Chapter 1
Crime, Justice, and Media
Chapter Objectives
After reading Chapter 1, students should:
1. understand the importance of the relationship between media, crime, and criminal
justice
2. appreciate how criminal justice policy is impacted by the media
3. know the history of crime-and-justice media
4. understand the basic differences between the types of media
5. understand how different media content is related to media crime-and-justice portraits
Chapter Outline
I. Media and Criminal Justice: A Forced Marriage
A. Why we study crime, justice, and the media
1. Crime and justice provides a substantial portion of the media’s raw material
2. Popular crime and justice stories are framed, packaged, and marketed
3. Media portraits of crime and justice influence public perceptions of:
i. What behaviors should be criminalized
ii. Who should be punished
iii. What the punishment should be
, iv. How police, judges, attorneys, correctional officers, criminals, and
victims should act
4. Contemporary technology compounds media influences
i. Technologies such as PDAs, cable television and satellite networks,
VCRs, the Internet, electronic games, virtual reality devices, mobile
communications devices, and social media platforms create faster and
broader access
ii. Have created a hyperactive media environment
1. New, high-speed media world dominated by entertainment value
and visual images
5. Effect of crime and justice in the media on policy
i. Examples:
1. Uncle Tom’s Cabin influenced slavery laws (mid-1800s)
2. I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang affected U.U. correctional
practices (depression era)
3. The Silence of the Lambs influenced serial killer threat policies
(1980s)
A. Media-rendered portraits often drive crime-and-justice practices
1. Memorial criminal justice policies (see Box 1.1)
i. Named for individuals who are usually innocent victims of heinous
crimes
ii. Result from massive publicity
1. Examples:
a. Megan’s Law
b. Amber Alerts
2. “Three Strikes and You’re Out” legislation
i. The cooption of the kidnapping and murder of Polly Klaas
3. Much of criminal justice policy exists because of high profile crimes being co-
opted as campaign symbols
, 4. Local criminal justice issues tend to spawn broad-based policy responses
i. Contemporary media often cover local crime through a national lens
1. Raises some newsworthy crimes to national prominence
2. Media portrays local crime as beyond the ability and resources
of local criminal justice agencies
3. Solutions to crime painted as sensible are always given a
punitive federal orientation
5. A secondary reason for studying the media, crime, and justice is public worries
most about a set of more visible concerns
i. Examples:
1. Media-orientated terrorist events
2. Copycat crime
3. Coverage of media trials
4. Media-linked social violence
ii. The criminal justice policies we support and pursue due to the media
ultimately affect these issues as well
6. Media ultimately influences how tax dollars are spent
i. Determines how we react to crime
1. Determined by what is visual, newsworthy, entertaining, and
salable
a. Criminal justice policy has become a national political
issue
b. Crime has become another media commodity
II. The Blurring of Fact and Fiction
A. Everyone is wedded to media through one or more of the following:
1. Internet
2. Television
3. Movies
, 4. Music
5. Video games
6. Multi-purpose new media devices
B. Media provide the broadly shared, common knowledge in our society independent of
occupation, education, and social status
C. Media knowledge is generally perceived as less important and more transient but
more entertaining and enjoyable
D. Technological progress is broadening media’s reach
1. Concerns have grown about:
i. Direct criminogenic media effects on:
1. Copycat crime
2. Media-oriented terrorism
ii. The reality the media create unduly influencing the public’s view of
reality
E. The snapshots of reality the media present provide the public a dramatic but reshaped
and marketed narrow slice of the world.
1. Public awareness of the unrealistic and heavily edited nature of media content
does not deter the public from being influenced
2. Media influence is particularly strong where alternate sources of information
are less available
3. Media-generated perception of crime-and-justice reality is exploited by both
the media and criminal justice policy makers
F. Looping
1. Results when events and information are repeatedly cycled and recycled
through the media into the culture to reemerge in new contexts in differing
media
i. Example: police car chase video cycles from courtroom evidence, to
local news footage, to infotainment program content, to a clip inserted
in a comedy movie, to Internet sites
Crime, Justice, and Media
Chapter Objectives
After reading Chapter 1, students should:
1. understand the importance of the relationship between media, crime, and criminal
justice
2. appreciate how criminal justice policy is impacted by the media
3. know the history of crime-and-justice media
4. understand the basic differences between the types of media
5. understand how different media content is related to media crime-and-justice portraits
Chapter Outline
I. Media and Criminal Justice: A Forced Marriage
A. Why we study crime, justice, and the media
1. Crime and justice provides a substantial portion of the media’s raw material
2. Popular crime and justice stories are framed, packaged, and marketed
3. Media portraits of crime and justice influence public perceptions of:
i. What behaviors should be criminalized
ii. Who should be punished
iii. What the punishment should be
, iv. How police, judges, attorneys, correctional officers, criminals, and
victims should act
4. Contemporary technology compounds media influences
i. Technologies such as PDAs, cable television and satellite networks,
VCRs, the Internet, electronic games, virtual reality devices, mobile
communications devices, and social media platforms create faster and
broader access
ii. Have created a hyperactive media environment
1. New, high-speed media world dominated by entertainment value
and visual images
5. Effect of crime and justice in the media on policy
i. Examples:
1. Uncle Tom’s Cabin influenced slavery laws (mid-1800s)
2. I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang affected U.U. correctional
practices (depression era)
3. The Silence of the Lambs influenced serial killer threat policies
(1980s)
A. Media-rendered portraits often drive crime-and-justice practices
1. Memorial criminal justice policies (see Box 1.1)
i. Named for individuals who are usually innocent victims of heinous
crimes
ii. Result from massive publicity
1. Examples:
a. Megan’s Law
b. Amber Alerts
2. “Three Strikes and You’re Out” legislation
i. The cooption of the kidnapping and murder of Polly Klaas
3. Much of criminal justice policy exists because of high profile crimes being co-
opted as campaign symbols
, 4. Local criminal justice issues tend to spawn broad-based policy responses
i. Contemporary media often cover local crime through a national lens
1. Raises some newsworthy crimes to national prominence
2. Media portrays local crime as beyond the ability and resources
of local criminal justice agencies
3. Solutions to crime painted as sensible are always given a
punitive federal orientation
5. A secondary reason for studying the media, crime, and justice is public worries
most about a set of more visible concerns
i. Examples:
1. Media-orientated terrorist events
2. Copycat crime
3. Coverage of media trials
4. Media-linked social violence
ii. The criminal justice policies we support and pursue due to the media
ultimately affect these issues as well
6. Media ultimately influences how tax dollars are spent
i. Determines how we react to crime
1. Determined by what is visual, newsworthy, entertaining, and
salable
a. Criminal justice policy has become a national political
issue
b. Crime has become another media commodity
II. The Blurring of Fact and Fiction
A. Everyone is wedded to media through one or more of the following:
1. Internet
2. Television
3. Movies
, 4. Music
5. Video games
6. Multi-purpose new media devices
B. Media provide the broadly shared, common knowledge in our society independent of
occupation, education, and social status
C. Media knowledge is generally perceived as less important and more transient but
more entertaining and enjoyable
D. Technological progress is broadening media’s reach
1. Concerns have grown about:
i. Direct criminogenic media effects on:
1. Copycat crime
2. Media-oriented terrorism
ii. The reality the media create unduly influencing the public’s view of
reality
E. The snapshots of reality the media present provide the public a dramatic but reshaped
and marketed narrow slice of the world.
1. Public awareness of the unrealistic and heavily edited nature of media content
does not deter the public from being influenced
2. Media influence is particularly strong where alternate sources of information
are less available
3. Media-generated perception of crime-and-justice reality is exploited by both
the media and criminal justice policy makers
F. Looping
1. Results when events and information are repeatedly cycled and recycled
through the media into the culture to reemerge in new contexts in differing
media
i. Example: police car chase video cycles from courtroom evidence, to
local news footage, to infotainment program content, to a clip inserted
in a comedy movie, to Internet sites
