Crime, Justice and the Media: a Reader

The Oxford Handbook of Criminology, 2012

Victims, Crime and Society, 2007

The news media are a defining feature of the crime and justice landscape. Especially today in a globalised context of hyper-mediatisation and high crime consciousness, news media representations are key indicators of the nature and extent of crime, the appropriateness and efficacy of criminal justice, and the wider state of the nation. Yet serious attention to news media within criminology has historically been patchy and recently appears alarmingly to have dropped off the radar. This chapter discusses the major theoretical issues and debates that have shaped what might loosely be termed news media criminology in Britain. It identifies key interventions, situating them both theoretically and chronologically in order to document the development of the field. What becomes apparent is just how few of the definitive interventions have come from within criminology. From its origins in the 1960s, the field of news media criminology was characterised by prolific and engaged research and a voracious interdisciplinarity that cut across the emerging areas of critical criminology, sociology of mass communications, media studies and cultural studies. Today, only research on content abounds and, as criminology has made the transition from field to discipline, that original enthusiasm for interdisciplinarity has been replaced with disciplinisation and selfreferentialism.

papers.ssrn.com

This article aims to demonstrate that, despite their potential for cultivating communitarianism and deliberative democracy on a large scale, the mass media contribute decisively to the formation of punitiveness amongst the public by means of selective semiotic aestheticisation. They overstate the problem of crime; put the blame on marginalised cohorts and level heavy criticism against the administration of prisons purportedly for laxity; issue urgent calls for ever-greater reliance on the use of strict imprisonment by the authorities and the adoption of self-policing measures by local communities and private individuals; and either mute or neutralise the attendant hardships prisoners suffer at the hands of the state. Breaking with discourses of rational linearity, whereby distorted perceptions of criminal danger result in punitive reactions, the claim is made that the imagery of crime and punishment helps audiences resolve at the level of symbolic expression contradictions which remain unconsciously insoluble at the level of everyday life.

2016

The Caribbean has been experiencing a crime problem for some time, which dates back even before the 1980s. As a result of the crime problem, a conference was held in 2001 to address the causes, consequences, challenges and the way forward and this was aided by the World Bank which sponsored a study to examine crime and poverty. The crime pandemic has resulted in heightened fear of victimization in the region, much so that people are afraid to report threats. Although the media provides an account and makes the cases of crimes to the general public, they oftentimes disregard individual and collective security in the pursuit of reporting the information. Within the context of the crime problem experienced in many Caribbean societies, particularly Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago and Barbados, the media play increases the fear factor as in their desire to report and inform people of crimes who make it difficult for the individual as well as the society. The aim of this study is to explore,...

The Howard Journal of Criminal Justice, 2009

2022

This investigation assumes that the media can reduce or spread criminal activities and tendencies based on how the concerned parties apply the policies and community standards that guide these platforms’ use. In total, 254 materials were gathered across several search systems between October 2021 and September 2022. Qualitative data were used from the selected materials to synthesise and summarise the content on the examined 21st-century events and media’s influence on crime. It is not possible to reject the premise that the media influences opinions on crime and the legal system. Nevertheless, the data reveals that no causal media effect can be directly established. However, the same data uncovers how media portrays an activity affects how people perceive it. Advances in technology, media, and criminology may have affected the analysis of records, including the time and quality of resources. More accurate and fair media coverage of crime would lead to a more informed and aware population. On the other hand, media houses that promote and reward good behaviour should be applauded. These two steps ensure the media cannot be ignored when assessing crime and how the public perceives it, as it can encourage crime and shift perceptions. Therefore, further research, stricter laws and policies, and community education on crime prevention and media screening are needed. The fact that unfavourable media coverage of crime can ruin a business, either directly or indirectly (consumer behaviour changes due to crime), makes this paper of utmost importance for businessmen, politicians, and local agencies.

International Review of Law, Computers & Technology, 2008

The gap between actual crime trends and public perceptions has cast a shadow over criminal policy since it became apparent -with the downturn in crime -in the mid-1990s. Neither the fall in crime nor the fact that this has gone unnoticed by the public is unique to this country. There are also other areas of social policy where public beliefs are out of step with reality. However, the 'perception gap' in relation to crime and punishment is especially large, and the distortions thus caused to crime politics are particularly serious. This is an important report and Ipsos MORI is to be congratulated for producing it. It brings together the key evidence to paint a picture of the nature and causes of these gaps -and it presents some serious challenges for the Government and the criminal justice system.

in the Routledge Handbook of European Criminology, 2013