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CONSTRUCTING CRIME - Coggle Diagram
CONSTRUCTING CRIME
Crime in the Media
Types of perspectives:
Conservative; the media encourage people to commit crimes
- most research into this lab-based and so the result has been underwhelming
Liberal/**radical**; media causes/ increases the level of public fear
- no clear direct connection, research shows there's a probable link
"the media do not hold a mirror to society or provide us with the facts, rather they create and interpret on our behalf" ; Kidd-Hewitt, D
SOCIAL REACTION
- The 'New Criminology' is now concerned with social reaction to deviance
- Stan Cohen's 'Folk Devils & Moral Panics: The Creation of Mods and Rockers' explores this idea of crime being a social reaction ; "the mods and rockers...became news because...there was room for a story that weekend"
- Techniques of Media inventory (term coined by Cohen); language, misleading reporting, prediction, symbolisation
ALL THIS PRODUCES MORAL PANIC AMONGST THE PUBLIC
DEVIANCY AMPLIFICATION
- The idea that the media could actually increase deviance within the population
-The cycle: deviancy - media coverage - creation of a social problem - social control - situation of the deviant becomes more difficult - deviancy
- role of mass media in seeking out sensational the sensational and 'pressing panic buttons'"; *McLuhan (1967)
- with capitalist news, media values oriented towards preserving the sense that there's a moral consensus; Young, 'The Drugtakers: The Social Meaning of Drug Use', 1971*
NEWSWORTHINESS
8 Professional Imperatives;Chinball (1977)
- immediacy
- dramatisation
- personalisation
- simplification
- titillation
- conventionalism
- structured access
- novelty
Jewks (2011)
- risk
- proximity
- inclusion of children
Greer (2007)
FRAMING
Green and Hanson (2012); the media shape public understanding of crime issues by framing them in certain ways
- thematic
- diagnostic
- prognostic; concerning prediction
- ideational; concerns e.g symbolism, few bad apples idea, etc
OVERALL IMPACT
- reinforce a particular ideology and social hierarchy
- hegemonic impact; allowing one class/ group to promote its interests and exercise dominance
- "the crime problem is fact an illusion, trick to deflect our attention away from other, even more serious crimes"; Stephen Box, 'Power, Crime and Mystification', 1993
Measurement of Crime
Key facts:
- the process of a crime; an event + translation/ interpretation = crime
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CSEW
Which crimes count?
- burglary, robbery, theft, criminal damages, violence, sexual offences, fraud and cybercrime
- only up to 6 different crimes over 5 different incidents can be counted
Exclusions
- certain groups (homeless, ex-prisoners, students in halls, children under 10)
- extended experiences of repeat victimisation
- crimes where people don't know they're victims
- crimes which victims choose not the tell the interviewer
- crimes beyond the 30 crime limit
- complex frauds
- health and safety
- pollution/ crimes against animals
- crimes where the attacker is in the home
- drug crime; seen as victimless crime
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POLICE RECORDED CRIME
How police found out?
- some reports to them
police witness the crime
Rules Governing the way Police Record crimes
National Crime Recording Standards
- crime must be recorded if the circumstances, as they have been reported, amount to a crime
Home Office Counting Rules
- only one crime per victim
- one crime per offender(s)
- a sequence of crimes reported all at once, counts as one crime
- only must serious offence is counted
Influences?
- officer discretion
- incentives
- wider context
- race
- gender
- sexuality
- nature of the event
What this method of recording CAN'T tell us
- how many criminal acts took place
- how many people are victims of crimes which come to the attention of the police
- how many criminal acts have come to the attention of the police
Negatives
- many exclusions
- trends can be influenced by changes in recording practice
Positives
- wider offence coverage and population coverage than CSEW
- good measurement for crimes in low volume, e.g homicide
- good indication of emerging trends
Effects of the way we count crime
- affects the expected characteristics of crime victim and criminals
- affects the extent and nature of the crime problem
"crime does not exist. Only acts exist, acts often given different meaning, within various social frameworks" ; Christie N, 'A Suitable Amount of Crime', 2004
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