Media and Crime Final

The portrayal of female attorneys, and their contrast to male police officer

young, white females who are single and childless and in lower law firms/CJ agencies

Abuse of Power

defendants in a position of trust

Sinful rich

defendants involved in bizarre or sexually related cases

Evil strangers

non americans and psychotic killers

prejudicial publicity types

factual info (guilt of defendant) vs emotional info (personal feelings)

Proactive Judicial Mechanism

Closure, restrictive, and protective orders. clashes with 1st amendment and impacts appeal processes.

Reactive judicial mechanism

preferred over proactive. do not limit the activities of the media

individuals with privilege

husbands and wives, attorneys and clients, priests and penitents, doctors and patients

Media portrayed as entertainment

Cynthia Sommer case

Perception and portrayals of corrections

focuses on violence and escapes from prison. Violence of being an inmate, escaping, or physical punishment.

Characters in corrections

Villains, good guys, heroic inmates, smug hack corrections

Anticrime efforts

PSA (3 audiences): criminals, victims, and witnesses

Prosocial Television

positive social behaviors after watching prosocial episodes.

Annoucement Effect (Anticipatory reaction)

behavior change in offender population in the anticipation of a new criminal justice policy or a program that has been heavily publicized.

Surveillance Effect

Contemporary media technology has also changed the nature of surveillance: drones, body cams, public/private buildings

Displacement of crime

simply crime moved to adjacent areas where the proactive measure may not exist.

Diffusion of benefits

offenders are unaware of where the boundaries of surveillance exist and don’t so they reduce their offending.

Distributive Justice

for allocation of resources, opportunities, and benefits within a society.

Procedural Justice

 Idea of fairness in the processes that resolves disputes and allocate resources.

Retributive Justice

Criminal offenders receive punitive damages similar to the crime.

Immanent Justice

divine higher power will punish guilty and protect innocent.

What does the media look for in a story?

ideal individuals for their story to include victims, offenders, etc...

Fear-of-crime is?

not related to real crime levels and the media links it to the need for more punishments and policies to support It

Mainstreaming

posits that the media affect some viewers more than others regardless of exposure level.

Echo effect

tendency for officials to treat defendants in unpublicized cases harshly if the press has been demanding such treatment for defendant in publicized cases.

Worldview cultivation

directly related to the number of hours of television viewed.

Counterproductive effects

occurs in situations when the media attention results in unanticipated consequences, usually involving a crime reduction program.

Anticipatory effects

seems to reverse the causal order of media attention and criminal justice policy change.

Know the control models

defendants should be processed as quickly and

efficiently as possible

- Punish criminals and deter law

→ Factual Guilt

1st Tenet

“Backward law" - particular crime and

2nd Tenet

" Immanent justice" - technological solutions to crime

how the media changes the way people interact

less direct face-to face contact, and interactive media is seen in games that depict crime and violence.

Concepts of Performance Crimes

Recording of torture and ritual humiliation of Prisoners and hostages by the government and terrorist groups

first scenario

a free-wheeling infotainment media dominates the culture in a new-media-technology-saturated journalism driven by intrusive voyeurism.

second scenario

the commercial media operates under heavy restrictions, and their ability to cover, comment on, and portray crime-and-justice issues and cases is tightly restrained.

Primary cause models

a significant, direct linear relationship exists between media content and consumer behavior.

Negligible cause models

People who already have a tendency toward certain bad habits tend to choose media that shows those habits.

Postulate 1

The media usually paints the criminal‑justice system and the people who work in it in a bad, ineffective light

Postulate 2

media mixes news with entertainment, blurs fact and fiction, and lets audiences help create the content. Because of that, crime stories have become a regular feature of “infotainment” shows and online content.

media crime-and-justice content supports certain claims including:

Crime‑fighters don’t have enough skills and need better training. Courts often release people who have committed violent crimes. Crime is seen as a personal issue, not something caused by larger social factors.