Images of Crime, Criminals and Justice in American Media
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Images of Crime, Criminals and Justice in American Media A sample of crime films, television programs, news programs, and a song were reviewed for this content analysis. Notes are included at the conclusion of this report. Several general themes emerged from these texts. First, the images of career criminals portrayed in the mass media continue to include Italian Mafia types, minority ghetto gangs, and the occasional white collar criminal who may commit a crime of passion. Deprivation and structural functionalist theories as discussed below along with social learning theories may explain the persistence of these images and the social realities they tend to mirror. A series of CSI Las Vegas television programs presented criminals as falling into these categories but tended to focus instead on the positive characteristics of crime fighters. This included forensic scientists as well as police officers. While these individuals were shown as having character flaws (e.g., excessive egos, involvement with crime figures, gambling addiction), their dedication to their jobs was emphasized. In contrast, criminals were depicted as less intelligent, more violent, and the product of flawed backgrounds. Bob Dylan's "The Hurricane" was a song that made the case that Rueben "Hurricane" Carter, a black New Jersey boxer, was wrongfully accused of murder by racist police officers. Whether or not Carter was innocent may be less significant than the fact that Dylan's song painted a portrait of police officers convinced that blacks are likely to be criminals and of a law enforcement system that was institutionally racist at its core. In contrast, the televised news programs on local CBS, ABC, and NBC channels present stories about crime, criminals, and the police that tend to be favorable to police action and critical of criminals. Many criminals are depicted as emerging from impoverished "ghetto" gang backgrounds and as living outside of societal norms. These programs tend to affirm Merton's theory of anomie and social learning as well as structural functional theories of crime and deviance that are discussed below. Review of Literature Theories of crime and deviance abound and are significant in determining how criminals are defined. The debate between classicalism and positivism has contributed significantly to the growth of modern day criminology. Classicalism is based in large measure on the assumption that individuals possess free will and that those who violate the law were motivated by personal needs. Utilitarians such as Beccaria and Bentham argued that the decision to violate the law comes after a careful weighing of the costs of criminal behavior and classical theorists assert that punishment should only be severe enough to deter an offense. In contrast, positivist thinkers argue in favor of a scientific approach to understanding choices as evident in the work of Comte and Durkheim. This theory calls for measuring rather than speculating about the causes of crime (Akers and Sellers 20-25; Lilly, Cullen, and Ball 17-23). The biological school of thought
as reflected in the work of such early scholars as Lombroso and Hooten proposes that individuals may be drawn toward deviance because of certain genetically inherited traits or characteristics. Lombroso, for example, whose ideas were later discredited, believed that criminal types could be identified by the shape of the human skull (Akers and Sellers 40-41). Modern day criminologists look at such biological antecedents of crime as neurological damage, mental disorders caused by trauma to the brain, and the interaction of biological and social factors or nature versus nurture in explaining crime (Lilly, Cullen, and Ball 27). The psychological view of ...
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as reflected in the work of such early scholars as Lombroso and Hooten proposes that individuals may be drawn toward deviance because of certain genetically inherited traits or characteristics. Lombroso, for example, whose ideas were later discredited, believed that criminal types could be identified by the shape of the human skull (Akers and Sellers 40-41). Modern day criminologists look at such biological antecedents of crime as neurological damage, mental disorders caused by trauma to the brain, and the interaction of biological and social factors or nature versus nurture in explaining crime (Lilly, Cullen, and Ball 27). The psychological view of deviance associates criminality with particular types of personality. It suggests that in a minority of individuals, an amoral or psychopathic personality develops. Such individuals may then commit violent crimes. However, Lilly, Cullen, and Ball (27) comment that psychological theories of crime can at best describe only some aspects of crime. It is highly improbable that the majority of criminals share personality characteristics distinct from the remainder of the population. The most empirical support for the various schools of thought on criminal causation discussed herein has been received by the positivist school. Akers and Sellers (24) note that this particular school of thought depicts crime and deviance as social and even inevitable elements in modern society. These schools, which include interactionist theories as well as functional theories continue to be researched because they are seen by Jacoby (n.p.) as offering more specific insight into deviant behavior than either the biological, psychological, or classicalism schools provide. The focus in criminal causation research today is empirical demanding high degrees of rigor and methodological soundness in testing any theory under real world conditions. Social process theories have been criticized by Akers for methodological shortcomings. For example, Akers and Sellers (48) contend that the Chicago School emphasized that criminal values are learned through associations, but they had little to say about precisely how this acquisition of anti-social definitions occurs. Akers criticized these theories because they did not take into sufficient account the various kinds of associations in which individuals participate. They do not recognize the influence of social structure as it relates to social learning leading to either criminal behavior or conforming behavior. Also, they do not refer to differential social location in groups, differential social organization, differential location in the social structure, or theoretically defined structural variables. Akers' social learning theory has elaborated Sutherland's model, stating that in addition to definitions, people can become involved in crime through imitation or modeling of criminal conduct. Secondly, Akers "contended that definitions and imitations are most instrumental in determining initial forays into crime (Akers and Sellers 49). The continued involvement in crime results in differential social reinforcement and the theory has been subjected to extensive empirical testing mostly in studies where measures of social learning are used to account for self-reported delinquency. Akers and Sellers (49) state that overall, "the research is supportive of the perspective, including studies in which social learning theory was tested against competing explanations of crime such as social bond theory." Walter C. Reckless' Containment Theory has influenced Control Theory by recognizing the individualization of the self and arguing that a variety of factors might push a person toward crime and that other factors might pull one toward misbehavior (Lilly, Cullen, and Ball 89). Reckless recognized that the leading sociological theories seemed to have effectively analyzed many of the central pushes and pulls operating on individuals but suggested that containment theory could explain why in spite of the various criminogenic pushes and pulls, whatever they might be, conformity remains the general state of affairs (Lilly et al. 89). It was his contention that to commit crime or delinquency, an individual had to break through a combination of outer and inner containment that together tend to insulate the person from the pushes and pulls. In essence, both outer and inner containment are brought about in this theory by control mechanisms some of which exist in society and others of which are inculcated within the individual through processes of socialization. Popular images of crime in America have often focused, as in the case of such films as The Godfather Trilogy and Wise Guys on the mafia or "organized crime." According to journalist Peter Reuter (1), "The American Mafia emerged during Prohibition as the wealthier and more violent successor to local city gangs involved in prostitution and gambling. It is thus a contemporary of the Soviet Union, another long-standing problem for the United States government. Coincidentally, the Mafia and Soviet Union have ceased to be significant strategic adversaries at almost the same time. The Mafia is almost extinguished now as a major actor in the United States' criminal world." This does not mean that the Mafia - derived from Sicilian crime families and their American branches - no longer exists or that "organized crime" has entirely disappeared. As Reuter (2) commented, the intense investigative and prosecutorial efforts of the various branches of the U.S, government (and particularly of the Justice Department) have significantly decimated the ranks of mafia-led organized crime; there are more street gangs of various other ethnic and national backgrounds at work in various criminal enterprises today than there are old-style Mafioso. During the Prohibition era and into the 1960s, the Italian Mafia (The Black Hand, Cosa Nostra, or "Our Thing") exerted enormous influence in such areas as prostitution, bootlegging, gambling, racketeering, on the docks, and in union pension fund manipulation. Over time, as more and more prominent members of these families were arrested, convicted and jailed, and as some former Mafioso moved into more legitimate business areas, the group has lost much of its control over crime. It is a less significant source of criminal activity today than in the past, but it has not entirely disappeared from the scene (Reuter 1). Crime in gangster films has been analyzed, generally depicting via content analysis criminals that are of the Mafia, gang, or accidental type as compared to police officers and crime fighting district attorney who are only occasionally corrupt ("Crime and Gangster Films" 1-2). Television programs such as The Sopranos as well as movies such as Bugsy and Once Upon a Time in America tend to focus on stereotypes of Mafia type criminal organizations (Beck 24). Beck (25), in a content analysis of such films, made the case that these films and their television equivalents tend to stereotype criminals as either belonging to either Italian organized crime families or ghetto-centered minority group crime families. In contrast, Bill Keveney (D1) states that television programs such as CSI and films like The Siege depict officers of the law as brave, courageous, and if diverse, nevertheless fairly stereotypically American and middle class. A content analysis of popular crime films by gender conducted by Castle and Feshami (1) made the point that rarely are criminals depicted as women and when female criminals appear, they are generally drawn from either minority racial and ethnic groups and/or poorly educated, low-income white groups (e.g., Foxy Brown, Bonnie and Clyde. According to a content analysis of crime films by Maloney (1-2), such films tend to fall into specific genres such as the caper film, the horror film, the organized crime film, the execution film, the prison film, and the law enforcement film. Depending on the focus of the protagonists' characters, Maloney (2-3) suggests that the film will be skewed to represent a combination of desirable and undesirable characteristics that are meant to evoke a certain sympathy for the protagonists among audiences. Finally, Allen, Livingstone, and Reiner (2-3) undertook a content analysis of British films released between 1949 and 1991 which revealed that the proportion of films containing crime was rising as was the case with American films. However, the depiction of criminals in such films as normless products of social exploitation is increasing while depictions of criminals as Mafia-types or gang members seems to be decreasing. Content Analysis Notes Several different media productions were analyzed. Twelve different CSI Las Vegas episodes were researched, revealing such different criminal types as accidental criminals committing crimes of passion, opportunistic criminals taking advantage of unforeseen situations, criminals from organized crime in the casino industry, and career criminals. Images of crime fighters tended to be almost entirely positive with character flaws on the part of CSI personnel and police illustrated as not impacting upon their professional performance. Police and CSI staff were almost always universally portrayed as "winning" in comparison to the "losing" criminals. Four films were analyzed. The Godfather, Wise Guys, Once Upon a Time in America are representative of fairly standard Mafia crime films whereas Scarface depicted a Cuban-American drug dealer with ties to a Colombian drug cartel. The Godfather and Scarface films presented the greatest amount of violence, although criminals in all of these films were characterized as very violent. All four films suggested that members of the law enforcement system could be corrupted or were actually corrupt and tended to denigrate the role of these actors in bringing criminals to justice. Bob Dylan's song, "The Hurricane," was reviewed as part of the content analysis. It tells the story of Rueben Carter, a black heavyweight boxer convicted of murder. Dylan's song depicts Carter as the victim of racial profiling and police ineptitude and a desire to arrest anyone black for the crime. This paints a portrait of a racist criminal justice system. A series of news reports on the local CBS, ABC, and NBC networks were included in the content analysis. Reports on crime ranged from gang related to drug related to domestic violence incidents. They included statistical presentations on robberies, auto thefts, home break-ins, and other crimes. Police were invariably portrayed in a positive manner whereas criminals (alleged as well as convicted) were presented negatively. There is a sharp difference between the depiction of law enforcement personnel as heroic and criminals as normless, hostile, uneducated, and violent misfits within society.Works Cited Akers, R.L., and Sellers, C.S. Criminological Theories: Introduction, Evaluation, and Application. Los Angeles: Roxbury, 2004. Allen, Jessica, Livingstone, Sonia, and Reiner, Robert. "The Changing Generic Location of Crime in Film: A Content analysis of Film Synopses, 1945-1991." Journal of Communication, 1997, 47: 89-101. Anonymous. "Crime and Gangster Films." 2008. Available at www.filmsite.org/crimefilms.html. Accessed online, April 13, 2008. Beck, Bernard. "The Myth That Would Not Die: The Sopranos, Mafia Movies, and Italians in America." Multicultural Perspectives, 2000, 2: 24-27. Castle, Tammy and Feshami, Kevan. "Criminal Preference: A Content Analysis of Popular Crime Films by Gender. American Society of Criminology, 2006, 1-7. Jacoby, J.E. Classics of Criminology. Oak Park, IL: Waveland Press, 2005. Keveney, Bill. "'Events' Keep 'CSI' Fresh in Its Eights Season." USA Today, 6 Dec 2007, D1. Lilly, J.R., Cullen, F.T., and Ball, R.A. Criminological Theory: Context and Consequences. London: Sage, 2007. Maloney, J.J. "The Crime Film." Crime Magazine, 2008. Available at www.crimemagazine.com/crimefilm.htm. Accessed online, April 13, 2008. Phillips, Nickie D. "Cultural Criminology and Kryptonite: Apocalyptic and Retributive Constructions of Crime and Justice in Comic Books." Crime, Media, Culture, 2006, 2: 1+. Reuter, Peter. "The Decline of the American Mafia." Public Interest, Summer 1995. Available at www. findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0377/is_n120/ai_ 17379694.
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