James B. Jacobs

James Barrett Jacobs (born 1947) is the Warren E. Burger Professor of Constitutional Law and the Courts at New York University School of Law, where he has been a faculty member since 1982. He is a specialist in criminal law, criminal procedure and criminal justice.

Jacobs was born in 1947 in Mt. Vernon, New York. He attended public school in Mt. Vernon. He earned his BA (1969) at Johns Hopkins University, where he majored in sociology and minored in Russian. After completing basic training (U.S. Army Reserves), he spent most of 1970 in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union as a Thomas J. Watson Fellow.

In the fall of 1970, Jacobs began study at the University of Chicago Law School. During the summer of 1971 he served as a research assistant for the eminent criminal law professor Norval Morris. Professor Morris enjoyed a close relationship with the Illinois Director of Corrections, Peter Bensinger, and arranged for Jacobs to spend his 1972 summer doing research at Stateville Penitentiary in Joliet, Illinois. Jacobs’ research, focusing on how several large Chicago-based street gangs operated within the prison, resulted in "Street Gangs Behind Bars", published in the sociology journal Social Problems in 1973. "Gangs Behind Bars" was the first scholarly article to deal with gangs in prison and launched Jacobs' career as a criminologist.

After graduating magna cum laude from University of Chicago School of Law in June 1973, Jacobs became a full-time PhD student in the University of Chicago’s Department of Sociology. The renowned sociologist Morris Janowitz was the chair of his PhD. committee. Under Janowitz’ guidance, the gangs in prison research grew into a dissertation (PhD 1975) and a book, Stateville: The Penitentiary in Mass Society, now regarded as a classic in American penology.

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