The Media And The Criminal Justice System Essay

Racial bias, defined as “unreasonably hostile feelings or opinions about a social group” by Dictionary.com in which the social groups are different races, has been a problem for a long time, and it still exsts today. People cannot ignore the truth that is being shoved in our faces on the media. There are multiple examples of racial bias in the criminal justice system. If you don't believe this, here are some statistics by the Huffington Post: In a California study, the ACLU found blacks three times more likely to be stopped than whites, African Americans are arrested for drug offenses at rates 2 to 11 times higher than whites stated in a May 2009 report by Human Rights Watch, the U.S. Sentencing Commission in March 2010 stated that, in the

Americans have given up some of their freedoms to be protected by the United States, so they have a right to be informed. In the majority of the all the discussion boards, the classmates agreed that the media creates problems. By giving stories more attention than others, the media creates problems. The media tends to focus more on seriously violent crimes more than missing, or kidnapping cases. According to Champion, in the portrayal of both offenders and victims of crimes in the media there is a "significant focus on high profile crimes as well as societal ills related to crime and victimization" (Champion 2007). In addition, the media reports stories that can make money, and to draw viewership. These are important to the media because without the funding the media wont be able to report from different places across the U.S., and without the support of the public looking them, the media will lose its only audience. The media plays a significant role in public safety by keeping the public aware of crime increase, violence, and fugitives. This allows the community to take action to promote their safety. Americans put a lot of trust into the media in hopes that everything they report is honest and fair.

The criminal justice system is composed of three parts – Police, Courts and Corrections – and all three work together to protect an individual’s rights and the rights of society to live without fear of being a victim of crime. According to merriam-webster.com, crime is defined as “an act that is forbidden or omission of a duty that is commanded by public law and that makes the offender liable to punishment by that law.” When all the three parts work together, it makes the criminal justice system function like a well tuned machine.

We’ve all heard it hundreds of times from people that the news and media is overdramatic. That is one of the biggest complaints about the media, but is it true? Scholarly articles have found that the news is in fact over dramatic about crime which induces public fear and may produce many myths about how much crime is actually happening in our society. As a broadcasting major, it is easy for me to see why the news would cover stories in such a dramatic way. These types of stories capture the users attention which means more people will watch your station resulting in advertising spots being worth more which in the end benefits the stations because they will make more money. Popular examples such as the “knockout game” and the Central Park jogger case both show just how much the media has an effect on society, copycat criminals and other crimes. Is the media overdramatic? Does the media cause higher public fear? What myths does the media create?

The bias in the American criminal justice system is first reported in the first stages of the system, which includes the (act of asking questions and trying to find the truth about something) and arrest of the suspected people by police personnel (American Civil Liberties Union, 2013). These police personnel discriminately target the minorities as criminal suspects, which eventually skews the racial population of the people arrested, charged, put in jail or convicted (Cole, Smith, & DeJong, 2013). One of the key problems suffering (from sickness) the U.S. criminal justice system is (assuming certain races of people are more likely to commit crimes) (Cole, Smith, & DeJong, 2013). This involves the identification of criminal suspects on the basis race or (special way of speaking/mark that shows emphasis). According to Cole, Smith, & DeJong (2013), (assuming certain races of people are more likely to commit crimes) is widespread because the police agents enjoy a large amount of (ability to make wise decisions) as to who they think about/believe as a suspect. For example, in Baltimore, African-American car/truck drivers are discriminately stopped for minor traffic offenses because they are believed to be more likely tobe start/work at more serious criminal activity than whites (Saad, 2011). This results in a large percentage of innocent African-Americans and other minority drivers such as Puerto Ricans, Colombians and Cubans to be illegally subjected to the embarrassment (in

The Criminal Justice System has made many changes since it first started in the 17th Century. The Criminal Justice System first began in the United States during the colonial times, when the colonist had to follow the rules of the British. During the Colonial times, the Criminal Justices System was not as fair as our current system is today, which meant a lot of people did not have liberties and were ultimately treated unfairly. Times have definitely changed for the Criminal Justice System and for the United States. We now have several documents giving citizens’ rights to be protected from the Criminal Justice System, a few of those right are in the constitution and also the 27 amendments. In the United States there are also a few other things that a person can do other than go to jail or prison. One alternative to prison or jail is house arrest where the offender serves out their sentence at their home. Another one is probation, Probation, in criminal law, is a period of supervision over an offender, ordered by a court instead of serving time in prison. In the United States, we have several documents and alternatives for being placed in jail or prison, yet people still find a way to get themselves incarcerated. Since there are so many prisoners in these correctional facilities, they are beginning to face several problems such as mental health issues, staff morale, negative media attention, inmate behavior, and overcrowding. I believe overcrowding is the most

Policing the Media: A literature review of the Role the Media Plays in the Public’s Perception of Law Enforcement and the Criminal Justice System.

There are more people incarcerated in the United States of America than any other country in the world willing to count their inmates (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2016). How can this be? Foremost, the criminal justice system in the United States of America (which is made up of the police, the courts, and the corrections) is not working toward reducing mass incarceration the way it should be. The criminal justice system is set up strategically to accomplish two goals: to bring in money and to gain power. The byproducts of achieving these two goals are mass incarceration, ethnic and racial profiling, and minimal justice. The system needs to change its goals to: reducing crime and doing justice. The police, the courts, and the correctional system all feed off of one another and affect each other. Therefore, if real change is going to be made, it needs to happen in all three branches of the criminal justice system. A system that seems to be working well is in Norway. Norway’s criminal justice system does not look like America’s system. The criminal justice system in Norway has different philosophies concerning crime, justice, and the corrections. "We don 't look at our inmates as criminals, but rather as regular people who have committed a crime." (Skulberg, 2010, p. 73) This is a quote from a Norwegian prison guard giving an example of the ideology in Norway. In order for the United States to reduce crime and to have true justice, first, the policing model needs to change

There is a significant racial bias in how the media delivers certain stories, based on who the suspect of the crime is. For example, content of the story will vary differently depending on if the suspect is white compared to if they are a person of color. In cases, where the suspect of a crime is white, the media may often try to advocate for the suspect. Emphasizing that they may have had a mental illness, acknowledging any positive characteristics of the suspect, or even reminding the audience of the future potential that the suspect holds. Of course, this doesn’t mean that the media isn’t blatantly lying to the public, but the same treatment does not apply to minority races. In fact, the it is the exact opposite is in effect when talking

“13th” is a documentary directed by Ava DuVernay. It is named after the 13th Amendment to the American Constitution which outlawed slavery unless you are being punished for a crime. The film focuses on racism in the United States’ criminal justice system. According to DuVernay, the part of the 13th Amendment that says “unless you are being punished for a crime” is a loophole that has been used to allow slavery to continue in the early days during reconstruction and even now. This loophole coupled with the criminalization of the black man has led to mass incarceration of minorities. The United States which has only five percent of the world’s population but has twenty-five percent of the world’s prisoners. The prison population of the United States has exploded from 300, 000 in 1972 to 2.3 million now. Each component of the criminal justice system, law enforcement, the courts and corrections, has contributed to the perpetuation of slavery through its contribution to mass incarceration.

In conclusion, In 2016 the three challenging issues administrators in criminal justice will face is The budget, Inadequate training, and the media. These are issues that everyone should be concerned with especial criminal justice students. One question the budget is faced with is there be enough money to sustain the growing criminal justice system. WIll the training be enough to teach officer when there are in the streets. How do we not let the media influence how we feel. We have to

The official statistics are particularly useful in that they have been collected since 1857 and so provide us with an excellent historical overview of changing trends over time. They also give us a completely accurate view of the way that the criminal justice system processes offenders through arrests, trials and punishments. However, official statistics cannot be taken simply at their face value. They only show crimes which are reported to and recorded by official agencies such as the police. They account for only those crimes which are recognised as such by victims and those detected by the police. Sociologists have argued that there exists a ‘dark figure’ of unrecorded crime. This may be due to social agencies ignoring crimes committed by the ruling class such as white-collar and corporate crime and their views and stereotypes that they have against certain individuals, such as the working-class and ethnic minorities. Arguably, another reason why police recorded may be seem as inaccurate is due to the increased problem of reporting issues. There is evidence that a number of individuals choose not to report a crime on the basis that they have little faith in social agencies or that they feel that the crime may not be serious enough. Positivists favour the official statistics as they believe that they are functional for society, whereas interactionists and Marxists go against the police the statistics as they argue that they are bias. In this essay, I will discuss the

Different forms of media, such as television, films, books, and newspapers, have similar ways of portraying the criminal justice system. The media constructs representations of crime and justice and in doing this, it presents an often dramatized representation of the criminal justice system; and this does not just influence on the public’s lay view of crime but also for criminal justice experts (Marsh, 2014). In the media it is commonly known that they are a business, and businesses need to make a profit. Because of this, the media’s portrayal of the criminal justice system has been very negative. With the news, their main purpose is to produce what sells. So many of them would edit the information they have gathered and make a story that will sell. Also the media does not show the full process of the criminal justice as a quick process, while in fact it is not. For example, last year, Netflix released a short series called “Making A Murderer”. Most people claimed that they feel like they can solve a crime when they finished watching a series. While that series is very factual, it does not hit every single step of the criminal justice process.

The public depends on the news media for its understanding of crime. Reportedly three quarters (76%) of the public say, they form their opinions about crime from what they see or read in the news (Dorfman & Schiraldi, 2001). After reviewing five hours of reality crime television shows, one is left with a very dismal look on society and a prejudice towards minorities as they are largely depicted as the perpetrators of crime. This new genre commonly referred to as reality television appears to be sweeping the nation by storm. Opinions vary, depending on whom you ask, to what extent reality plays a role versus the selling of a product. Sensationalism, advertising, ratings hype, profiling and fear all comprise the mass

Over the course of the semester, I have learned about numerous aspects of Mass media and crime. We have broken these aspects into nine major topics based on what they focused on. The nine major topics includes theorizing media and crime, construction of crime, media and moral panics, media construction of children, media misogyny, police, offenders, and victims in the media, crime and prison films, role of the internet in crime and crime and surveillance culture. The topics that I found most interesting to me would be media and moral panic, construction of crime news and children and police, offender and victims in the media. I chose these four topics, because they play a role to the overall information that I have been paying close attention to in regards to how the media presents the information and how our Criminal Justice system addresses the concerns in the media. For our final exam, were asked to pick and discuss a topic that interested us, because of my curiosity of those four major topics I decided to pick a historical case that touched basis with all four topic areas. My topic being the historical case of Brown v. Board of Education. My goal of this essay is to give you the back story of the case, explain why I chose this case, discuss how the case is considered newsworthy and how it links to broader social structures.