Social Constructionism Theory Of Crime And Media

CSI, Law and Order, Fox News, Making a Murderer, Nancy Grace and Cops: these shows have large audiences and high ratings, showing that western society is obsessed and mesmerized with crime and criminal activity. Crime and media go hand in hand, as the media frames crime as a major social problem, due to the lack of policy and policing certain behaviors. The media and the criminal justice system go together, like peanut butter and jelly, a sandwich of chaotic fruits and nuts. The media is quite concerned with policing, but much less about the court system, consequences, and the punishment received by the offender, devising misconceptions of the judicial processes. There are several different sociological perspectives pertaining to the media

This case is one that changed the way the United States Police forces will work forever. Every human in the world has natural born rights. Even people who have been arrested have rights, ‘The rights of the accused’. These rights are the main point of this court case.

Crime is often described as socially constructed, which influences our understanding of who commits a crime. Firstly, labelling theorists argue that crime is a social construction based on the powerful’s reaction to certain behaviour, those who are deviant are people that have been labelled as such. Marxists claim the bourgeoise construct crime in order to criminalise the proletariat, get away with their own deviance and maintain their own dominance. Neo-marxists look at how moral panics create a social construction of crime and can criminalise certain groups. Finally, feminists, argue crime is constructed in a patriarchal way and that the criminal justice system is harsher to female offenders. Whereas others criticise these theories for

In the Mapp vs Ohio state court case, the issue disputed was when the appellant Dollree Mapp was convicted of possessing “obscene” materials after an illegal police search of her home for a fugitive. During the year of 1961, Ohio police were looking for a criminal accused of a bombing and had been told that he was hiding in Dollree Mapp 's house. Police acted quickly and came to her house but when she didn 't answer the door, police officers forced themselves inside. Dollree demanded to see the police 's search warrant once having spoken to her attorney but police didn’t have one so they held a piece of paper to disguise that it was a warrant when it really wasn’t. Dollree grabbed the paper and when trying to read it, she was then handcuffed on the ground and police continued to search her house (Landmark cases). During the search, officers found pornography and other materials that were against Ohio State law in her basement. As a result, Dollree was arrested, found guilty, and sentenced to 1 to 7 years in the Ohio Women 's Reformatory. Dollree felt that justice was unfair so she consulted with her attorney. “She appealed her conviction on the basis of freedom of expression” (Oyez). Dollree’s lawyers argued to the Supreme Court of Ohio that she should never have been brought to trial because the material evidence resulted from an illegal (warrantless) search and how it was illegally obtained. “In its ruling, the Supreme Court of Ohio

Crime is the product of the social structure; it is embedded in the very fibres of society. In this essay, I aim to explore different theories as to why crime exists within society and how we as a society therefore construct it. Crime is a social construct; it is always in society and is on the increase. It is inevitable. Where does it come from? It comes from legislation, from the making of laws.

My research was conducted and compiled to present information on the Supreme Court case Mapp v. Ohio. The Mapp v. Ohio case was brought before the Supreme court in the year 1961 and was and still is considered a landmark supreme court case in dealing with Civil Liberties and criminal Procedure. The case itself deals with the admissibility of illegally obtained evidence in criminal proceedings, but I feel the case addressed a more deeply rooted problem. A problem where american ideals of freedom and liberty are pitted against a changing social relationship with law enforcement, which I will discuss

Many forms of media have popularized the Fifth Amendment’s protection. For example, “grand jury indictment,” “due process,” “double jeopardy,” and the most popular one “pleading the

Most people use second hand information as their core source of information about crime, this source of information usually being the media. When carrying out sample research in Birmingham, Susan Smith (1984) discovered that 52% of people obtained most of their information about crime from the media, 36% obtained it from hearsay or alleged experiences of friends and neighbours, 3% from their own experiences, and 1% from the police service themselves (cited in Jones, 2001; 8). However the media tend to exaggerate upon areas of criminal activity causing a moral panic. ‘A moral panic is a semi- spontaneous or media generated mass movement based on the perception that some individual or group,

Crime is a social construction, and behaviour defined as criminal varies across time and place. Crime is an act that violate moral behaviour, but why is that not all behaviours that violate moral behaviour are labelled as crime? This is because crime is defined differently across different societies and different times. Neutralisation and drift theory helps us to explain why people abuse children by showing us how perpetrators rationalise their guilt for these actions before they physically, sexually, emotionally abuse or neglect children. They do this by blaming their actions on other people, higher forces or believing their acts are harmless. In this essay I will begin by talking about crime as a social construction then touch on child abuse in New Zealand followed by a discussion of how my social contract theory helps us to explain this crime.

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

The first mass media that developed came in the form of print media: newspapers. In addition to books and magazines, printed media traditionally tends to be more fact oriented. Print media can be more analytical in their reporting and can cover a story in more detail, and are less suited to emotional, visceral reporting than, say, television (Surette, 12). Newspapers contain only news and not the fictionalized crime drama presented on television. But that is not to say that print media is not capable of sensationalism all the same. A 1988 study found that newspapers in the mid – 1980s covered violent crimes (murder, robbery, rape, assault) four times more frequently than property crimes (burglary, larceny, theft), even though property crimes are nine times more prevalent (Krajicek, 98).

Crime is a social construct because it is an idea that is established by a society to control the behaviors of the people within the society (“Radical Concept of Crime”). What is considered to be criminal varies within different area and cultures and even time. Things that were legal two hundred years ago are illegal now. For example, in the 18th and 19th century when slavery was allowed in America, there were a lot of people who saw nothing wrong with it because they had been socialized to accept and justify it. If you ask most Americans now about slavery, they would say that it was a tragedy or that they just cannot understand how it happened. This is because we are now being socialized to think of slavery as wrong. Even though many citizens

The importance given to certain crimes in the daily newspapers and other media sources shows us proof to the fact that crime is a topic that has the public’s interest and is a focus of their worries (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2001). It goes on to discuss the fact that crime as reported on by the media increases the public’s levels of fears and that there is little or no correlation to actual levels of violent crime in our society today.

Crime is a socially constructed phenomenon. It is not static but dynamic and is defined into existence. It changes over time and place. For example, early definitions of crime such as classicism defined individuals as rational, free and responsible for their own actions. The emergence of positivism was an attempt to bring scientific methodology to criminology. Positivists believe in objectively quantifying cause and effect. In the early twentieth century a sociological lens was applied. Functionalist sociologists such as Durkheim argued that crime had a positive function for society by reinforcing societal norms and values (Ziyanak and Williams 2014). Anomie and strain theory proposed later by Robert Merton examined how poorer classes experienced frustration through lack of opportunities leading to strain. There are many others including labelling, control and cultural deviance, however; this shows that our understanding of criminology is not static and like crime itself it changes over time and place.

Many people have different theories as to why crime exists. Some believe crime happens because of the individual’s culture, education (or lack there of), or even their race. Others believe crime is associated with whom we surround ourselves with. There are three sociological theories that suggest why crime happens in society; they are social learning theory, social control theory, and social reaction (labeling) theory. These theories suggest it is our relationships and social interactions that influence our behavior.