Media, Crime, and Criminal Justice / Edition 4

by Ray Surette

Overview

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Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780495809142
Publisher:	Cengage Learning
Publication date:	08/03/2010
Pages:	304
Product dimensions:	6.30(w) x 9.10(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

Ray Surette has a doctorate in criminology from Florida State University and is a Professor of Criminal Justice at the University of Central Florida. His crime and media research interests revolve around the media's effects on perceptions of crime and justice, criminogenic media, and criminal justice policies. He has published numerous articles and books on media, crime, and criminal justice topics and is internationally recognized as a scholar in the area. He has published research on the development of public information officers in criminal justice agencies, crime and justice infotainment programming, copycat crime, the effects of news coverage of high profile trials on similarly charged non-publicized trials and on police recruits, the effects of news coverage of corrections on municipal jail population trends, media oriented terrorism, and the use of computer-aided camera surveillance systems in law enforcement. He is currently working on a book on copycat crime.

Table of Contents

Foreword xiii

Preface xv

1 Predators, Pictures, and Policy 1

Media and Criminal Justice: A Forced Marriage 1

The Blurring of Fact and Fiction 4

A Brief History of Crime-and-Justice Media 5

Print Media 6

Sound Media 10

Visual Media 11

New Media 13

Types of Content 15

Entertainment 15

Advertising 16

News 16

Infotainment 19

Crime and Justice as a Mediated Experience 24

Chapter Summary 27

Writing Assignments 28

Suggested Readings 28

2 Social Constructionism 29

The Social Construction of Crime and Justice 29

The Sources of Social Knowledge 30

Experienced Reality 31

Symbolic Reality 31

Socially Constructed Reality 32

The Social Construction Process and the Media 32

The Concepts of Social Constructionism 34

Claims Makers and Claims 34

Frames 37

Narratives 41

Symbolic Crimes 42

Ownership 43

The Social Construction Process in Action 44

Social Construction of Road Rage 45

Reconstruction of Driving Under the Influence 45

Competing Constructions of the Arrest of Rodney King 46

Social Constructionism and Crime and Justice 48

Chapter Summary 50

Writing Assignments 50

Suggested Readings 51

3 Crime and Criminality 52

Criminals, Crimes, and Criminality 52

Criminals 53

Predatory Criminality 54

Crime Victims 55

Crimes 57

White-Collar Crime 58

Criminological Theories and the Media 61

Criminality in Today's Media 64

Criminogenic Media 66

Violent Media and Aggression 67

Media and Criminal Behavior 69

Copycat Crime 70

Media-Oriented Terrorism 77

Criminogenic infotainment 79

Chapter Summary 81

Writing Assignments 82

Suggested Readings 82

4 Crime Fighters 84

Law Enforcement: A House Divided 84

Media Constructs of Professional Soldiers in the War on Crime 86

Lampooned Police 86

G-Men and Police Procedural 87

Cops 90

Police as Infotainment: "Who yon gonna call?" 92

Dusting for Saliva: The CSI Effect, Forensic Science, and Juror Expectations 95

Police and the Media 97

Media Constructs of Citizen Soldiers in the War on Crime 99

Private Investigators 99

Private Citizens 99

Professional Versus Citizen Crime Fighters 101

Chapter Summary 103

Writing Assignments 104

Suggested Readings 104

5 The Courts 105

Media, Infotainment, and the Courts 105

Courts, Attorneys, and Evidence 106

Crime-Fighting Attorneys 107

Female Attorneys 108

Media Trials 109

Media Trial Effects 110

Merging Judicial New with Entertainment 114

Live Television in Courtrooms 117

Pretrial Publicity, Judicial Controls, and Access 119

Pretrial Publicity 119

Judicial Mechanisms to Deal with Pretrial Publicity 121

Media Access to Government Information 125

Reporters' Privilege and Shield Laws 125

The Courts as Twenty-First-Century Entertainment 126

Chapter Summary 130

Writing Assignments 131

Suggested Readings 131

6 Corrections 132

Historical Perspective 132

Sources of Correctional Knowledge 135

Prison Films 135

Correctional Television and Infotainment 138

Corrections in the News 140

Corrections Portraits and Stereotypes 148

Prisoners 149

Correctional Institutions 150

Correctional Officers 150

The Primitive "Lost World" of Corrections 151

Chapter Summary 153

Writing Assignments 153

Suggested Readings 154

7 Crime Control 155

Media and Crime Control 155

Public Service Announcements Join the War on Crime 156

Victimization-reduction Ads 159

Citizen-cooperation Ads 160

Case Processing Using Media Technology 163

Judicial System Use 163

Law Enforcement Use 165

Surveillance 166

History and Issues 167

Benefits and Concerns of Increased Surveillance 171

Balancing Police Surveillance and Public Safety 174

1984: An Icon before its Time 176

Chapter Summary 178

Writing Assignments 178

Suggested Readings 179

8 The Media and Criminal Justice Policy 180

Slaying Make-Believe Monsters 180

Media Crime-and-Justice Tenets 181

The Backwards Law 182

Media's Crime-and-Justice Ecology 184

Immanent Justice Rules the Media 186

Technology Enhances Crime Fighting 187

Real-World Crime and Justice Problems 188

Criminal Justice Policy and Media Research 189

Crime on the Public Agenda 189

Beliefs and Attitudes about Crime 190

Crime-and-Justice Policies 191

The Social Construction of Crime-and-Justice Policy 195

Chapter Summary 198

Writing Assignments 199

Suggested Readings 199

9 Media and Crime and Justice in the Twenty-First Century 200

Crime-and-Justice Media Messages 200

Media Anticrime Efforts 202

Two Postulates of Media and Crime and Justice 204

Expanded Public Access to Criminal Justice Procedures 206

Mediated Reality 207

The Future of Crime-and-Justice Reality 209

Spectacles 209

Surveillance 211

Mediated Criminal Justice 213

What You Have Learned 215

Chapter Summary 217

Writing Assignments 218

Suggested Readings 218

Glossary 219

Notes 226

References 247

Index 269