Showing papers in "Crime, Media, Culture in 2008"

On the Concept of Moral Panic

Abstract: The article develops a critical analysis of the concept of moral panic and its sociological uses. Arguing that some of the concept's subtlety and power has been lost as the term has become popular, the article foregrounds its Freudian and Durkheimian aspects and explicates the epistemological and ethical issues involved in its use. Contrasting the dynamics of moral panics to the dynamics of culture wars, the author shows that both phenomena involve group relations and status competition, though each displays a characteristically different structure. The piece concludes by situating `moral panics' within a larger typology of concepts utilized in the sociology of social reaction.

Gang talk and gang talkers: A critique

Abstract: Recent years have witnessed a proliferation of interest in the phenomenon of the gang both in the UK and across Europe. Such concern has been driven forward by growing reports of gang activity reported in the media, circulated by populist politicians as well as by academic researchers convinced the European gang has been ignored for too long. This anxiety has coalesced in a perception that the gang is a serious and growing problem, that the rise in lethal violence, as seen recently in inner cities such as London, Birmingham, Manchester and Liverpool, is connected to the proliferation of the gang, and that the solution to the problem of urban gang violence lies in its suppression. This article takes a critical standpoint against these statements and challenges attempts to interpret urban violence in the UK as a problem of gangs or a burgeoning gang culture. It argues that the problem of street-based violence is not always reducible to the gang and suggests that the solution to preventing urban violence will not be found by sanctioning crackdowns or gang suppression programmes. It concludes by offering an alternate perception of the gang and urban violence and signposts areas that research on urban violence might need to address.

Living with the Other: Street sex work, contingent communities and degrees of tolerance

Abstract: There is substantial literature on how fears of Other populations are prompting the increased surveillance and regulation of public spaces at the heart of Western cities. Yet, in contrast to the consumer-oriented spaces of the city centre, there has been relatively little attention devoted to the quality of the street spaces in residential neighbourhoods beyond the central city. In this article, we explore how media representations of sex workers as an abject and criminalized Other inform the reactions of residents to street sex work in such communities. Drawing on our work in a number of British cities we highlight the different degrees of tolerance which residents express towards street sex work. In light of the Home Office strategy document, A Coordinated Prostitution Strategy, this article concludes by advocating participatory action research and community conferencing as a means of resolving conflicts and assuaging fears of difference.

'No emotion, no sympathy': The visual construction of Maxine Carr

Abstract: This article examines the visual press coverage in three centre-right British newspapers of the Soham murder trial, a very high-profile case which took place in the winter of 2003. The previous summer, two young girls had been abducted and murdered, and their school caretaker, Ian Huntley was charged with their murder. He was tried alongside his girlfriend, Maxine Carr who, significantly, was not deemed to be an accomplice but was charged with perverting the course of justice, because she provided an alibi for Huntley. Public loathing towards Carr remains intense and when she was released in May 2004 she was granted indefinite anonymity. This article focuses on the visual representation of Maxine Carr, in an attempt to understand the ways in which she was visually constructed in comparison with Ian Huntley. A content analysis and qualitative visual analysis were undertaken on the trial coverage published in The Times (broadsheet), the Daily Mail (middle market) and the Sun (tabloid). The content analysis demonstrated that images of Maxine Carr appeared more frequently than images of Ian Huntley, and were often larger and reproduced in colour. The qualitative visual analysis explored the placement and juxtaposition of the images with each other and with the headline text. We found disturbing evidence of newspaper formatting which could only encourage readers to draw misleading conclusions about Carr's role in the crime. The visual coverage in the press 'told' a very different story than the one which formed the basis for her sentence. We argue that the influence of newspaper page layout and image montages is too frequently overlooked by media scholars, but that it should not be underestimated, particularly in terms of the reporting of high-profile crimes.

Bad, mad or sad? Mothers who kill and press coverage in Israel:

Abstract: Israeli scholars have found that a lenient and paternalistic perception of violent mothers has been characteristic of Israeli court decisions over the last few decades and the general public. Mothers, in comparison to fathers, are perceived as being more influenced by mental disorders and therefore deserving of cure and care rather than punishment. As part of a wider research that compares the construction of fathers and mothers who kill, this article analyzed 19 articles from the three most popular secular Israeli daily newspapers that covered six notorious cases of filicide by mothers between 1992 and 2001. The coverage during the first few days, at the significant initial stages of the process of covering the events, received more in-depth examination. This research shows that the local press tends to stress the psychopathological etiology for the rare Jewish married mother who kills. It also suggests that this attitude is not present in cases of marginalized 'criminal' women: women from ethnic minorities (e.g. Arab women), and mothers who do not fill the traditional role of wife inside the 'well ordered family', as is true of young and unwed girls.

How material are cyberbodies? Broadband Internet and embodied subjectivity:

Abstract: Internet use is commonly portrayed as a form of disembodied communication, that is, communication from which bodily performativity has vanished, leaving users free to indulge in identity play and e

Suitable vehicles: Framing blame and justice when children kill a child:

Abstract: This article presents the results of a comparative analysis of English and Norwegian newspaper coverage of two child-on-child homicides from the 1990s. Domestic coverage of the English case of James Bulger presented it as alarmingly symptomatic of deep-seated moral decline in Britain that only tough, remoralizing strategies could address. Coverage of the Norwegian case of Silje Redergard constructed it as a tragic one-off, requiring expert intervention to facilitate the speedy reintegration of the boys responsible. Four sets of plausible explanations are offered to account for differences in the ways the two cases were constructed. First, different cultural constructions of childhood endure in each country and these condition the responses deemed appropriate for children who commit grave acts. Second, the dominant claims makers were very different in each jurisdiction with consequences for the quality of the discourses readers encountered. Third, while the legitimacy of elite expertise appears to survive in Norway, it appears to ail in Britain, and addressing this absence of public confidence has become a political priority. Fourth, a consensual political culture obtains in Norway and this makes Norwegian politicians less susceptible to the temptations experienced by adversarially acculturated English politicians to politicize high-profile crimes.

Wild pigs and outlaws: The kindred worlds of policing and outlaw bikers

Abstract: What are the similarities and differences between police officers and gang members? From a largely cultural and thoroughly critical perspective it is logical to develop a comparative analytical design that focuses on outlaw motorcycle clubs and police motorcycle fraternal organizations Outlaw motorcycle clubs arose following the Second World War, and across the past 50 years have been targeted by law enforcement for their increasingly sophisticated involvement in violent criminal activity They are characterized by hierarchical command structures, initiation rites and socialization processes, oaths of loyalty, codes of silence, a uniform mode of dress, and outwardly symbolic accoutrements of rank and achievement Police organizations and cultures are not much different in these aspects of signification; comparative analysis based on naturalistic inquiry may hold the key to greater understanding of both subcultures

Policing the crisis revisited: The state, masculinity, fear of crime and racism

Abstract: E. P. Thompson once said, I forget where, that the most difficult part of writing was the opening sentence since that set the tone, or the `voice', for the whole piece. I think of his words almost every time I start a new piece, reminding myself that a morning spent playing with openings is not wasted, although it may feel so at the time. The problem of a starting point seems even more difficult when being asked to revisit something (co)written over 30 years ago, a time that has seen enormous changes in the theoretical landscape, in the state of the world, and, inevitably, in my own personal life. Given all this, I feel that the best I can manage is to tell the story, heavily edited of course and with the broadest of broad brushes, of how it was then and of how (with appropriate nods to serendipity, contingency and chance) I got from there to here. This will entail sticking with those elements of my work — namely, policing, masculinity, fear of crime and racism — that most resonate with the themes of Poli...

Things like that don't happen here: Crime, place and real estate in the news

Abstract: This article investigates the construction of place in crime reporting through bystander quotes in recent crime stories in newspapers from the north-eastern US. These quotes are part of a larger pattern of reporting that highlights environmental features of serenity and peacefulness as antidotes to crime. Against claims that crime in the media is always exaggerated, this research demonstrates how the impact of crime is moderated by declaring it unlikely and by discursively shifting it to other geographic locations. It is argued that crime reporting shares a structural similarity with fictional representations of place found in film, and that this pattern of crime reporting helps to reinforce a suburban consumption ethos.

Transgressive decor: Narrative glimpses in Australian prisons, 1970s—1990s

Abstract: This article presents a number of examples of prison inmate graffiti photographed by the author in Australian decommissioned prisons. The images are examined with regard to aspects of the sociology and social psychology of the prison environment. Abiding themes of prison life are identified and discerned as factors contributing to the content of the graffiti. These include especially power relationships, sexuality, revenge, violence, boredom and the simple desire for some form of entertainment, however fleeting.

Still Policing the Crisis

Abstract: Writing this has been a troubling experience. Returning to a text 30 years on in this way combines intellectual, political and personal reflections in an unsettling way. These range from a powerful attachment to processes of collective or collaborative intellectual work that Policing the Crisis (PTC; Hall et al., 1978) embodied and enhanced to a rather depressed sense of how many things the book got right about the trajectory of the British social formation in the mid 1970s (other futures might have been preferable). And above all, there is a sense of what the book stands for in the emergence of cultural studies as an institutionalized academic field. As a way of trying to digest these different responses, I have tried to address three sorts of questions: why PTC mattered, where it belongs and why it continues to have echoes in the present.

Mediating crime, mediating culture: Nationality, femininity, corporeality and territory in the Schapelle Corby drugs case

Abstract: This article uses the arrest and conviction of Australian Schapelle Corby (for smuggling drugs into Indonesia) to articulate and explore the mediation of criminal `events' across borders, bodies and technologies. As such, connections are drawn to the resurgence of nationalistic and neocolonial discourses within the contexts of globalization and the `war on terror'. Working at the intersections of gender, race, border control and national identity, the Corby phenomenon is taken as a political drama of visuality and nationality that equates bodily security with regional integrity. Thus this article necessarily tracks the persistence of the body of the white female as a unit of currency in the aggressive adherence to historical tropes of nationalism. The mediation of Schapelle's `criminal' body is shown to deploy a corporeal lexicon of terror through which the celebrity prisoner articulates tensions and changes in bilateral relations with Indonesia.

Crime, media, coding : Developing a methodological framework for computer-aided analysis

Abstract: As researchers within the fi eld of ‘crime, media, culture’ we often set out to study cultural representations of crime. We inform our readers, supervisors or research councils that we will analyse how different types or aspects of crime are portrayed by the media. But no matter what our objects of study or theories are, we always need a systematic approach to capturing the way in which the crimes under analysis, in fact, are represented. This can of course not be done by simply watching television or reading newspapers and making random notes or refl ections. Rather, we need a methodological framework which brings stringency to the process and systematizes it. My aim in the following is to present a suggestion as to how such a framework could be developed. Building on experiences from a recent research project on media representations of youth robberies in Sweden, a methodological strategy which combines the use of quantitative and qualitative techniques for content analysis and interpretation will be described. This particular approach relies heavily on the use of the NVivo software for qualitative analysis, although similar packages such as atlas.ti or MAXqda could be used just as well (Richards, 1999; Bazeley and Richards, 2000; Gibbs, 2002). Since I had a large amount of data to work with, I felt the need to develop a structured approach which would facilitate the analysis and make it as transparent as possible. How, I asked myself, should I work in order to arrive at a believable account of how the media constructed the problem of these youth robberies?

Hitting the panic button: policing/'mugging'/media/crisis

Abstract: Policing the Crisis (PTC) is an intriguing text that flickers hazily in the contested histories of both critical criminology and cultural studies in the UK. For 'the last of the true believers' within critical criminology, it remains the most thorough and sophisticated example of how to use Marxism to theorize the problem of crime. The strength of PTC lies in its hard-edged stance on analysis and prescription and its intellectually eclectic explanatory framework. Not surprisingly, re-reading Hall et al.'s analysis of 'mugging' and the news media in 2007 one realizes how much has altered since 1978.

Crime as an issue during the 2005 UK general election

Abstract: Politicians are fond of telling interviewers that their focus should be on the `real issues' or `what matters most to the people'. This research note considers the place of crime as a `real issue', specifically during the national general election held in the UK in May 2005. According to research by Ipsos MORI (May 2005), at the time of the election the issues that mattered most to people were crime (40 per cent), the health service (36 per cent), race relations/immigration (27 per cent) and education (26 per cent). Crime was clearly important to the public, but how was this reflected in the policies of the main parties and the media coverage of the campaign?

Investigating the crisis of the present

Abstract: As we begin Crime, Media, Culture’s fourth volume, the need for serious and sustained scholarly engagement with the intersections of crime, media and culture has never been greater. Around the world, genocidal criminality competes with global warming and a Spice Girls reunion for media attention. The United States gears up for a presidential election sure to be decided by distorted images of terrorism, gender, and crime. The Guardian declares that, with some 138 journalists now killed, Iraq has become a war ‘no longer . . . accessible to public scrutiny or to democratic engagement’, and so evidences ‘the end of the media as a major actor in war’ (Bunting, 2007: 17). In the heartland of the United States, a distraught young man murders eight people at a mega-shopping mall and then kills himself, all in the hope that ‘now I’ll be famous’. Meanwhile, a little girl goes missing – and the media are mobilized. Madeleine McCann’s disappearance in Portugal has generated a torrent of international media coverage – coverage that may in fact be ushering in a dangerous extension in the hyper-mediatization of crime and control. Images of Madeleine are ubiquitous, and can be spotted not only in the media, but in airports and other public venues around the world. Two points arising from this story are worth briefl y dwelling on here. First, in November 2007, charities released fi gures indicating that more than 600 children have been missing in the UK for as long as Madeleine McCann, and are still unaccounted for (Woolf, 2007). Among them, dozens have disappeared from local authority care, and many more have been identifi ed by police and immigration offi cers as traffi cking victims: 40 are considered to be at particularly ‘high risk’ of harm. Many of these children have no parents to launch an appeal and few have achieved any kind of media visibility. None has attracted the levels of attention devoted to the McCann case. Secondly, the intensity and relentlessness of the media focus on the McCanns becomes all the more interesting when we consider the dearth of verifi able facts in the case. Indeed, all we ‘know’ at the time of writing is that a little girl has gone missing. No body has been found, no clear information regarding Madeleine’s whereabouts has been uncovered, and no one has been offi cially charged with an offence. Yet Madeleine’s parents – Kate and Gerry McCann – have been subjected to nothing short

Booing or cheering? Ambiguity in the construction of victimhood in the case of Maria Colwell

Abstract: This paper presents a microanalysis of the media representation of victimhood in key public narratives It builds on Peelo's account of the `mediated witness' as part of the struggle for control of the crime agenda To extend Peelo's analysis to other areas of public policy making, the paper uses the example of an iconic welfare `scandal' (the Maria Colwell case) and focuses particularly on the role of victims themselves in the struggle to own and exploit victimhood The paper argues that ambiguity in the ascription of victimhood can reveal points of unresolved tension in the emerging public narrative that the scandal (or crime) is meant to signify, explain and incorporate

Street crime: Interpretation and legacy in Policing the Crisis:

Abstract: Policing the Crisis (PTC) (Hall et al., 1978) is a book written ostensibly about a crime or, more specifi cally, a crime wave. The crime in question is what the police would come to refer to as ‘street crime’ but which everyone else at the time would come to label ‘mugging’. This is also a book about how and why young black men were singled out for labelling as the archetypical muggers behind this crime wave during the early 1970s, when the research was conducted. The book begins in a traditional criminological vein. The authors review the empirical evidence that had been mobilized to support the contention that there was indeed a street crime pandemic and one in which black males were over-represented. The evidence is examined and the authors are not impressed by what they fi nd. There is, they argue, little evidence to support either conjecture. Street crime, they argue, is not new; it is a perennial feature of urban life in British society. Nor was this the fi rst time a moral panic around it had occurred. As there was, consequently, no prima facie evidence of a crime wave, they see no reason to adopt the path of conventional criminology and study street robbers. Drawing on Stan Cohen’s work in Folk Devils and Moral Panics (1972), they instead ask why, in the face of no compelling evidence, a moral panic over black muggers emerged in British society when it did. From an analysis of the deviant, the text became instead an extended exegesis on the moral panic that surrounded a crime wave the authors did not believe had occurred but out of which the black mugger was produced. From an analysis of the deviant, the text became instead an analysis of the social construction of the black mugger as a folk devil and an analysis of the social function this folk devil would then serve. Well not entirely, because at the very end of PTC, a kind of explanation for street crime and the involvement within it of young black males is in fact attempted. This chapter, entitled ‘The Politics of Mugging’ has the feel of a supplementary narrative and, as such, it sits strangely at odds with the tenor of the text that preceded it. From a narrative that sought to examine a moral panic that had, its authors argued, little basis in material fact, the text returns to ponder black involvement in street robbery. In substance, the explanation advanced involved revising and humanizing an older

`Aftermath: Living with the crisis': From PTC to Governing Through Crime

Abstract: In these disparate voices we can hear the closure occurring — the interlocking mechanisms closing, the doors clanging shut. The society is battening itself down for `the long haul' through a crisis. There is light at the end of the tunnel — but not much; and it is far off. Meanwhile, the state has won the right, and indeed inherited the duty, to move swiftly, to stamp fast and hard, to listen in, discreetly survey, saturate and swamp, charge or hold without charge, act on suspicion, hustle and shoulder, to keep society on the straight and narrow. Liberalism, that last back-stop against arbitrary power, is in retreat. It is suspended. The times are exceptional. The crisis is real. We are inside the `law-and-order' state. (Hall et al., 1978: 323)Welcome to the desert of the real.1

The subversion of Eros: Dialectic, revolt, and murder in the polity of the soul

Abstract: The political is most often conceived in terms of being exterior to the individual. Yet, if capitalism represents a kind of ubiquitous horizon, one that succeeds in conforming the unrestricted desires of the individual to the burdens of `reality', as Marcuse suggests in Eros and Civilization (1966), then the political can easily constitute the interior as well. The unified self becomes the projection of an interior polity composed of conflicting interests struggling for control. In this article I explore the phenomena of self-destructive sexualities through a reengagement with Marcuse's performance principle. First, I argue that Marcuse's concept of performance requires an elaboration that prohibits discrete boundaries for when an individual is performing and when they are purely governed by the quest for pleasure. I suggest that only in the briefest instances is pleasure free from the strictures of ideological performance. Consequential to the expansion of Marcuse's performance principle, I examine the d...

Crime's family tree: Conflating race, criminality and family in New Zealand

Abstract: This paper produces a critical reading of discourses of criminality, family and racialization circulating in an interrelated set of feature articles published in late 2006 in a major New Zealand newspaper. Through images, diagrams and written text, local crime is mapped as a familial aberration that threatens a whole city and region. Rather than demonstrating a novel approach to reporting crime, this paper argues that the representation of crime in these texts puts the body politic of the state, and good governance, at risk in ways that resonate with the new modes of subjectivity and responsibility that Nikolas Rose (2007) traces from contemporary biomedicine into populist discourses.

Scrapbooking the criminal defence file

Abstract: This article moves away from a common understanding of a criminal defence file as a container for relevant documentation and addresses it as a cultural object which organizes and performs various written documents towards making a case. In my examination I employ rhetorical ethnography of communication. Suggested by Thomas Farrell and Tamar Katriel, the method was originally applied to the analysis of the scrapbooks presented as the cultural text of identity. Drawing on the analogy between the legal file and the scrapbook I show how specific activities (saving; organizing; sharing) expose the criminal defence file to be a culturally choreographed way of law-making, whose performative identity is defined by forensic, deliberative, and testimonial discourses.

Review: Lifting: Theft in Art: Fort Worth Contemporary Arts/The Art Galleries at TCU, Ft. Worth, USA. Curated by Atopia Projects [www.atopiaprojects.org]/Gavin Morrison and Fraser Stables April—May 2008 In different forms at Peacock Visual Arts, Aberdeen, Scotland, UK, August—September 2007; and at Georgia Scherman Projects, Toronto, Canada, April—June 2008

Abstract: If Lifting: Theft in Art were a person instead of a gallery showing, it would be a slippery little sneak thief, stealing your wallet without your knowing, then coming back around to buy you a drink with your own money and engage you in earnest conversation about the aesthetics of property and theft. Incorporating fi lm, video, photography, wall text and installation, the exhibit and an associated publication (Morrison and Stables, 2008) showcase artists who have explored the interplay of theft and art. More to the point, the artists haven’t just considered the concept of theft; they’ve thieved – paintings, hubcaps, doorstops, clothes, fi lms, magazines, money – as part of their art. Some of these stolen goods are on display in the exhibit; others are documented in fi lm or photography. Either way, the exhibit seduces the viewer into a series of subversive visual pleasures – and in so doing forces an uncomfortable consideration of the viewer’s own complicity in the process. By appropriating everyday objects, many of the pieces in the exhibit also appropriate and make problematic everyday meaning. Alison Wiese presents a collection of stolen doorstops – ugly, uncrafted wooden wedges, scarred from their time shoved under open doors, and now piled unceremoniously on the gallery fl oor. But perhaps there is now something artistic about them, accumulated there on the fl oor of an art gallery – or perhaps the art was in the taking? The Art Guys force this question more directly, and more ludicrously, displaying a mundane meat tenderizing mallet, stolen from a friend, and now ensconced in a lovely glass case with explanatory gold plaque. Meanwhile, Micah Lexier asks the question in a way that a cultural Marxist might appreciate, bringing into the gallery stolen restroom cleaning logs of the sort public restroom attendants fi ll out to confi rm the regularity of their sanitation work. Evidence of a particularly degraded form of low-wage labour, these logs – at one time practical