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Moral panics, the media and crime
Classical theories in criminal justice
Classical theories in criminal justice
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1) choose the theory from part one of the course most relevant to explaining your chosen topic, and provide a succinct analysis of the theory The criminal law are rules of conduct set to prevent ‘crime against the person and crime against the property’ in different time and places (Rush 2003). Each state in Australia has a specific set of criminal law, which is designed to protect individuals of a state from facing possible harm and threat. In order to achieve policy reforms, legal authorities make use of moral panics to create tension in society, so as to increase public awareness and gain social support towards related issues. On the other hand, mass media create moral panics to achieve commercial gain by increasing coverages of a particular issue to draw public concerns. …show more content…
Threats may have been perceived and detected which could impact and cause an imbalance in the society. Moral panics are built upon seven major factors, concern, hostility, consensus, disproportionality, volatility, the moral dimension and symptomatic idea, and comes in different categories and forms (Cohen 2004). Each panic may have different levels of social influence over different time period depending on the seriousness of the problem. Issues that are not as severe would draw public concerns for a shorter period, meanwhile more serious problems may result in long-lasting transformation and modification of laws and legislations. Thus, moral panics shaped by the legal authorities and mass media may influence the criminal law of a state. Critical thinking should be made by the public to decide the seriousness and appropriateness of the issue, so as to ensure the criminal law would not be affected by political or commercial
The roots of Australian laws are similar to traditional Aboriginal laws, dating back to before the Norman Conquest in 1066, where each separate village had their own laws developed to their own customs. This changed however, after a centralized legal system was established after 1066. A common law was formed, that applied to all of England. This was later combined with equity law and mercantile law, which is the basis of Australian law today, known as ‘statute law’.
Legal system is a comprehensive term that is used to confirm the existence of the law; it also explains the law-making process and how this is enforced on everyone. The Australian legal system regulates all level of governments, organisations, and all people whether they are Australian born or have migrated here, and they must obey Australia’s regulations. The legal system here was developed from the United Kingdom’s legal system, as Australia was a colony of the British. At a glance, the British government granted restricted rights to their colonies, including Australia to set local government system. This was intended to developed laws in local area, also to deal with specific situation at that time. As a result, the legal system in each of the colonies started to develop separately. According to Carvan J (2010) the Australian law is adopted from several sources, including the rules of equity, parliamentary laws, delegated legislations, judge-made laws, and international laws. (Austrlian Legal System, 2007)
The main topic that we get from this idea is popular punitivism. Popular punitivism is a process that is used all over the world to try and control crime. It is a concept that balances coercion and consent that uses movements that are with the popular opinion “to engage in vote buying and power maintenance” (Makin). The idea of this is that officials focus crimes that the public is seeing more often than usually. Looking at Cohen’s deviancy amplification process can help explain this better. The process shows that when the media begins to talk more about a certain crime then the public thinks that that particular crime rate is rising and the clear up rate is falling. After this the fear of crime increasing and there begins to be a mass panic. The officials see this panic and focus their attention on the punishment of that crime. New legislations are created that impose more severe punishments so that the officials can show the community that they see what is going on and they are trying to fix it. Citizens believe that if the officials are tough on the crime than the problem will go away. However, we know that the problem does not just go away and now that we have harsher penalties there are more people being thrown into
R N Howie and P A Johnson, Annotated Criminal Legislation NSW, 2011-2102, (Lexis Nexis Butterworths 2012) 17769-1774
“Moral panic has been defined as a situation in which public fears and state interventions greatly exceed the objective threat posed
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, frequently a minority group or subculture, is dangerously deviant and poses menace to society. These panics are generally fuelled by the media, although not always caused by, media coverage of social issues… These panics can sometimes lead to mob violence… (newsfilter.co.uk).
The social construction of myths of crime and criminal justice seems to follow a series of recurrent patterns. These patterns allow for an unprecedented amount of social attention to be focused upon a few isolated criminal events or issues. This attention is promoted by intense, but often brief, mass media coverage of a select problem. Intense social concern of an issue is achieved by a variety of means from the mass media, government, law enforcement officials, interpersonal communications, and the interests of reform groups whom all play major roles in focusing the publics attention on select so...
This kind of social issue is more evident when episodes with violence are trending topics. For example, during and after the September 11th’s attack in New York, many Arabs, Muslims, and South Asians, were subject to revisions and detentions because authorities had no clue about how those mentioned attacks were perpetrated and who did them. It was not just a matter concerning authorities, society in general condemned hardly to the entire eastern community, even though many of that people stopped, detained, and questioned, did not have any linkage with this terrorist event.
In every society around the world, the law is affecting everyone since it shapes the behavior and sense of right and wrong for every citizen in society. Laws are meant to control a society’s behavior by outlining the accepted forms of conduct. The law is designed as a neutral aspect existent to solve society’s problems, a system specially designed to provide people with peace and order. The legal system runs more efficiently when people understand the laws they are intended to follow along with their legal rights and responsibilities.
The sociological concept of ‘moral panic’ is said to be used by the mass media in an attempt to entertain audiences. Cohen (1980: p. 9) suggests that a fear-provoking event or condition is covered by the media, with individuals who may have political agendas suggesting their own methods of prevention to the listening audiences (as cited in Altheide 2009, p. 79-80). Moral panic in relation to certain crimes can be seen as a possible explanation to the growing prison population. Chiricos (n.d.) furthers this notion by stating that “over the past fifteen years, the United States has had an expanding underclass, a declining crime rate and an exploding prison population” (p. 44). Thus, it seems possible to suggest that moral panic among citizens
Goode, E. & Yehuda, N. B.1994. Moral Panics: The Social Construction of Deviance. Oxford: Blackwell.
In the article, “Moral Panics: Culture, Politics, and Social Construction” the authors Erich Goode and Nachman Ben-Yehuda discuss two different perspectives of moral panics. Each perspective give a different way of looking at how moral panics are portrayed to come about in society. The Objectivist perspective and the Constructionist perspective show how people view moral panics. However, the Constructionist perspective is more important and valuable to society than the Objectivist perspective.
Punishment occurs to individuals who break the law. It is also used to maintain the level of crime and to protect community members in Australia. To determine that society is content with maintaining the crime rate, this essay will discuss punishment types given to offenders and how society justifies the use punishment. Additionally, providing a brief overview of the community correction and prions rates to show that communities prefer to incarcerate lawbreakers. Highlighting that crime rates are being maintained by looking at the personal crime rate for assault before concluding that Australian society feel safe enough to allow the criminal justice system to sustain the crime rate.
Throughout society there are both individuals and groups of people with a wide range of perceptions about crime and justice. These perceptions are influenced by the media and what the media presents. Media presents crime stories in ways that selectively distort and manipulate public perception, thus creating a false picture of crime. Therefore the media provides us with perceptions and social constructions about our world. Firstly I will be discussing the role of the media in constructing knowledge about crime. I will begin by explaining why the media is important, and go further to explain that media representations construct knowledge of crime and since knowledge about crime is constructed it does not necessarily capture reality in fact crime stories are often sensationalised. I will then link this to my central argument that the media shapes people’s perceptions of crime and how this is important as it can lead to changes in the law. I will then explain what it is that the public or society needs to be aware of when reading and watching media reports about crime. We need to be aware of bias and moral panics that are created by the media and how the media shapes or influence’s public perception through this, it is important for us to be aware of misleading or false crime stories so that we are not swayed by the media in believing what they want us to believe.
Often, authorities initiate investigation teams to gather information about the variables of public tragedies. They try to connect the pieces of the puzzle in the situation and identify a source from which the tragedy stemmed. With this information, people feel that they are able to prevent the tragedy from reoccurring. They put an effort to predict actions and situations that lead to similar tragedies and implement ways to inhibit catastrophes. Additionally, they try to analyze the motives behind tragedies, especially if they were fulfilled by humans, and apply their conclusions to educate the public on signs of potential risks of tragedies. Many times these attempts to avoid tragedies are successful, but when they are not, they can cause further confusion in the public opinion and