Dr. Jill Harrison

Dr. Jill Hume Harrison is a Professor of Sociology at Rhode Island College. She holds a B.A. from Wells College, an M.A. from George Mason University, and a Ph.D. from the University of New Hampshire. Her research focuses on the intersection between mental health and crime. Her work has been published in several journals, including Women in Criminal Justice, International Review of Modern Sociology, Corrections Compendium, Contemporary Issues of Criminology in the Social Sciences, International Journal of Crime, Criminal Justice and the Law, and Sage Research Methods. In her most recent work, she interviewed high risk inmates to examine the relationship between trauma and recidivism. For over 7 years, she led a meditation program for inmates at the Adult Correctional Institutions of Rhode Island and continues to offer on-site programming and classes to inmates and correctional staff. She also served on the drug prevention coalition in Jamestown, RI and currently serves on the town’s juvenile hearing board. She is also a court appointed special advocate for children under state care. In her book, Writing for the Criminal Justice System (Springer 2017), the focus is on formal writing skills and cultural competency across many platforms within the criminal justice spectrum, from law enforcement incident reports to grant writing. Her most recent book, Critical Thinking: Developing the Intellectual Tools for Social Justice (Routledge 2020) engages critical thinking techniques as tools for social and economic justice. She peer reviews journal articles for the Community Mental Health Journal and the Journal for Offender Rehabilitation.

Since 2015, Dr. Harrison has offered graduate and undergraduate students an international service learning course focused on the issue of food security at two orphanage sites in Ecuador and Belize where parents of these children are often incarcerated due to drug trafficking, drug use, child abuse, and domestic violence. She has presented research on these projects at the International Technology, Development and Innovation Conference in Valencia, Spain in 2016-2018 and has published research on incarcerated women in Ecuador in the journal Sociologists Without Borders."

Dr. Harrison teaches courses in the B.A. and M.A. programs in justice studies and sociology. She encourages students to apply their knowledge in the discipline through writing, interviewing, such as "Promoting Restorative Justice in Law Enforcement" and writing their own book, Guardians of Justice, in the Justice Studies Senior Seminar. She currently serves as the director of the undergraduate justice studies program.

Listen to student testimonials from their international service learning experience here.