EXPERTISE
Criminal Law
International Law
Death Penalty
Wrongful Convictions
Political Science
FACULTY PROFILE
Professor Vincent R. Jones, Sr. is a highly accomplished professor, advocate, and legal scholar. Before leaving the practice of law and becoming a professor, Professor Jones began was as an attorney with the United States Securities & Exchange Commission in Chicago. He then worked for several years as a national trial lawyer, and was the lead trial attorney on several high profile cases. As a sought after public speaker, he has lectured nationally and internationally in such places as Paris, London, Singapore, Belgium, Morocco, Italy, Brazil, Miami, and Los Angeles, on such topics as wrongful convictions, death penalty law and administration, international human rights, human trafficking, and terrorism.
Professor Jones teaches courses at the doctoral, graduate, and undergraduate levels. His signature courses, many of which he created for Governors State University are: The Death Penalty in America, Understanding Terrorism, Examining Human Trafficking, Transnational Crime, Wrongful Convictions, Race, Class, Comparative International Criminal Justice Systems, International Peace Initiatives and Gender in Criminal Justice.
Professor Jones is an advocate for international human rights, the abolition of capital punishment, criminal justice reform, social justice advocacy, and solving the problem of wrongful convictions.
His teaching philosophy is to meet students where they are and help them find the best academic versions of themselves through active instruction, engaging information, and timely topics. He emphasizes exposure to more than the traditional class room and has taken or facilitated students exploring Paris, Belgium, London, Italy, Washington D.C. and New York. He is a firm believer that travel is an important form of developmental education.
SELECTED WORKS
The Problem with Capital Punishment and Why it Should be Abolished in America, Vincent R. Jones, (2024) Lexington Books, Lanham Maryland.
The Global Rise of Child Soldiers: Why we all should be concerned, Vincent R. Jones, Bruce Wilson, Shirlyn Garrett,(2023) Journal of Namibian Studies, 36 S2 (2023) 963-972, ISSN: 2197-5523 (Online).
The Death Penalty in Focus: A Special Topics Anthology, Vincent R. Jones, James Coldren, (2011) Cognella Publishing, San Diego, CA.
Rebalancing The Scales: Examining Wrongful Convictions, Vincent R. Jones, Bruce Wilson (2016) Cognella Publishing, Custom Edition, San Diego, CA.
Innocence and Its Impact on the Reassessment of the Utility of Capital Punishment: Has the Time Come to Abolish the Ultimate Sanction? Vincent R. Jones, Bruce Wilson, (2013) University of Miami Law Review, volume 67, number 2, University of Miami School of Law.