“The future authority of the criminal justice system may well depend on how the system appears not just to those directly involved in the system, but to all citizens. That, in turn, may depend heavily on how criminal justice manages its image in the electronic media” (Sherman 2002, p.29). However, television and media values conflict with the legal institutions values. In order to make a television series successful, the entertainment business must give what audiences crave the most, which is putdowns and conflict. For example, let’s take the television program “Judge Judy”, where this portrays an in-you-face image of what a judge would be like. She is rude, controlling, in power but also treats people equal in a sense. This example is what audiences want to watch because they find it funny even though this image has nothing to do with the reality of how the legal system really works. In reality judges and magistrates would not treat a criminal in this way because everyone deserves a fair trial and is innocent until proven guilty in my eyes. The people of today don’t really care much about what really happens and all they want is pure entertainment as this allows them to believe what they are seeing.
 |
| Comical representation of police arresting suspect |
In regards to police controlling crime, the television business through crime shows has implicated that the authorities will apprehend the offender straight away once the crime has been reported. This depiction is far from the reality of the work of police. For example, a significant proportion of cases involving serious street crime don’t even make it to the stage of prosecution (White & Haines 2008).
 |
| Police arresting suspect |
When it comes to the fictional representations of the police, the entertainment world often portrays them with having special qualities such as having the ability to fight criminals with martial arts and giving them big guns in order to make them look superior and meaner in some way. The central theme around most crime fighting television series is the use of violence being justified because of the nature or type of criminal the police are dealing with. It is through this depiction that policing is misrepresented as the mundane aspects such as research, interviewing, looking over case materials are all absent.
Another interesting fictional account of police through television is that they don't report to anyone and should not be accountable to anyone as they can take the law into their own hands and no one will question them because in a sense they are on "our" side. However, this portrayal of police is not as true as recent television series such as "Underbelly" and "The Shield" has told a different story. These shows have portrayed police officers as being the criminals where they steal, bribe, use illegal drugs, plant and destroy evidence, force confessions and so on. Both shows are said to be fictional but three examples that revealed systematic and widespread corruption in Australia paint a different picture. These three examples include the 1989 Fitzgerald inquiry into Queensland police, the 1997 Wood inquiry into New South Wales police and the 2002 Royal Commission into Western Australia police. The following video gives a summary of the findings of the Royal Commission and outlines how corrupt police can really be.
References
White, R & Haines, F 2008, Crime and Criminology – An introduction, 4th edn, Oxford University Press, USA
Sherman, L 2002, ‘Trust and confidence in criminal justice’, National Institute of Justice Journal, no. 248, pp. 22-31.
No comments:
Post a Comment