education
Ph.D., Criminology, CUNY Graduate Center (2015)
MPhil, Criminology, CUNY Graduate Center (2014)
MA, Criminal Justice (Policing), John Jay College of Criminal Justice (2010)
BS, Criminal Justice, John Jay College of Criminal Justice (2010)
Bio
Dr. Jennifer Ortiz is an Assistant Professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. Her research centers on structural violence within the criminal legal system. She is editor of the volume Critical and Intersectional Gang Studies. Dr. Ortiz's research has been published in The Prison Journal, Corrections: Policy, Practice, and Research, Feminist Criminology, Criminal Justice Review, and The International Journal of Rural Criminology.
In addition to her scholarship, Dr. Ortiz maintains a firm commitment to civil service and community activism. She previously served as an executive board member for Mission Behind Bars and Beyond, a Kentucky based non-profit reentry organization. Dr. Ortiz also served a three-year term as President of the New Albany, Indiana Human Rights Commission.
Courses Taught
LLS 120: Race, Criminal Justice, and Latinx Communities
LLS 325: Latinx Experiences in Criminal Justice
LLS 341: Immigrants' Rights in the Americas
Scholarly Work
Ortiz, J. (2026). If There’s No Causal Model, It's Just Activism: An Autoethnographic Reflection on Criminology’s Rejection of the Scholarvist Model. Feminist Criminology.
Ortiz, J., Tietjen, G., & Kavish, D. (2026). Convict Criminology. In K.D. Haggerty & L. Presser’s (Eds.) The Oxford Handbook of Contemporary Critical and Cultural Criminology. Oxford University Press.
Ortiz, J. (2025). A radical vision of prison abolition. In A. Walker & A. Wodda’s (Eds.) Abolition & Queer Justice. University of California Press.
Skipper, H. & Ortiz, J. (2024). Conceptualizing peer support to mitigate the rural-urban divide. International Journal of Rural Criminology, 8 (4): 538-562.
Ortiz, J. (2023) Beyond the ivory tower: The need for collective activism in Convict Criminology. Journal of Prisoners on Prisons. 30(1): 76-86.
Ortiz, J. (2023). The Future of Convict Criminology. Journal of Prisoners on Prisons. 30(1): 157-160.
Ortiz, J., Cox, A., Kavish, D., & Tietjen, G. (2022). Let the Convicts Speak: A Critical Conversation of the Ongoing Language Debate in Convict Criminology. Criminal Justice Review, 35(3): 255-273.
Ortiz, J. & Wrigley, K. (2022). The invisible enclosure: How community supervision inhibits successful reentry. Corrections: Policy, Practice, and Research, 7(3): 230-245.
Ortiz, J. (2021). Doxa is dangerous: How academic doxa inhibits prison gang research. In R.J. Gude & D. Brotherton (Eds.) International Critical Gang Handbook (p. 624-632). New York, NY: Routledge.
Ortiz, J. & Jackey, H. (2021). Educational and skill-based prison programming. In Brent, J. & Gould, L. (Eds). Routledge Handbook on American Prisons (pp.261-270). New York, NY: Routledge.
Ortiz, J. & Jackey, H. (2019). The system is not broken, it is intentional: The prisoner reentry industry as deliberate structural violence. The Prison Journal, 99 (4): 484-503.
Honors and Awards
2024 Critical Criminology Praxis Award (ASC Division of Critical Criminology & Social Justice)
2023 Outstanding Article of the Year- (American Society of Criminology-DCC)
2021 Early Career Award (ASC- Division of Convict Criminology)
2020 Outstanding Article of the Year (ASC- Division of Convict Criminology)