Professor Emeritus
Professor Emeritus John J. Sloan III joined the Department of Criminal Justice at UAB in 1988 after earning his B.S. and M.S. in criminal justice from Eastern Michigan University and a Ph.D. in sociology from Purdue University. While there, he was awarded a National Institute of Justice (NIJ) Graduate Research Fellowship to support his dissertation research on the role of prosecutorial and judicial discretion in the processing of felony cases in Detroit in the late 1980s. During his 27 years at UAB, Professor Sloan served multiple terms as program director for two graduate programs, as Interim Chair (2002-2003), and as Chair (2003-2014) of the department. He earned the inaugural President’s Award for Excellence in Teaching in 1998 (and for which he was subsequently nominated multiple times), and was runner-up for the 2014 Ellen Gregg Ingalls/UAB National Alumni Society Award for Lifetime Achievement in Teaching. He also taught in the University Honors Program. In 2011, he co-founded the UAB Center for Cybersecurity and served as its Associate Director (2011-2013) and Director (2013-2014). He then served on the steering committee that created the UAB Institute for Human Rights in 2014 and on its faculty advisory board; he is now a Senior Scientist in the Social Science and Justice initiative there. Partnering with the Department of Computer and Information Sciences, Professor Sloan also developed new master’s and bachelor’s degree programs in computer forensics. He also partnered with Jefferson State Community College to create the “3-degrees-in-5-years” program which allows students to earn an associate, bachelor’s, and master’s degree in criminal justice in five years.
Professor Sloan is a nationally recognized expert on crime and security issues on college campuses, the campus police, and police basic training, with dozens of interview credits ranging from local Birmingham media to Alabama Public Television, as well as Chicago Public Radio, National Public Radio, Fox and Friends, CBS and NBC Evening News broadcasts, and the BBC World News. Along with Prof. Bonnie Fisher at the University of Cincinnati and with funding from the National Institute of Justice, in 1994 he conducted the first-ever national-level survey of the victimization experiences of students while in college. That project became the foundation for a series of subsequent efforts spearheaded by Prof. Fisher and others that resulted in large scale change in the measurement of sexual victimization.
Professor Sloan is author or co-author of well over 100 scholarly articles, book chapters, research reports, and professional presentations, has procured nearly $4 million in extramural funding from such sources as the National Science Foundation, National Institute of Justice, Bureau of Justice Assistance, and Office of Community Oriented Policing Services, and been an expert witness in sentencing policy litigation in federal court. He’s also author or co-author of 10 books, including Campus Crime: Legal, Social and Policy Perspectives (now in its fourth edition with Charles C. Thomas, Ltd.), The Dark Side of the Ivory Tower (Cambridge University Press) and textbooks in criminal justice ethics (Oxford University Press) and criminal justice policy (Carolina Academic Press). His textbook Introduction to Victimology (with Bonnie Fisher and Brad Reyns) earned the 2018 Robert Jerin Book Award from the Division of Victimology, American Society of Criminology. His most recent books are Cops on Campus: Rethinking Safety and Confronting Police Violence with the University of Washington Press and Criminal Justice Ethics: A Framework for Analysis (2nd edition) forthcoming with Cognella publishing.