Front-end loaded
• More media coverage of criminal justice on
policing than courts and corrections
– Why?
– Implications?
• Police receive about 45% of all resources but
far more media coverage of police …
Focus on police
• More media coverage of local police and the
types of crime they deal with
– Accurate since most police are local (74-88%)
– But, implications of focus on street crime?
Focus on police
• More media coverage on “law enforcer” role
than others
– Law enforcer
– Crime preventer
– Peace preserver
– Service provider
– Rights protector
Focus on police
• Media coverage suggests law enforcement is
effective in reducing crime
– Police often appear in newspapers, both in crime
stories and as experts for stories about crime and
crime prevention.
– Police use external relations to influence how they
are portrayed in the media.
Focus on police
“All of the major factors influencing how much crime
there is or is not are factors over which police have no
control whatsoever. Police can do nothing about the age,
sex, racial, or ethnic distribution of the population. They
cannot control economic conditions; poverty; inequality;
occupational opportunity; moral, religious, family, or
secular education; or dramatic social, cultural, or political
change. These are the ‘big ticket’ items in determining the
amount and distribution of crime. Compared to them
what police do or do not do matters very little.”
– Karl Klokars, 1991
Focus on police
• One major frame used by the media is the
“social breakdown” frame.
– Logical implication is that we need the police to
maintain the social order.
– Social order relies as much if not more on parents,
schools, religious institutions and other social
control institutions in society
– (i.e., informal social control is more effective than
formal social control).
Community Policing v.
Problem-Oriented Policing
Pro crime control
• Media images of police rarely show police
constrained by the criminal law, when in
reality their actions are constrained by the law
in very important ways.
• Media images of crime suggest that police can
(and should) do whatever it takes to solve
crimes in order to protect the public, but
officers in the real world are required to
follow due process requirements established
in law and enforced by the courts.
Pro crime control
“In the end, crime control is applauded, due
process is disparaged. Individual causes of
crime, assumed guilt of suspects, and an ‘us’
versus ‘them’ portrait dominates …”
-- Ray Surette (2007)
Pro crime control
• “Faulty system frame” attributes crime to
weak or soft criminal justice punishment.
– Logical implication is that we need to get tougher
in order to reduce crime.
– Constitutional protections viewed as
“technicalities” and barriers to justice.
– “Crime control model” wins out over “Due process
model”
The “Perp Walk”
Good cop, bad cop
• There are both positive and negative images
of policing in the media
• Positive images greatly outnumber negative
images
Good cop, bad cop
• Negative stories about police are still common
because news organizations are attracted to
conflict and negativity
– Bad news sells!
• Common stories include stories about police
profiling, police brutality, and corruption.
• More: http://www.propublica.org/nola/story/postkatrina-shootings-by-police-where-things-stand/
Good cop, bad cop
• Negative stories often framed a bad apple
frame rather than a rotten barrel frame
– They tend to be shown as arising from bad
officers--individual bad apples--rather than
structural problems in policing, or a rotten barrel.