hga108 week 2

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Good morning. Good afternoon. Good evening. Good night. Depending on when you're watching this lecture. Today, we're going to be talking about crime and media. We're not just talking about the news media, which we often associate with crime. But we're looking at a wide range of examples in which TV shows, podcasts. News reports, of course, also play a role in how we understand crime, our views on crime, our fears of crime. And, yes, so welcome to our short-ish lecture. Good morning. Good afternoon. Good evening. Good night. Depending on when you're watching this lecture. Today, we're going to be talking about crime and media. We're not just talking about the news media, which we often associate with crime. But we're looking at a wide range of examples in which TV shows, podcasts. News reports, of course, also play a role in how we understand crime, our views on crime, our fears of crime and, yes, so welcome to our short-ish lecture. We are going to jump right into it and talk about images - we are going to jump right into it and talk about images of crime. When I talk about images I don't mean photographs or, you know, images within a newspaper. I mean all kinds of visual images. So genocide films, crime, crime shows, FBI, Criminal Minds, all these different kinds of shows that we consume in which we understand crime, they show crime in a particular way. And if you think about it, when you're listening to a podcast, you do have some visual images in your head. They are shaped - the words and objectives used actually shape what you're thinking about and how you view the crime. And those are also images of crime. They're not just visual, but how we understand crime. And the core point to take away from this is that our knowledge about crime is socially constructed. Crime is a socially constructed phenomenon. It does not come out of - for the vast majority of people, it doesn't come out of our personal experiences. It doesn't come out of our sources, of knowledge are our neighbours, our friends, our families. It doesn't come from these sources. It comes from the media most of the time. And so the media plays a humongous role in how we view crime, how we understand the causes and consequences of crime. And that's why when we're doing an introductory criminology unit, it's very important to flag that popular media and how they construct crime plays an important role in, in how we view what crimes are. And this is what the whole lecture, we're going to keep talking about this throughout this lecture. So what are the images of crime today? If you have a look at newspapers, look at 60 minutes. Whatever you're looking at, there is this tendency to focus on street crime, that society has become extremely violent and police can't control society. We need more police on the streets. There are. We're not safe. We need more patrols. We hear about these stories all the time. Then another key trope that often keeps coming is crime is rising. It's out of control. Crime rates are increasing because of inept politicians. Home invasions are out of control. Dodgy youths are harassing people on the streets. People are getting drunk, having too many drugs, all of these different ideas. It almost, if you focus on news media, if you focus on the stories that come out, you already get a sense that there's more bad stories than good, which gives you the impression that crime, criminals, and [incoherent] people, outnumber the number of "good people" who do not commit crimes in society. And we know this is problematic because for a vast majority of people within any given community, do not commit crimes. Do not commit crimes or do not commit, you know, problematic crimes, I would say, harmful crimes. We know that some crimes like downloading music. Oh, you guys don't do that anymore. I need to come up with better examples, but downloading music or downloading Game of Thrones, piracy, was big in my day. I will look up some more examples, contemporary examples to be in sync with you. But there are crimes. The vast majority of people aren't this, they're not deviant, is in the sense that the media produces and suggests that they are. Similarly, it gives this impression, the images give an expression impression that these deviant communities and deviant offenders are easily identifiable and this is not really the case. Another thing that frequently comes up is that all police are good and criminals are all bad. I would say that given the instances and events of police brutality reaching a boiling point with the success of the black lives matter movement with the - our knowledge about police brutality has definitely increased many fold in the last five years. Four years, three years. There's been enormous progress made in this arena, but overwhelmingly, police are still produced and constructed. And in stories. Think about the police officer who's going out of his way to get justice. Who's finding a missing girl, who is, Law and Order Special Victims Unit. I don't know why I'm drawing a blank on things, but it's always constructed in a particular manner. Blue bloods. The police are good and the criminals are all bad. And images of crime are particularly linked to ideas of morality and deviants. We think about it. Morality. What are the messages that you're getting from your media, from your social media? What are the messages that are coming out? Things are getting worse and worse. People aren't honest anymore. The good old days were so much better. People are cheating you. The more morality in terms of, in so many different ways. Those are the messages that we're getting, and it's also linked to ideas of deviance. So deviance is, any society has a particular set of cultural norms and values. And deviance is when you're kind of moving away from those norms and values. It's a digression from it. It's - you're not believing in it. So you become a deviant youth If you're wearing a hoodie, this is not so much the case anymore, but certainly in 2010, when youths who are wearing hoodies and walking around and shopping centres, in fact it still happens, are considered to be deviant in some way, being loud loitering. You're going to see no loitering here and signs all over the place. They're considered to be problematic behaviours. And of course, deviance is linked to more serious crimes when you're digressing from it. There are things that play into this, [incoherent], a noted sociologist who actually played an important role in criminology and how we view crime with this concept of deviance, said that deviance is actually important for a society. Having their ability to define something as deviant, as outside what we are willing to do, what we are willing to accept within the norms and bounds of our respectable society actually allows you to understand what is good or bad. It gives us knowledge of that. Simultaneously, it also, when something is so bad, when something is so deviant, it allows people to make meaning of it together and to stand up against it, that this is a deviant behaviour. This is bad behaviour. We need to move away from it. It's also linked to social change. So whether you think about climate change policy at the moment, many people look at this as a form of deviance. Corporate deviance, corporate crime, corporate deviance. Those kinds of issues come into play. But our focus over here is the media. And so deviance plays an important role because in constructing particular groups, in particular actions as deviant and then bringing it to the masses through, now it's social media, but also print media, popular media podcasts. Bringing it to the masses means that those messages about what deviant is is actually spread through the media. And this is problematic because once we start looking at particular groups in particular actions as deviant, what it results in is a kind of moral panic. The concept of moral panic is what we're focusing most of our lecture on. Remember how I talked about moral panics? This is what we're going to be talking about in the next few slides and really try to unpack this. It's important to know that moral panics as a term is relatively new. It was came about by criminologist Jock Young in 1971. But and in the 1970s, Stanley Cohen also made the seminal piece of criminal logical work in which folk devils and moral panics, the creation of mods and rockers, which unpack the term in depth and brought it into public consciousness. Criminological consciousness, sociological consciousness. Everybody uses it now, but it's very important because it gives us the tools to understand some of the ways

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in which the media interplays with our understandings of

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crime and other arenas. So moral panics, essentially, as I mentioned, they've happened before. But we can, considering the 1970s is when they came about, examples of moral panics included, you can look at the Salem Witch trials in the 16 - late 16 hundreds as an example. Comic books, there was a massive backlash against comic books. If your child was reading a comic book, that means that they are deviant in some way. We need to burn. There were, particularly in America, I believe, there were burning of comic books and mainstream bookshops were not allowed to keep comic books. And there is some research which shows that this subculture of comic books becoming like specialised areas, specialised bookshops. This was very much linked to some of those early understandings of comic books as being a less worthy form of media consumption. Reading is good. Books are good, novels are good. Comic books are the work of evil, essentially. In the 1950s, you also have rock music and Elvis. And music is from the devil concepts of this. Women, remember how we're talking about deviant behaviour, women and boys screaming in concerts? That was considered to be quite problematic, and so definitely there were moral panics around this kind of culture. There was a war on drugs which can be viewed on moral panics, as moral panics. HIV, AIDS and how it was constructed by the media, created moral panics around, very misguided ideas of deviance around homosexuality and how the disease of AIDS, HIV is spread. So there are lots that - there's a long history of this, and one of the most common examples of moral panics in recent years is terrorism.

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So while I was recording this lecture in my office, I'm not sure if you guys noticed, but a bunch of flies, moths, insects decided to attack me. So a couple of the recordings were a little bit, disrupted and interrupted, so I decided to record them here at home. So sorry if it seems a little bit out of place in terms of what I've been doing so far, just a couple of slides. I will redo them now. We were talking about moral panics, and there are seven categories of social identities that Cohen identified as being prone to moral panics or moral panics revolve around them. You can have a look at this list. They're young working class male violence, school shootings, particularly in America, sex and violence, blaming the media, welfare and single mothers examples like that. Stanley Cohen also talked about the steps involved in creating a moral panic. And these included identifying someone, a particular person, a subculture or a subgroup of some sort, as a threat, defining them as a threat to social norms. Remember how we talked about deviance and social norms? And if someone you know, this is the way society is, this is what is right. This is what is wrong. So if you're a threat to social norms, then you're inherently wrong. You're the other, you don't belong, and you're a threat to the normal way of life. That threat then, is simplified and depicted in the media in a very stereotypical manner. They form symbols and shorthand stereotypes, which then arouse public suspicion of these groups. Eventually, policymakers and politicians get involved in the process and promise to make things better. There's a moral panic. There's a problem articulated and they give promise to give solutions, oftentimes solutions which don't really work. And we're going to talk a little bit more about this later. So basically moral panics can result in social change. Example of this, there are lots of examples of this in this book called Moral Panics in Australia. If you're doing the question on moral panics, which is one of the options in your essays, definitely have a look at this book. It has fantastic examples of moral panics from basically the lovable Aussie Larrikin, who was actually considered to be a threat because of their jovial nature. And one of the chapters actually links it to go through a whole spectrum of moral panics around particular groups from larrikins to Lebanese "gangs". Then you also have chapters on rock n roll, youth culture and Law and order in Brisbane from 1956 to 1957. There is about the heroin epidemic in Melbourne in the mid 1990s, which led to some very restrictive policies. There was public fear about it, and it resulted in some horrible, draconian policies. Hooning, moral panics around hooning and [incoherent], ecstasy. Lots of amazing, this is - this is a really good book. I highly recommend if you guys are interested in this, definitely have a look at it. It's also available as an e-book in the library, so I'm just going to go through this slide very quickly. Not everything covered by the media is, of course, a moral panic and more recent research considers, you know, has particular attributes with moral panics that there's concern, they're labelled deviant, which is similar to what, not pointing. Who was it that we're talking about? Young, identified in the 1970s, but also newer research, actually considers the hostility towards the group. So it's not just that they're identified as a threat. Once they're identified they're othered. They are dehumanised, they become folk devils and you know, they're treated quite badly, and there's wider consensus amongst the public that this is a problem. We're talking about the heroin epidemic, quote unquote of the mid 1990s, moral entrepreneurs. So you have people, dominant members of society, whether it's church pastures or pastor sorry or politicians or people you look up to or news personalities. They build consensus around the issue. They say that it is a problem. The moral entrepreneur has become more and more vocal. And then it's not just about a response from the criminal, sorry response from policy makers. The response is usually disproportionate. So this is an important distinction from the previous slide, which the early research shows. But now we know that this response is out of sync. It's usually quite punitive. Again, we're going to build on this. There's a lot of repetition between these different ideas. But it gives you an idea, a good sense of what's happening in this space of crime and media and public perceptions. And there's a lot of volatility. So a moral panic disappears quite quickly and it moves on to another folk devil. That doesn't mean that the implications of these in terms of policy changes that have happened changes, so our attention might move away from a particular moral panic. But the laws which were kept in place continue to plague different societies, which we're going to look at bail laws and parole laws following moral panics and how they've shaped things. We are - I'm not going to go into a lot of details over here. This is a very, you can have a look at the slide. It's a bit repetitive. It's a slightly different concept from moral panics. It's about labelling, and it brings in deviance. We will go into this in a lot more depth in the next couple of weeks. So I'm not going to build on this because we're quite short on time. Again. Just in terms of a simplified idea of what the labelling process is.

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The idea is that once you have a label applied

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to a group that or that label or an individual, that label is internalised and the label becomes a master status. So it's in this particular arena study. It's not so much the deviants that has been committed, but the reaction to the deviants, the label that is applied to you, which is important. The person who accepts the label of being criminal or being a deviant, then it results in a self fulfilling prophecy. Whether they have committed the crime or not, whether they were deviant or not doesn't matter in the first place. But the fact that you've applied that label and this particularly happens in moral panics, where communities and people who haven't even committed crimes are given that label may internalise that kind of identity and acted out, so just briefly. Key issue that I want to

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talk about, we are at 22 minutes, and I want to wrap this off in the next eight minutes. Let's see if we can do it. Fear of crime. So we talked about moral panics and how it shakes public opinions, in a similar fashion. If we zoom out a little bit and take a bird's eye view, these sensationalised images, the images of hurt, the images of pain, oftentimes they're very - what's the word I'm looking for? Very gross, very grotesque images, shape how we understand crime and shape our feelings around crime. Simultaneously, there is disproportionate coverage given to particular events, crimes and criminal behaviour. Serial killers really get the attention of media. Things which are out of the ordinary, get the attention. So this gives us a skewed knowledge about the frequency of crime and also about the nature and understanding of crime. And this creates oftentimes fears about crimes which are problematic. We shouldn't be fearful. It makes us fearful of things that we shouldn't be fearful of and less fearful of things that we should be fearful of. An example of this would be we teach children's stranger danger. It is part of - part and parcel of growing up for generations now, that you have to have a talk with your kids, you don't talk to strangers on the street. You take care of yourself, all of these different messages that we give. But systematically, we know that a child is most likely to be victimised by people in their own social circle. People that are directly connected to. These messages still don't get through. We might have moral panics. We might have certain situations where this - paedophiles comes up into the forefront. But this message still doesn't get through. And our fear is of the unknown stranger when realistically the fear should be of people within the home. So the reason that I wanted to, I really want you guys to internalise this and understand this is that it's not just problematic that you have fears, which are, you know, not really based on evidence. But it's also problematic that we're not fearful in areas that we should be fearful of, that we should seek protection of. Good morning. Good afternoon. Good evening. Good night. Okay, this slide is pretty self explanatory. It kind of ties into what I've discussed a couple of quite a few slides ago. But it's about overrepresentation, underrepresentation, you know, greatest. This idea that the greatest threat to women's sexuality

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is their, is the stranger.

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Whereas we know that that's not the case I've discussed in the previous slide. So tying everything together, it's - there's so much in there in terms of crime and media. One of the first full length feature film was an Australian film depicting Ned Kelly. So studying popular culture is extremely important. It impacts how we think about ourselves, criminal justice institutions, this idea that the Jill Meagher case made people feel that the parole system is to blame. It was one minor case in the broader scheme of things. The likelihood, you know, similar cases are very, very, very, very low. And yet the whole - our views of the parole system were affected, and that in turn impacted criminal justice policy in the arena. It also affects who we consider responsible for crime, and in what circumstances. It affects how much crime we think that there is in reality. I've touched on those points that already. It affects public attitudes about crime but also justice. What would justice be to individuals? And it also plays a role in what we - how we learn and understand crime and deviance. In the last

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few sides, we talked about moral panics. We touched on this idea that once the threat is identified and the threat, there is consensus about the threat, vocal moral entrepreneurs make it into a problem there. The politicians and the political system gets involved in creating new policies. I'm going to flesh that out a little bit more, providing some concrete examples within this arena, Law and order politics is this idea. It's linked to an idea of politics of sphere where we've gone through this process. We've discussed it that people are scared. People believe that there's something wrong. So politicians come in and provide solutions and the solutions are usually quite problematic and not based on evidence, as we've mentioned they're disproportionate, they're punitive, they're restrictive and examples of this what would be in as late even in the mid 2010s, Queensland pursued a policy of sending problem youths "to youth boot camps". These are very problematic boot camps. We know that these don't work. They have this idea of tough love militarised training. They're very abusive. They've been found to be abusive. They in fact, do the opposite of getting kids out of crime. There's evidence to show that in quite a few instances, and yet this kind of a solution was promised. And it was a massive failure. But Queensland already knew this because they tried this a couple of decades ago and it was considered to be a failure then. Why did they pursue it again in 2014? What was happening? And a report by the Queensland Justice Department actually clearly states that the establishment of the programme occurred in a short time frame and was driven by the election commitment without a strong policy basis. That shows the interaction between there's, you know, there were concerns around problem youths concerns around stereotypes, driven by stereotypes about youth reoffending, and that resulted in this kind of a half hazard punitive policy. Another example of this would be the Jill Meagher case in Melbourne. It was a very high profile case in with Jill Meagher had dinner with her friends, had a few drinks and was walking back home, and she was abducted and raped. In the aftermath of this, there was a lot of fear within the community, and this was the time that I was doing my undergraduate. So I saw that fear. I saw what it meant in terms of women going home, my own friends after a night of partying. We didn't have ubers back then, so we'd pay the extra money to take a taxi back home. People wouldn't be walking on the streets if you're in Brunswick because of that. So there's a fear around it. And within this environment, what it resulted in is a change in parole laws because it turned out that the perpetrator was out on parole. And that led to claims that there is a massive failure within the criminal justice system and because of parole and because of all these laws and one of the myths that I looked at in a few slides ago, we didn't really discuss it. I left it there, is lenient sentencing or problems with the criminal justice system, particularly courts are looked at badly. So what this resulted in is a tightening of parole laws. Here's a headline. It's to be the toughest in Australia. The Masa Vukotic case. It was a girl walking walking home from school, I believe the offender was out on bail, and that resulted in a lot of backlash against bail, and it resulted in bail reform. The combination of these have resulted in skyrocketing of and the skyrocketing of people in prison. And it's really problematic in terms of justice and what we believe about justice and proportionality of punishment and lots of other things which come into play over here. But it's based on that law and order politics. Another example is this is from the UK, the Sarah Payne case. It's a very high profile case in which an eight year old girl was abducted and killed and it resulted in a really - a newspaper called News of the World, taking it on as a massive, you know, leading the charge within the area of sex offender registries, they named and shamed sex offenders in particular areas close to Sarah Payne's place, I think, for the names of 46 offenders were released and that really drove the charge in terms of UK's laws around sex offender registries. As you go through your criminology degree, you're going to see that sex offender registries don't really work. Thinking that you might have protection because you know that the sex offender lives around the corner is actually not that helpful. Because remember how we were talking about violence and fears of crime. They usually happen not from strangers, from people in your own house. And a vast majority of people who are sex offenders may not even be in touch with the criminal justice system. So this is a very problematic direction that it takes us on. But it's a very fascinating case. You can have a look at it online. You can follow it up in America. There is a similar case which led to Megan's Laws with sex offender registries over here. There's also a similar law, but overwhelmingly what sex registries actually do is drive genuine sex offenders underground, so it makes it harder to police them. In fact, it makes it because there's - yeah, it makes it harder. That's another issue. I'm not going to go into that now. So a

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key thing that I want you guys to remember before we finish this lecture is that, yes, there are problems with the media, but that doesn't mean that it can't be trusted. So a lot of - the take home message from this lecture isn't that it's all fake news. The take home message is that we need to ask critical questions when it comes to the arena of crime, media, justice. We really need to ask some critical questions and ask and do research within this area to understand where those problematic arenas are, we need to consider what the long term impacts of moral panics are. I've talked about how they're very volatile. They kind of just move on to something else. But at the same time, once the community is othered and dehumanised, once that community is given that label, it's very hard to come out of. And also we need to think about - not mean to think about. We will be talking more about labelling that concept. Does that labelling actually increase or reduce crime? Anyways. Questions to think about. I hope you've enjoyed the lecture. Send through any questions you might have, feel free to get in touch with your tutors, your teachers, your unit coordinators and good luck with doing the readings.

Summary of Crime and Media

Images of Crime Today

• Media often emphasizes street crime and portrays society as highly violent, causing public fear. Reports contribute to the perception that crime rates are rising, driven by ineffective politicians and societal decay.

• The depiction of crime fosters the misconception that most individuals are criminals and deviant behaviors are easily identified.

• The portrayal of police as universally good and criminals as inherently bad does not reflect the complexities of these roles.

Moral Panic Examples and Related Social Identities

• Moral panics are societal reactions to perceived threats, often constructed by the media. Examples include:

  • Salem Witch Trials

  • Backlash against comic books in the 1950s

  • War on Drugs and misconceptions around HIV/AIDS.

• Social identities susceptible to moral panics include young working-class males and notions of violent youth in schools.

Labelling Theory

• Labelling theory posits that once individuals or groups are labeled as deviant, these labels can lead to a self-fulfilling prophecy. Social reactions to deviance are crucial; the process of labeling shapes identity and behavior.

• The internalization of labeled identities can lead to increased criminal behavior, particularly during moral panics.

Fear of Crime

• Sensationalized media coverage contributes to distorted perceptions of crime, generating unjustified fears of strangers while neglecting real dangers, such as those posed by familiar individuals.

• This fear can mislead public perceptions and lead to societal measures focused on the wrong threats.

Non-News Media Representations

• Popular media (TV, film, podcasts) significantly shapes public perceptions of crime, leading to a skewed understanding of crime frequency and its nature, often missing the nuances.

• Representations can create simplistic narratives that overwhelmingly link crime with certain demographics or behaviors.

Impact of Criminal Justice Policy and Examples

• High-profile cases (e.g., Jill Meagher, Sarah Payne) can catalyze changes in criminal justice policy, often resulting in harsher laws without evidence of their effectiveness.

• Policies such as stricter parole laws and sex offender registries arise from societal fears and moral panics, but evidence suggests they do not effectively reduce crime and can exacerbate problems within communities.

Overview

• The interplay between media narratives and public perceptions of crime shapes societal understanding and triggers policy responses. Critical examination of these influences and their implications for justice is essential. Understanding the volatility of moral panics and their lasting impacts is crucial in navigating crime, media, and public policy.

Recommended Readings on Crime and Media

1. "Moral Panics: The Social Construction of Deviance" by Stanley Cohen

   • A foundational text that explores the concept of moral panics and their societal impact.

2. "Understanding Crime: A Multidisciplinary Approach" by Stephen Tomsen & Helene O'Neill

   • Offers perspectives from various disciplines on how crime is perceived and constructed in society.

3. "Media, Crime, and Criminal Justice: Images, Realities, and Policies" by Ray Surette

   • Analyzes the relationship between media representations of crime and public policy responses.

4. "The Culture of Control: Crime and Social Order in Contemporary Society" by David Garland

   • Examines how social and cultural changes influence crime control policies.

5. "Deviance: The Interactionist Perspective" by David R. Simon

   • Discusses labeling theory and how societal reactions to deviance shape identities and behaviors.

Note

These readings provide essential insights into the concepts discussed in this course and help understand the interplay between crime, media, and public perception.