NCJ Number
213538
Editor(s)
Paul Mason
Date Published
2006
Length
252 pages
Annotation
This anthology contains chapters that examine how the media (television, newspapers, and movies) portray correctional regimes and influence the shaping of popular, punitive approaches to the management of offenders.
Abstract
One chapter reports on research which has found that people with highly punitive attitudes toward offenders identify with crime narratives that portray clear distinctions between right and wrong; whereas, nonpunitive people are attracted to stories with more ambiguous and complex portrayals of the morality of human behaviors. Another chapter offers hope that new information technologies and persuasive social movements will provide a more informed and rational approach to corrections policies. A chapter focuses on print media coverage of State executions in the United States, with attention to how it has normalized the death penalty by presenting it from the State's perspective. Other chapters explore how the news media fuel support for more punitive prison regimes by suggesting that they are like holiday camps. The second half of the book focuses on television and film, beginning with a chapter by a documentary filmmaker who has portrayed prisons as places for the marginalized and disenfranchised of society. Other chapters note that crime dramas identify with victims' suffering and the efforts of police and prosecutors to ensure that criminals are properly punished. Some chapters explore television and film dramas about life in prison for both males and females. Many of these dramas attempt to provide accurate portrayals of the personalities, conflicts, and coping behaviors of inmates, but they offer no clear messages about how public policy provides the setting and the stresses within which inmates live. A chapter also discusses correctional regimes of the future as portrayed in sci-fi films. They provide warnings about manipulation and control of human behavior more than physically punitive regimes. Chapter notes and references and a subject index