Peoples Knowledge on Crime and Criminal Justice - Essay Example

Impact of Media reporting on people’s knowledge on crime and criminal justice Name: Institution: Date: Impact of Media reporting on people’s knowledge on crime and criminal justice Introduction The word ‘crime’ conjures up images of rape, drug abuse, murder, terrorism, drug trafficking, aggravated assault, armed robbery, arson or similar acts. This kind of presentations has been perfected in the media. Criminality and crime is socially constructed and the public perception on criminality is formed from the representations of the media. The media has an active duty and obligation of sensitizing and educating the public about crime and justice system. However, in many circumstances, the representations in the media has always been skewed towards a certain direction and therefore, making the public come up with misconceptions (Altheide, 2009). This paper explores the distortions that are represented in everyday media reporting and the impact it has on public knowledge in regard to criminal justice and crime responses. Fear of crime, formulation of policies, and general response to crime has been misled or directed by media representations. Western society is intrigued with justice and crime. From Books, films, television, newspapers, magazines, to normal talk, people engage in crime “talk”. The mass media has big role to play in the creation of criminality as well as criminal justice system. The perception of the public concerning the criminals, victims, law enforcement officials, deviants is largely shaped by the manner in which they are painted in the mass media. Research has demonstrated that majority of knowledge concerning crime and justice is obtained from the media since few people can access the crime scene. Consequently is it important to assess the effects that the mass media have on attitudes toward justice and crime. There is no denying that public knowledge concerning justice and crime is to a large extent obtained from the media. The perception of who can legitimately claim victim status is hugely influenced by social divisions including race, class, gender, ethnicity, sexuality, and age, remains point of debate and contention. The debates are inflected and framed largely in the news media. The media has been focusing for a long time on the most serious cases of crime and victimization, disturbing images of violently and frequently sexual interpersonal offending (Gies, 2003). Ostensibly, lower-level property offences that contribute to the significant majority of recorded crime, and corporate and white-collar offences that place a big financial and social burden on society are given scarce attention and altogether ignored. The mass media pursuit of violent crime is overly selective. Media representations demonstrate the criminal victimization of people perceived as strangers as opposed to the intimacies of family or domestic conflict. When the public perception of gangs remains inaccurate, policies formulated to address the gang situation from this perception will most likely fail (Beale, 2006). When the perception of gangs in America is that most members are mostly Africa-Americans, then the tragedies happing in Asian, Hispanic, Samoan, Russian, and other ethnic enclaves in cities will be overlooked. When the perception is that gang members are normally male, then policies needed to assist female stay outside gangs are overlooked. Policy formulation has been skewed towards violent crime as opposed to white-collar crimes which form the bulk of recorded crime. These misconceptions have been constructed by the presentations in the media. The media has the capacity of persuading people to take and endorse notions concerning the legal systems that founded on misconceptions, prejudice or false facts. By design or convince the public to accept the distorted perspective of the media. The fundamental question is whether all kinds of media presentations are a reality that is distorted or whether the media has the capacity to accurately portray the law. Representations and information become distorted when they are presented in a way that is misleading and inconsistent with what was on the ground. The relationship between crime and media representations depends on the characteristics of the audience and the message (Bohm & Walker, 2006). Presentations of huge amounts of local crime news has the danger of increasing fear among the general public and their perception about crime rate in the society. Contrary, presentation of huge amounts of non-local news has an opposite effect of making the local viewers to have a safe feeling in comparing with other parts of the world. It has been established that national and local news are related to fear of crime. The impact of local news on fear of crime is more evident in high crime areas and those which have experienced victimization. The audiences’ effects will be determined by who is viewing the crime reports. Looking at the attention coming from criminologists, public fear of crime was considered as a trivial consequence of crime in the history of criminology. Little attention was given to fear of crime in the 19-century but the attitude changed in the 20th century. It is important to explore media representations of crime critically because over the decades, victims have taken unprecedented priority in the media and criminal justice discourses; in crime policy development, and in popular imagination. Foregrounding of crime victims in representation in the media is one of the most important qualitative changes in media reporting of crime and crime control since the World War II (Surette, 2007). It is perturbing to note that not all the victims of crime get equal attention in the news media. In isolated cases, intense media coverage may be focused on victims who can be later discredited on the basis, for instance, a criminal, promiscuous or else questionable past. In many circumstances, media resources are given to the representation of those victims perceived as ‘ideal’ in the eye of the media. One source of confusion when it comes to definition of fear of crime happens when investigators equate fear of crime the perception of the risk of victimization. On the other hand, there are adequate reasons to believe that perceived risk is a proximate case of fear as opposed to the fear itself. There is corroborating evidence that measures of perceived risk and measures of fear do not measure the same phenomenon and do not behave in the same manner with regard to other variables. Fear of crime may be precipitated by an immediate danger, for instance, when a person is confronted by an armed robber or is verbally threatened (Halton & McCann, 2004). This kind of intensity and immediate experience is what people have in mind when they talk of fear of crime. Humans are symbolic and sentient beings who have the ability of contemplating or anticipating events that lie in the future or not immediately apparent. The media dramas and stories are often presented or written to highlight these aspects and present a simplified, distorted picture of offenders being immoral, violent, uncaring and a threat to harmony and security. On other hand, victims are portrayed as vulnerable and needing protection. Normality is shown as ordered and safe while criminality is shown as alien to the stereotypical normality. Criminologists have to dig deeper and consider the grey and complex. Life is not that simple. Bias in media representations on the type of crime regarded worth reporting has a long history. There is an over-emphasis on crimes with violence (Simon, 2007). Most recently was the shooting in Connecticut in a college where about 16 people were killed. This crime was a major headline for many media houses for some time. This over-emphasis has been established in researches that are over three decades old. In many cases fear of crime influence more people in America than crime itself, and there are concrete reasons for treating fear of crime and crime as very different social challenges. This follows the perception that the media has painted about crime and criminality. Criminal events and scenes capture the attention of the public than any other event can occasion. Crimes receive more emphasis in media and capture the front headlines. This is very evident in news coverage, television dramas, and crime fiction. Even without the focus by the media, crimes are intrinsically fascinating events (Altheide, 2009). Criminal events are also frightening events and therefore capturing attention. In many circumstances, the media over-represent sexual and violent crime. 46% of reports in the media are about sexual or violent crimes. Rapists have been represented as ‘psychopathic strangers’ while most rapists are actually known to their victim. The law and media are closely linked in a number of ways. In the first place, media is a chief subject of legal discourse. Lawyers, policy makers, and judges are constantly engaged in the regulation of different forms of media such as television, radio, and the internet. Regulation of media is an important legal issue and many attempts have been instituted to come up with rules restricting media content and decide who has control on media production. Moreover, media and law are connected through communications in the media concerning law and legal events. In most circumstances, the media exaggerate the risks of victimization-particularly to women, white, and middle class people. Crime is also represented as a series of separate events; wider structures are conjured up without focusing on the causes of the incident. It is common for the media to overplay dramatic crimes and underplay ordinary crimes. There are a lot of distortions that are represented in the media that affect the people perception about crime and criminal justice responses. Media paint victims and criminals as more middle class and older than the real picture in the criminal justice system. There are people from the upper class who have committed heinous acts. Distorted crime news coverage shows that news is a social construction and media will try as much as possible to come up with news that sells (Bohm & Walker, 2006). The media is the sole or chief source of legal information, and besides, the audiences are not in position to resist the influences of media in formulation of opinions about law. In the society, the media is a source of legal information through advertisements on law firms, news paper article on any legal event, or a reality courtroom programme. Law is visible through media representations of justice and crime. The connection between the law and media is strengthened by the fact that both are present in everyday life experiences. These distortions works to persuade public knowledge of crime and criminal justice responses but the real picture about the burden of crime in the society is overlooked at the expense of important projects and formulation of sound policies. Conclusion From the discussion in this paper, it can be accurately concluded that distorted picture of crimes represented in the media has a great impact on the public knowledge crime and criminal justice responses. Victims in crime have been given foregrounding coverage and the real perpetrators of crime left out. Misconceptions about the composition of criminal gangs have led to formulation of policies that do not help in bringing down the crime rate. Fear of crime has been of greater magnitude in cases where crime rate is high or individuals have had a previous experience. This is accentuated by the reporting in the local news. Reporting of crime in non-local news makes people to feel safe in the neighborhood. The impact of media representation influence on the people’s knowledge on criminal justice and crime responses cannot be overlooked. Knowledge of criminality by the public has been drawn from media representations. References Altheide, D. (2009). Moral Panic: From sociological concept to public discourse, Crime, Media, Culture: An International Journal 5(1): 79-99. Beale, S.S. (2006). The News Media’s influences on criminal justice policy: How to make market-driven news promotes Punitiveness, William and Mary Law Review 48 (2): 397-481. Bohm, R. & Walker, J. Eds, (2006). Demystifying crime and criminal justice, Los Angeles: Roxbury. Gies, L. (2003). Explaining the Absence of the Media in Stories of Law and Legal Consciousness, Entertainment Law 2(1): 19-54. Halton, W. & McCann, M. (2004). Distorting the Law: Politics, Media, and the Litigation Crisis. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Simon, J. (2007). Governing through Crime, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Surette, R. (2007). Media, crime, and criminal justice: Images, realities, and policies, 3rd edition, Belmont, CA: Thomson Wadsworth. Read More