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/post-katrina-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.