Is the Nature of Crime in Our Society Accurately Presented by the Media?

What do recent criminal statistics in Australia reveal about the rights and responsibilities of Australians? What is the link, if any, between crime and social inequality?

The Australian Criminal Justice system has an intricate and diverse structure that makes it one of the most unique systems in the world. The Commonwealth of Australia was approved by the British Parliament in 1900 and came into existence on January 1, 1901. The federal constitution combined British and American practices, with a parliamentary government, but with two houses - the popularly elected House of Representatives and Senate representing the former colonies. This began the start of a new era of policing. (Findlay, Odgers, Yeo). The Commonwealth of Australia is a federalist government composed of a national government and six State governments. There are nine different criminal justice systems in Australia - six states, two territories, and one federal. The eight States and Territories have powers to enact their own criminal law, while the Commonwealth has powers to enact laws. Criminal law is administered principally through the federal, State and Territory police. (Chappell, Wilson, Heaton). In this essay an in depth analysis of the Australian criminal justice system will be given, along with a comparison to the United States criminal justice system throughout the essay. As well as an evaluation of the effectiveness of the system and finally a brief summary of how the Australian criminal justice system structure could be improved to better suit the evolving society. Australia has a complex and very intuitive system of policing that

Throughout crime in Australia, a noticeable increase in crime occurred between the 1970’s to the 1990’s but has declined to a stable rate of crime which is similar trend in America. However, crime itself is often complex to define due to the variety of crime. Therefore, it is difficult to accurately measure crime and if crime cannot be measured efficiently and it proposes concerns of whether crime in Australia is stable or not. Although Australia’s system of collecting crime data is striving to be as accurate as possible, the media will often manipulate the data which misleads the Australian public of crime stability. Inclusively, through gaining an understanding of defining crime, accurately measuring data and comparing Australia’s crime data

Pop culture media, like Law and Order, has a way of showing people how crime is portrayed. Case (2013), mentions that past studies about the representation of crime in the media has increasingly shown fear to the public and portraying unrealistic standards of how crime is in the real world. Media likes to exaggerate how things truly are in the real world, which is why people believe what the media portrays. People will believe that everything they see in a television show can truly happen in the real world, which certain things can happen but not everything. If people end up believing in how the media portrays crime then people will be living in fear of their society being more violent than it actually is (Case, 2013).

Assess sociological explanations of the role of the mass media in creating moral panics about crime and deviance:

Weatherburn, Matka and Land (1996) reported that there is a extensive difference between the actual levels of violent crime within society and societies observations about the nature of this crime. In Australia, within the period of 1990 to 2007, the rate (per 100,000 population) of homicide incidents decreased from 1.9 in 1990-91 to 1.3, in 2006-07 (Australian Institute of Criminology, 2012) despite the public’s perception of a crime increase. This study found there were several inconsistencies between the crime television reported and the crime that actually occurred within society. Very serious crimes such as homicides, abductions, armed robbery and sieges were over-represented in the news reports. Children and the elderly were over-represented

The criminal justice system is the system the Australian public look to for protection and justice against those that disregard the law but there are mixed opinions from the general public that the justice system is too lenient and that the public opinion isn’t taken into consideration when assessing crime and punishment. In this essay, I will argue that the Australian criminal justice system is in fact shaped largely by our society because if it doesn’t reflect social conscience, the justice system would fail. I will discuss this firstly by explaining how the criminal justice system works in Australia, how the justice system reflects community values and how it relates to today’s society, the budget and staffing levels of agencies of the

There is a plethora of crime related movies, TV shows, video games, etc. Violent portrayals of crime are everywhere. As most Americans do not have any personal experience with the criminal justice system, public knowledge of how it operates comes mostly from the media. Dowler (2003) did a study on the relationship between consumption of such media and fear of being victimized by crime. He found that there is, in fact, a relationship and people who consume more of this media are more afraid of crime. “Regular viewers of crime shows are more likely to fear or worry about crime. Similarly, regular crime drama viewers are more likely to hold negative attitudes toward police effectiveness.” (Dowler,

It is commonly known that crime in Canada has gone down over the last few years, and that this is or has been advertised in just about every online news outlet in Canada. Overall, this is great! However, we still see and hear about many stories based around crime daily in the news, and this is not surprising. What is though, is that the crime reported in the news is typically violent crime, regardless of the fact that crime statistics typically indicate that only about 10 percent of crimes committed in Canada are actually violent. Stats Canada (2014) indicates that there are approximately 340,000 violent crime violations (e.g. homicide, sexual assault, robbery) per year. This may sound like a lot, and it is! But not when you consider that there is approximately 1,00,000 property crime violations (e.g. break and enter; theft over 5,000) and 582,000 other crime violations (e.g. administration of justice violations, impaired driving, drug violations) per year. It is argued that the media disproportionately reports violent crime because is more serious and creates a better news story, which in turn gains more views for the media. Not many people would be intrigued hearing about how many parking violations occurred that day or how many petty thefts occurred. Non-violent crime is unintentionally, and sometimes

It was implied that Australia was beginning to succumb to an influx of crime that was violent in nature, and that society’s fear had increased. The public’s fear of violent crime has increased due to media outlets and to social media networks that now can be found quite easily on the internet (Sanson et al, 2013). Although, new figures from the Australian Institute of Criminology demonstrate that the number of violent crimes have essentially decreased. These same figures show that incidents of murder, sexual assault and robbery, both armed and unarmed, have all declined from the previous calendar year.

These issues include of over-policing, re-offending, inconsistent notion of youth, desistance, and creation of moral panic. I find it beneficial that the subject used Melbourne specific examples, such as the APEX gang’s portrayal in the media, to understand what shaped our society’s dominant understanding of youth criminality.

The information that is put out through the mass media is filtered, so it not only has pieces missing, it also has bias reporting’s. Obviously, they want you to believe what they believe, so they are going to brainwash you into thinking that. When it comes to crime, we examine it the exact same way the media does. That’s the goal. The media has shaped our perception on crime and criminals, to the point where we do not bother asking ourselves, why is this wrong? Why are people being sent to prison? Why are there some people who are getting harsher penalties for trivial crimes? It is not completely our fault. We are programmed to not think these thoughts. Society thinks, ‘‘well there are people who

I would like to argue that the violent crimes depicted in our local news are framed in an amplified manner with a purpose to negatively impact our interpretation of community safety. News media often produce higher reports of violent crimes committed by strangers over those committed by known offenders at home (Ward 1995, p44), thus twisting the majority cases of violent crimes and its reality in our everyday life. Although crime rates in Australia have significantly reduced compared to centuries ago (Ward 1995, p44), there remains a perception that the community we live in today has become a more dangerous one. This could possibly be the result of the exaggerated reality depicted in our local televised news, whereby gang-affiliated crimes would receive high range of coverage. Therefore, the interpretation we may have produced of our society’s reality is its insecurity due to the rise of gangs, which is often dramatised in the

Victims of crime, particularly those violent in nature, have their rights violated and experience exceedingly high level of trauma and stress (Appendix B, 2015). It is surprising then, that Criminal Justice Systems (CJS) around the world forgo many victims’ rights and provided limited space for them to interact with the system (Sarre, 1999). Rather systems are built around balancing the rights of offenders against the greater safety and need of the community whilst neglecting individual justice needs of the victims (Sarre, 1999). With limited rights and minimal involvement a victim often becomes a disposable utensil to the CJS (Clark, 2010). They are used by the courts to determine the ultimate truth so justice may be served, with no care for the damage that may be caused in the process and then disposed of the case is concluded (Braun, 2014). In 2011-2012 a victimisation survey revealed that 1.2 million Australians were victims of personal crimes, such as assault, robbery and sexual assault (Australian Institution of Criminology, 2013). Of these victims, only half of the crimes were reported to the police (Australian Institution of Criminology, 2013). Such low reporting rates have been contributed in part to this notion of imbalance offender VS victims’ rights (Braun, 2014). Due to the sensitive nature of sexual crimes, the limited available evidence and victim rights, these crimes tend to carry the lowest reporting rates (Braun, 2014). During the latest Australian

The importance given to certain crimes in the daily newspapers and other media sources shows us proof to the fact that crime is a topic that has the public’s interest and is a focus of their worries (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2001). It goes on to discuss the fact that crime as reported on by the media increases the public’s levels of fears and that there is little or no correlation to actual levels of violent crime in our society today.