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Misconceptions Of Policing Essay

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Misconceptions of Policing As the day begins, millions of American’s perception of police work is influenced by everyday norms that they face. Whether it being actual interaction with police, news, movies, TV, protests, social media, observing police, or conversations with peers, people are knowingly or unknowingly forming an idea as to what police work is like. The ideas of policing have taken on a drastic change since the beginning of the 21st century. With the introduction of social media and the internet, people have been free to express whatever feelings or stories they have about police whenever they want without any fact checking or any type review by professionals. Entertainment media has molded policing into action pact dramas where …show more content…

the CSI effect is the notion that people who watch crime shows like CSI feel as though they have an understanding of forensic investigation and an expectation that a certain amount of evidence should be presented at a trial just like in the shows. In his research titled The Impact of Crime Drama Viewership on Perceptions of Forensics and Science, Amber Ferris studied the relationships between crime drama viewership and perceptions of forensics and science. Part of his research found a positive correlation between the numbers of hours spent watching a show and it effect on people’s perception of forensic evidence. Ferris found that “the more participants watched CSI programming, the more likely they were to indicate that scientific evidence would be presented in theft cases and in every criminal case”(Ferris,2011, p.78) and that hours spent per week viewing CSI: Miami was positively related to participant’s‟ likelihood of expecting forensic evidence in every criminal case(Ferris,2011, p.76). This notion is one of many misconceptions that come from TV’s take on forensic investigation. In a study of 400 murder cases across multiple jurisdictions, it was found that only 13.5% of the cases had physical evidence that linked the crime to the suspect (Turvey,2011, p.147). DNA was found in only 4.5% of the homicides with latent fingerprints being found 28% of the time and biological

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