Jesse Self
Expertise
Carceral supervision, mass incarceration, mass deportation, state sexual violence against women, immigration and criminal legal policy.
Education
PhD University of Chicago, Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy, and Practice (2025)
MA University of Chicago, Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy, and Practice (2015)
BAIS, Social Work and Interdisciplinary Studies, Northeastern Illinois University (2013)
Background
Dr. Jesse Self is an assistant professor of Justice Studies at NEIU. As a socio-legal scholar, his work focuses on parallels in how individuals and their families experience legal marginalization across the criminal legal and immigration systems.
He earned his PhD from the University of Chicago’s Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy, and Practice. His dissertation, Beyond Bars: Examining the Hidden Consequences of Carceral Expansion into Family Homes, examines how carceral supervision (parole, probation, and electronic home monitoring) creates various forms of violence against supervised individuals and their co-residing family members.
Dr. Self's research and teaching draw from various fields in the social sciences, including law and society, sociology, criminology, and social work. In the classroom, he encourages students to explore how shared experiences of criminalization and punishment reveal broader patterns of power, inequality, and social control.
He enjoys mentoring students on independent research project or offering guidance when they need help refining their ideas or deciding on a career path. When not at NEIU, he’s often reading or writing in a coffee shop, at the gym, or relaxing at home with his wife and three cats.