Surette views the evolution of the criminal as going from romantic or heroic to animalistic, irrational, and predatory. Today's media focuses on the rare crimes of these criminals and underplays more common crimes. By doing this the media has portrayed criminals as evil, abnormal people whose victims are vulnerable and innocent. Because media loves to report these types of crime it seems as if they are a huge problem and are happening everyday. While in reality these crimes are rare and some people carry more risk of being victimized than others. Further more serial killers only account for 2-3% of American homicides though media leads us to believe it is more. Also the idea of the roaming serial killer is even rarer because serial killers are regional not national. So in Criminal Minds, the character Frank who drives around the country towing a RV/torture room and abducting random people would almost certainly not exist in real life. America loves the predator criminal and shows like Criminal Minds because it allows us to view criminals as a separate breed and different from us. Because of this all criminals are seen as predators on society regardless of their crime.This also effects police work making the job seen as dangerous, stressful, exciting, and full of glory. Recruits come in expecting an exciting job chasing down and nabbing the worst criminals daily, when really there is a lot of paperwork and routine disturbances. I happen to agree with everything Surette says, but it won't stop me from loving criminal minds or my sister from checking every door and window in the house before bed. The damage to society has been done regardless of how little these crimes actually happen.
Chapter two of the Rafter reading talks about the three different causes of crime
Hi Amanda,
ReplyDeleteThese last two entries are good--if you can get caught up with entries like these you will be doing much better on the assignment.
I do think that you are being a bit hard on Chermak in the previous posting. He isn't saying that objectivity is a bad thing, he's just questioning whether or not the relationship that reporters have developed with police actually yields a more nuanced and accurate coverage of crime news. What's more, he's not just making this stuff up--this is a pretty detailed study of how crime reporting is actually going on in the cities he examined. In his study, he actually witnesses this process in which reporters just plug information they get from the police into generic story formats that go to press. While reporters are supposed to investigate both sides of the story (as I'm sure you are being taught), he's talking about the practical nature of how crime becomes news for overworked and underpaid reporters and a system that doesn't encourage reporters to actually investigate in most instances. But I'm glad you engaged with the reading so well.