Crime and Punishment in Detective Stories: Poetic Misdeeds Since E. A. Poe (From Images of Crime: Representations of Crime and the Criminal in Science, the Arts and the Media, P 169-183, 2001, Hans-Jorg Albrecht, Afroditi Koukoutsaki, et al, eds. -- See NCJ-192094)

• NCJ Number: 192098
• Author(s): Petros Martinidis
• Date Published: 2001
• Length: 15 pages
• Sale Source: Max-Planck-Institute Fur Auslandisches und Internationales Strafrecht
• Publication Format: Book (Softbound)
• Publication Type: Issue Overview
• Language: English
• Country: Germany (Unified)

Annotation

This article discusses detective stories and the images of crime, of the criminal, and of the prison, as well as the agents of social control which this kind of "para-literature" produces.

Abstract

The fictional portrayal of the conditions of crime and its punishment, the invented narratives and fictions, irrespective of how indirectly they relate to the real world of criminals and to their actions, very effectively disseminate to the wider public incidents of illegal acts or the perpetrators' psychology and the adventurous endings of the police chase. Literary stereotypes about the fairness or unfairness of the punishments and about the psycho-pathological or environmental causes of delinquency are frequently offered to the public. Despite being fictitious and invented, they may contribute directly to the conception and evaluation of various reform measures or, inversely, to the perseverance of various vindictive methodologies or the practice of taking the law into one's own hands. In fiction, crime has "faces"; its development has cohesion, its persecutors ingenuity, and its punishment expediency. The article claims that all these receive much more extensive publicity than any academic endeavor might ever attract. Notes, references