Rise and fall

Programs like 'Scared Straight' involve organized visits to prison facilities by juvenile delinquents or children at risk for becoming delinquent. The programs are designed to deter participants from future offending by providing first-hand observations of prison life and interaction with adult inmates. Results of this review indicate that not only does it fail to deter crime but it actually leads to more offending behavior. Government officials permitting this program need to adopt rigorous evaluation to ensure that they are not causing more harm to the very citizens they pledge to protect.

/pdf/scared-straight-and-other-juvenile-awareness-programs-for-59msnj5cj2.pdf

'Scared Straight' and other juvenile awareness programs for preventing juvenile delinquency

6 Consumer synopsis 6 Executive summary and abstract background 6 Objectives 6 Search strategy 6 Selection criteria 7 Data collection and analysis 7 Results 7 Author’s conclusions 7

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.4073/csr.2013.5

Scared Straight and Other Juvenile Awareness Programs for Preventing Juvenile Delinquency: A Systematic Review

This article aims to demonstrate that, despite their potential for cultivating communitarianism and deliberative democracy on a large scale, the mass media contribute decisively to the formation of punitiveness amongst the public by means of selective semiotic aestheticisation. They overstate the problem of crime; put the blame on marginalised cohorts and level heavy criticism against the administration of prisons purportedly for laxity; issue urgent calls for ever-greater reliance on the use of strict imprisonment by the authorities and the adoption of self-policing measures by local communities and private individuals; and either mute or neutralise the attendant hardships prisoners suffer at the hands of the state. Breaking with discourses of rational linearity, whereby distorted perceptions of criminal danger result in punitive reactions, the claim is made that the imagery of crime and punishment helps audiences resolve at the level of symbolic expression contradictions which remain unconsciously insoluble at the level of everyday life.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/SSRN_ID1560134_code1172588.pdf?abstractid=1560134&mirid=3

The Ambivalent Consequences of Visibility: Crime and Prisons in the Mass Media

/pdf/the-ambivalent-consequences-of-visibility-crime-and-prisons-4muwuarkba.pdf

The ambivalent consequences of visibility: Crime and prisons in the mass media

Previous literature on ‘the prison film’ has generally been sceptical as to the value of portrayals of prisons and prisoners in popular film. The prison film is said to contain little real informat...

Re-theorizing the penal reform functions of the prison film Revelation, humanization, empathy and benchmarking

This article presents a case study of the serial killer Trevor Joseph Hardy — who murdered three young women in Manchester, England between 1974 and 1976, and who is now one of Britain’s longest serving prisoners. Even so, Hardy and his crimes are almost unknown. As such, the article uses the Hardy case to consider academic definitions of ‘newsworthiness’ and the assertion that the rise of the mass media has made serial killing a ‘media event’. Through a series of interviews with journalists who covered the case, the article suggests possible reasons as to why Hardy has disappeared from popular and academic consciousness.

When serial killers go unseen: The case of Trevor Joseph Hardy

This exploratory article presents an overview of British, male family annihi- lators from 1980 to 2012. In doing so it provides a range of criminological information relevant to the incidents being described, and offers a taxonomy of four different types of annihilators that moves discussion beyond 'revenge/altruistic' categories.

A Taxonomy of Male British Family Annihilators, 1980–2012

This article examines the TV series Banged Up and media reactions to it. In doing so it seeks to argue that it served a wider public service purpose, or public criminology, than simply entertainment. A number of other ‘experiments’ and the crossover between those and reality TV are also explored. The series was not universally admired and no attempt is made to hide this. In addition to engaging with theoretical matters the experience of one of the authors of being part of the programme is set out. (Authors' abstract)

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/hojo_584.pdf?abstractid=1524500&mirid=1

David Wilson

Papers

Re-theorizing the penal reform functions of the prison film Revelation, humanization, empathy and benchmarking

When serial killers go unseen: The case of Trevor Joseph Hardy

A Taxonomy of Male British Family Annihilators, 1980–2012

‘I'm Making a TV Programme Here!’: Reality TV'S Banged Up and Public Criminology

Counterblast: The Public Criminologist and the Democratic Under-labourer