Читать книгу Releasing Prisoners, Redeeming Communities - Anthony C. Thompson - Страница 9

2

Media Influence on Public Perceptions of Prison Life

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, two news photographs ricocheted around the Internet and set off a debate about race and the news media. The first photo, taken by Dave Martin, an Associated Press photographer in New Orleans, shows a young Black man wading through water that has risen to his chest. He is clutching a case of soda and pulling a floating bag. The caption provided by the AP says he has just been “looting a grocery store.” The second photo, also from New Orleans, was taken by Chris Graythen for Getty Images and distributed by Agence France-Presse. It shows a White couple up to their chests in the same murky water. The woman is holding some bags of food. This caption says they are shown “after finding bread and soda from a local grocery store.” Both photos turned up on Yahoo News, which posts automatic feeds of articles and photos from wire services. Soon after, the rapper Kanye West ignored the teleprompter during NBC’s live broadcast of “A Concert for Hurricane Relief,” using the opportunity to lambast President Bush and criticize the press. “I hate the way they portray us in the media,” he said. “You see a Black family, it says they’re looting. You see a White family, it says they’re looking for food.” ¹

Many people have had no direct contact or experience with the criminal justice system, so their information about criminal justice comes exclusively from second-hand reporting, entertainment, and other representations in the media. This fact has important implications for public perceptions of law enforcement agencies, the courts and prisons, offenders, and victims. Several studies have shown that television programming greatly exaggerates the amount and frequency of violent crime relative to property crime.² Both news and entertainment media consistently portray a more violent and dangerous view of our world than exists in reality.

The media’s dramatic effect on shaping perceptions of reality is clear.³ One study has correlated the amount of media coverage on a particular correctional topic with public knowledge of and interest in the same subject. In Florida, polling information revealed that the general public perceived overcrowding of prison facilities as the most pressing correctional problem, and a content analysis of Florida news media showed “overcrowding” to be the most frequently reported correctional issue.⁴ There was, in fact, no real problem of overcrowding in Florida prisons at the time, but media coverage and emphasis informed and shaped public perception despite the reality of the situation.⁵

So-called reality programs sometimes integrate actual footage and dramatic reenactments of the real-life adventures of police officers, suspects, emergency medical personnel, and everyday citizens performing heroic feats.⁶ Popular crime dramas focus primarily on violent offenders, perhaps for dramatic effect. One is left with the clear impression that criminal activity is typically random or results from individual pathology rather than larger social ills such as poverty, racism, and unemployment.⁷ And much as we see in the local news, the entertainment industry quite regularly depicts the crime problem along racial lines, with a disproportionate number of White officers compared to White offenders, and a disproportionate number of minority offenders compared to minority officers.⁸ Obviously, the script writers and producers of these crime dramas have no interest in presenting—and are under no obligation to offer—a balanced viewpoint. So, it is not unusual to view the events that these shows depict from the perspective of either law enforcement officials or prosecutors.⁹ Viewers are left with the impression that the police operate efficiently and always solve their cases. These distorted images may combine to skew viewers’ perceptions of the crime problem in the United States. And these distortions become particularly problematic when we consider how they serve to stereotype people of color.

The popular media’s portrayal of our corrections system tends to focus on violence, corruption, and a severe degree of disorganization. Nightly news coverage and investigative stories represent the media’s effort to provide more in-depth coverage of the lives of inmates and the problems they encounter. But, more often, the public builds its perception of prison life from the entertainment media. Television programs such as Prison Break and Oz and popular movies such as The Shawshank Redemption often purport to give the public an insider’s view of the daily lives of inmates.¹⁰ Millions of people watch these forms of entertainment; the influence upon the public imagination cannot be discounted.¹¹ But, the public is unaware of this impact. In a self-reporting survey, many people underestimated the role of entertainment in the creation or reinforcement of their own subconscious assumptions, especially in comparison to the impact of explicitly “informative” news programming.¹²

A. News Coverage of Prisons and Offenders

The news media continues to have a significant impact on the development of public policy in the related areas of prisons, crime, and delinquency. Crime coverage in the news media plays an important agenda-setting role, as well as influencing public perceptions about the incidence and severity of antisocial behavior.¹³ By looking at the percentage of stories and their content, we can begin to glean patterns that may explain policy as well as public opinion.

A content analysis of 206 New York Times articles relating to corrections published between 1992 and 1995 found that more stories focused on institutional violence and riots than any other issue, at 40 percent.¹⁴ Interestingly, the second most reported were stories on correctional programs and rehabilitation (34 percent), followed by health care (17 percent), followed by stories about tough-on-crime policies (16 percent).¹⁵ Content analysis found that the majority of sources quoted by the New York Times were government officials voicing support for the government’s position on a particular issue.¹⁶ In the case of institutional violence, the articles focused almost entirely on particular violent events, rather than on policy debate.¹⁷

Articles on institutional violence often took the form of investigative reporting, a method almost entirely absent from other articles on correctional issues.¹⁸ As for the prevalence of articles on rehabilitation, the authors of the content analysis use this result to suggest that, “contrary to the claims of some correctional pundits, the issue of rehabilitation is far from dead.”¹⁹ The statistical content analysis at least suggests that the bulk of the stories on corrections—and indirectly on those who inhabit prisons—focused on violence. This is more than a confirmation of the “if it bleeds, it leads” mantra. Rather, this speaks to the difficulty in developing a constituency and support for reentry. It also highlights the focus on government sources for quotes. If the public sees that the primary “in-depth, newsworthy stories” from prison are full of violence, then the news contributes to the notion that prisons are violent places filled with people who cannot easily be reintegrated.

Electronic media have been equally as focused on violent crime. Researchers have documented the media’s predilection for stories of criminal violence against another person.²⁰ A survey of local television news in Los Angeles revealed that crime coverage was overwhelmingly focused on violent crime rather than property nonviolent crime and that where the race of the offender was recorded, nearly 70 percent were non-White males.²¹ A similar study of local news in Chicago confirmed that television images were not only violent but also disproportionately focused on incidents involving perpetrators who were people of color.²² People tend to forget, ignore, or miss altogether distinctions in crime news, which is a further means of developing false impressions. In watching and reading the news, the average viewer tends to think of a person who kills after being released from prison for a lesser—or less violent—offense simply as another murderer who was released too early. This assumption ignores altogether that he was released as someone who had committed a lesser crime and had never committed murder. Thus, news accounts of murders committed by persons who have previously served prison terms for other crimes, or by persons who were charged with first-degree murder but convicted of lesser offenses and later paroled, may contribute to the false impression that convicted first-degree murderers are back on the streets far sooner than they actually are. Of course, such selective ignorance makes these stories more consonant with myths of crime and punishment.

There is no question that the public is deeply concerned about crime; however, the average citizen actually knows very little about rates of incarceration, who is being incarcerated, and how much time they serve. This information is not part of the media coverage on crime; that coverage is episodic, not analytical. Nonetheless, Julian Roberts and Loretta Stalans have conducted a number of studies that seem to indicate that the majority of the public in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia share the view that sentences imposed on adults are too lenient.²³ In 1996, polls conducted by the National Opinion Research Center reported that 67 percent of those surveyed thought that the nation spent too little on stemming the rising rate of crime,²⁴ while 78 percent said that the courts in their area did not deal harshly enough with criminals.²⁵ Elected officials have responded to public concern about crime with an easily explained, superficially appealing strategy that does not provide an effective response to that concern. Simplistic terms and limited sentencing discretion proffered by elected officials are not limited to violent crime (which the public is largely focused on) but tend to catch large numbers of property and drug offenders in their indiscriminate nets as well.

B. Entertainment Media

In thinking critically and analytically about policies and attitudes regarding offenders, ex-offenders, reentry, and race, it is helpful—if not necessary—to examine the entertainment media. Movies, in their two-hour format, provide an opportunity to transport the viewer to a world wholly divorced from his or her own daily experiences. This medium taps into emotions and transmits messages about the prison and postprison experiences. At its best, entertainment media can educate the public to a side of life that is normally concealed to the average person. At its worst, it can caricature, stereotype, and titillate with little concern about the accuracy of its portrayals. What follows is a closer look at a few examples.

1. The Shawshank Redemption

Although not initially a huge hit upon its release in 1994, The Shawshank Redemption became enormously successful through video rental and sales.²⁶ In the Internet Movie Database list of the top 250 movies of all time, as voted by users, Shawshank rates as number two—trailing only the original Godfather, and easily eclipsing in popularity such iconic films as Star Wars and Casablanca.²⁷ The Shawshank Redemption (Castle Rock Entertainment, 1994) is based on “Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption,” a novella that Stephen King published in a collection called Different Seasons.²⁸

Shawshank combines two genres: escape fantasy and prison movie. Although stylistically and thematically, the film sets itself apart from other prison movies, it does employ classic prison movie devices, including corrupt prison authorities, unchecked inmate violence, and sexual assault. The lead character, Andy, played by Tim Robbins, must endure the repeated experience of homosexual rape at the hands of the “Sisters,” men who represent the perceived brutal side of prison life. The ultimate message is that the prison experience is so brutal and entrenched that no one can truly be rehabilitated.

The prison librarian, Brooks, has lived in an institutional setting for so long that not only has he adjusted to it, but he cannot survive outside its walls. Consequently, when he is released and reenters society without the support of people he knows and the familiarity of the structured environment in which he had lived for so long, he cannot cope and hangs himself.

Finally, the third key inmate character is the old-timer, Red (played by Morgan Freeman). He is African American and seamlessly manages to navigate the racial conflicts and the politics of the prison. Through his friendship with the White character, Andy, he moves beyond the loneliness and despair that he too experiences upon release. He violates parole to follow clues to hidden money Andy has put away, and he is magically transported to Mexico to live out his days with his buddy.²⁹ It is only through the extraordinary intervention of Andy, culminating in an utterly mythologized ending where the two friends meet on some nameless, featureless beach in Mexico, that Red can actually be redeemed. This is not unlike other prison films that require the intervention of some metaphysical force for any type of lasting reintegration to take place.

The film never posits anything other than a broadly cast, allegorical reentry or redemption, rather than the specific example of an ex-offender successfully reintegrating into society.³⁰ Consider the recurring parole hearing scenes, which serve as markers of Red’s slow progress into hardbitten wisdom. As film critic Roger Ebert characterized it in his review, “in his first appeal [Red] tries to convince the board he’s been rehabilitated. In the second, he just goes through the motions. In the third, he rejects the whole notion of rehabilitation, and somehow in doing so he sets his spirit free, and the board releases him.”³¹ Finally, at least one reviewer picked up on the trope of prison as a “school” for crime, as Janet Maslin takes note of Andy’s successful new career as the prison financial consultant offering shady advice to the warden and his guards.³²

In the twentieth-century prison depicted in Shawshank, the concept of reformation had practically disappeared. For the most part, penitentiaries like Shawshank are seen as serving a purely custodial function—as a warehouse for the convicted. This warehousing prison philosophy reemerged in the 1980s and 1990s and has remained part of our prison landscape.

The ultimate messages of Shawshank are threefold. First, prison is brutal and numbing and most inmates cannot make it through the experience once they have been exposed to this illogical and meaningless place. Second, prison becomes so debilitating that its members lose their ability to function in the external world. As sentences become longer, we have old-timers like Abraham who cleaned Wakefield prison long after his sentence is completed, and Brooks, who is unable to function outside the prison. Finally, the only way to prevent the inevitable destruction of spirit is to escape the confines of society. Redemption is ultimately linked to escape, not reintegration.

Television provides an opportunity to reach more individuals than can be reached in movie theaters. Cable takes characters and storylines that were once deemed too intense, too explicit, and too violent for television and puts them in late-evening slots. Cable tends to take more chances and devotes more time to character development, while at the same time still seeking the dramatic content to move the story and the viewer.

2. Oz

The HBO hit series Oz, which ran for six seasons between 1997 and 2003, depicted daily prison life as brutal and chaotic. One reporter wrote, “mention Oz to those who have seen it and many will squirm at its soap-operatic tales of scheming, divided loyalties and unfortunate consequences, namely shankings, rapes and beatings.”³³ The aim of the show, as expressed by the writer/producer Tom Fontana, was to create a realistic representation of prison life, and “not to entertain people.”³⁴ His notion of what “real prison life” looked like suggested that “it lets you know there’s a part of society out there that you don’t want any contact with.”³⁵ Unfortunately, it also led viewers to conclude that they didn’t want any contact with the people in prison—while they are inside or, presumably, once they are released.

Because the prison is perceived as a brutal, inhumane place and prisoners as its unflinchingly evil inhabitants, Oz only served to confirm viewers’ notions of prison life. As it turns out, viewers were both entertained by the program and convinced of the “deeper truths” mined by Oz. A sampling of viewer comments³⁶ regarding the show reveals that much of its appeal derives, in fact, from the assumption that it depicts prison life “unflinchingly”—i.e., as it really is. “Dark, dark drama about life in prison. If you want to scare kids straight, make them watch Oz; if that does not turn their life around nothing will.”³⁷ The unchallenged assumption that the drama and violence as shown in Oz and other television and movie dramas constitutes an accurate portrayal has led individuals to form inaccurate beliefs about prison and what prison and reentry policy should look like.

C. What the Public Thinks It Knows

Generally speaking, the public knows little of correctional institutions, especially compared to its knowledge of other law enforcement agencies.³⁸ This is not surprising given that prisons are closed spaces, and most people have never had reason to be inside a prison in any capacity.³⁹ Also, the lack of knowledge about prisons is not new. According to a study conducted forty years ago in the United States, researchers found that “people are generally ignorant of [prison] programs.”⁴⁰

Although the public also holds gross misconceptions about other criminal justice issues, such as the rate of crime, “perhaps the area reflecting the greatest degree of misunderstanding and misinformation is institutional corrections.”⁴¹ While one might expect that the general public would only pay attention to corrections issues if it had a direct experience with them, one might also expect that our most educated citizens would have more than a superficial understanding of institutions that constitute part of the enforcement of the social contract. In a survey of undergraduate college students, respondents were asked to estimate the prevalence of antisocial behavior in prisons. Students were asked to estimate (1) the number of inmates killed by inmates in prison; (2) the number of correctional officers killed by inmates; and (3) the number of male sexual assaults in prison. The results show that all students, even those majoring in criminal justice, vastly overestimated the frequency of these events.

• Inmates killed by inmates. Of all undergraduate students, 64.5 percent thought that more than four hundred inmates were killed by other inmates on a yearly basis. In 2002, according to the Corrections Compendium, the actual number of inmates killed was seventeen.⁴²

• Corrections officers killed by inmates. Most college students (39.2 percent) thought that between ten and ninety-nine corrections officers were killed by inmates. A full 25.3 percent thought more than four hundred were killed. In 2002, a total of one corrections officer was actually killed by an inmate.⁴³

Given our knowledge of the frequency with which the news and entertainment media focus on these types of images in programming, this study strongly suggests that this media focus influences beliefs. Even when individuals have access to better-quality information, the influence of media images seems compelling.

D. Public Attitudes toward Incarceration

The myths and stereotypes that drive public opinion about prison enable elected officials to operate publicly without a factual basis for their policy goals. Moreover, there is rarely an impact study completed in advance of policy enactment to establish the impact on the community, the victim, or the offender. The perhaps predicable result of this behavior has been the erection of vast, inconsistent, and often illogical barriers to housing, employment, voting, and almost every other manifestation of community reintegration.

1. Prison as an “Easy Life”

Although the public overestimates the occurrence of violence and sexual assault in prisons, paradoxically, it also sees prison life as one of idleness and even leisure. This could be partially explained by stories in the news that tend to dwell on the amenities to which prisoners have access.⁴⁴ For example, 90 percent of respondents to a survey in Florida believe that inmates are housed in air-conditioned facilities, but for the vast majority of prisoners this is not the case.⁴⁵ A poll by Doble Research Associates found that two-thirds of the public believe that prison inmates don’t work.⁴⁶ Another poll found that 60 percent of the public believes that inmates sit around playing cards or watching television all day.⁴⁷ A recent survey in the United States found that six of ten respondents agreed with the statement, “criminals don’t mind being sent to prison.”⁴⁸

These are interesting but, upon reflection, perhaps not surprising results. In addition to the “dehumanizing” images of prison life, one sees a parallel narrative of the undeserving inmate: sitting around, lifting weights in the yard, getting three square meals a day purchased by our tax dollars. Although the perception that prison life is brutally hard somewhat contradicts the perception that prison life is “easy,” both narratives serve legitimizing functions. If rehabilitative effort for the dehumanized inmate is hopeless, then rehabilitative effort on account of idle inmates is undeserved.

This image of prison time as easy time begins to suggest that, not unlike the welfare recipient, working America is paying for these individuals to live off the dole.⁴⁹ Conservative politicians attempting to create a tough-on-crime image by taking something away from the incarcerated are the primary beneficiaries. Inmates looking for educational or vocational training and corrections officers who see the benefit of good prison programming tend to be on the losing end of these political maneuvers.

2. Prisons as a Training Ground for Future Criminals

The public also believes that the prison experience increases criminality in inmates. According to Doble Associates survey data, nearly 50 percent of respondents agreed with the statement, “prisons are really schools for criminals that turn new inmates into hardened criminals.”⁵⁰ Another survey by Doble Associates found that two-thirds of respondents believe that prisoners become more dangerous by the time they leave prison.⁵¹ As a result, the public holds pessimistic views about the rate of recidivism among prisoners. In Florida, 58 percent of respondents believed that by serving time, inmates released would be more likely to commit crimes than before they went to prison.⁵² In fact, only 18 percent of ex-offenders were reconvicted of another crime within two years of release, according to Florida statistics.⁵³

This image of prisoners becoming more dangerous as they leave prison is a narrative developed by those who seek to depict prison as a place where no constructive learning can take place. It comes from popular culture’s notion of the evil con artist, rapist, robber, or murderer who will continue to ply his trade behind bars. Conservative politicians angling for longer sentences and corrections workers seeking to describe a workplace in need of more (and higher-paid) individuals combine to promote this notion. Inmates in need of vocational and educational training as well as recently released parolees are injured by this depiction.

E. Prisoners Get Out Too Early

Another image often manufactured for policy reasons and rhetorical flair is that of prisoners “getting out too early.” As mentioned earlier, there is some evidence that a widely held and strongly felt sentiment exists that murderers get back on the streets too soon.⁵⁴ Some studies confirm a pervasive public mistrust of the criminal justice system, which is especially manifest in perceptions that convicted criminals spend too little time in prison.⁵⁵ Media crime coverage helps to support the illusion of early release by what it chooses to report and ignore.⁵⁶

News accounts of murderers released to rape or kill again are surely effective in confirming the impression of predatory criminals being released too soon. The Willie Horton story cited earlier is perhaps the most striking example.⁵⁷ It succinctly illustrates both selective media coverage as well as “tough-on-crime” political posturing in the electoral process.

This image has always been used by those seeking to build reputations on law and order by talking of generic “criminals” not being punished enough and the courts being too lenient. Willie Horton was actually on work release—and not on parole or finished with his sentence, as often represented. The length of sentences of incarceration has actually increased over the last two decades, and sentenced prisoners tend to serve longer portions of their sentence in most states. Parole has decreased—there is less potential for a prisoner to get out “too early.”

Politicians and others seeking to build reputations on law and order as well as those opposed to training and work-release–type programs for offenders all attack any form of furlough for those charged with a crime. The notion of early release and “putting communities in danger” is also a characterization that serves the media well, allowing another level of drama.

F. Race and the Media

Media descriptions of offenders tend to make reentry a difficult policy initiative to champion. Shorthand descriptions of crimes and perpetrators, often engaging animal metaphors, create hostility and fear. Frontpage articles of crime and victimization often get politicians to call for sympathetic laws in the name of a victim rather than spurring them to focus on the root causes of the crime. The media uses the same shorthand to link race with poverty and crime in ways that caricature offenders of color and characterize them as particularly unworthy of our compassion or assistance.

The 1980s and 1990s saw a shift in the way poverty, public political dissent, and crime were characterized in print and electronic media as well as in political circles. After the riots of the late 1960s and civil unrest in the 1970s, conservative politicians recast the political unrest as an issue of “law and order” rather than of human rights and social justice. At the same time, new “coded” terminology was employed to recast public welfare as an issue of race. Increasingly, White America found itself hostile to public welfare. This stemmed in large part from the erroneous perception, often bolstered by media coverage, that most welfare recipients are Black. This also led to the conclusion of many that Blacks evince less commitment to the work ethic.

The United States Supreme Court decision Bakke v. California Board of Regents and the line of cases about affirmative action that it spawned have also influenced the national debate on race. Media coverage and depictions of “worthy Whites” being denied jobs and admission to college or graduate school because of “less worthy” Blacks and other people of color have each contributed to the impression that deserving Whites were being displaced by “unqualified” Blacks. Indeed, the double impact of media portrayals of poor African Americans as criminals and middle-class African Americans as unworthy (due to affirmative action) spurred public debate. Indeed, it became commonplace for politicians to voice concerns about “welfare queens” and “lazy, shiftless” prisoners as a way of rousing public anger and rallying public support for particularly draconian—and not necessarily effective—crime policies. Conservative politics and backlashes against civil rights gained ground and mainstream support.

The obvious shift from support and encouragement to attacks on—and distrust for—people of color seeking higher education, seeking employment, and seeking to support their children in difficult economic conditions laid the groundwork for public opinion to demonize those individuals with criminal convictions. Politicians soon capitalized on the prevailing sentiments that people of color tended to be dangerous, unworthy of rehabilitation. The country was well on its way toward turning young men of color, particularly those who came from low-income communities, into an underclass. By the end of the 1980s, the assumption that Black men were dangerous had soaked deeply into America’s consciousness, powerfully sustained by the steady flow of news coverage depicting Black men under arrest, in court, and incarcerated.⁵⁸ This strategy incited racial prejudices rather than concerns about crime and fostered great resistance to public policy efforts to reduce racial inequality.⁵⁹

The ability of the poor to adjust to social and economic disadvantage increased as the prosperity of the 1990s increased. As a result, the poor and less fortunate became alien to the well-to-do. The economic and criminal justice policies that resulted were focused increasingly on punishing the poor and people of color, and attempted to discredit social explanations of problematic behavior. This culminated in the vast array of zero-tolerance policies that emerged from the “broken windows” theory. The research, advanced by two criminologists, posited the theory that broken windows left unaddressed in a community would invite criminal conduct.

Policy makers, at a loss for answers in dealing with increasing homelessness, embedded poverty, and increasing petty crime, jumped on the theory and began treating manifestations of poverty as crime. Communities upset with graffiti, prostitution, and public drug use and the nuisance crimes that accompany these activities supported increased enforcement over social programs. As a result, the criminal justice infrastructure exploded. Community policing and community prosecution—programs that had initially come into being to be more sensitive to community needs—morphed into misdemeanor and petty crime enforcement. Community courts of all types sprang up. Many of these courts were modeled after drug courts, though they lacked the same rigorous empirical support for success, and were financed by the federal government and applauded by local communities. In some part, lack of services or treatment for the homeless and drug addicted increased the frustration of communities; the new criminal justice focus on enforcement and incarceration for petty crimes with some treatment available seemed to the public a more palatable approach.

Local television news and fictional programming as well as reality police shows substantially exaggerate the crime problem in the United States. Typically, law enforcement is shown in a somewhat flattering light on most programming, and crime and the circumstances of criminal conduct are not contextualized for the viewer. The result is the overwhelming impression that “these are just bad people.” Employment, housing, education, and opportunity are rarely, if ever, mentioned in descriptions of the commission of crimes or the investigation, trial, and sentencing of television suspects, defendants, and ex-offenders. The media not only contributes to the perception that ex-offenders cannot ever integrate into society; it also has profound effects on how race is perceived. Offenders are disproportionately shown as people of color and often in the role of violent psychopath or gang leader.

In addition to lack of context, there is a stereotyping of roles (also called “typification”) when it comes to the race of characters. Although some studies suggest that the actual number of minority offenders is less than that of White offenders, on television the percentage of minorities shown as offenders compared to those shown in other roles is much higher than with White characters. Consequently, it is not enough to know the content of television programming; it is also important to examine the consequences of viewing this content. The media’s perpetuation of racial stereotypes of the typical offender may not only be a function of African Americans being shown more frequently as offenders than in other roles; rather, it may include the way viewers process this information about race in making comparisons to their own knowledge (or assumed knowledge) about certain races.

G. What People Think They Know about Other Races

There is a good bit of research on the knowledge lens through which people develop opinions and strongly held beliefs. This “ordinary knowledge” is often hard to contradict even in light of specialized knowledge to the contrary produced by social science professionals.⁶⁰ Ordinary knowledge is derived from many sources that most citizens would find difficult to identify. When consistent with ordinary knowledge, specialized findings of social science tend to enhance the validity of ordinary knowledge. However, when specialized findings are inconsistent with ordinary knowledge, they are generally ignored or dismissed as unreliable or irrelevant.⁶¹

The media news coverage of crime through a racialized lens has had a pronounced effect on the way Americans view people of color generally and African Americans in particular. Media portrayals of violent crime, especially visual images, are dominated by pictures of African Americans. The Washington Post reported that even when the racial identity of a criminal is not pictured on television, two-thirds of those who think that the perpetrator was shown believe that he was Black.⁶² This presents a very seductive picture in the minds of all Americans that Blacks are the primary perpetrators of crime, even when statistics objectively defy that picture. In situations when crime and race are linked, the crime is generally reported as involving violence—most particularly murder, robbery, and rape. This creates and solidifies in the mind of the American public the myth that Blacks are more often the worst criminals.⁶³ This stereotype must surely cause excessive fear and create certain unwarranted beliefs about people of color. In circumstances where Whites have African American friends, the strength of the stereotype, reinforced by negative media portrayals, results in the belief that their Black friends are the exception to the “rule.”⁶⁴

H. Impact of News Media on Public Policy

Crime coverage plays an agenda-setting role, and has a significant influence on the public’s perceptions of frequency and behavior. News media play a number of roles in the criminal justice debate and policy agenda that ultimately affect offender reentry. News coverage influences the public by “priming” certain perceptions through its coverage of an issue.⁶⁵ Additionally, media coverage has systematically distorted reality by overreporting violent crime and by focusing on the race of the perpetrators in the coverage of violent crime.⁶⁶

One of the ways in which the news media functions in an agenda-setting role is in the way it fosters public misperception, especially as public opinion relates to crime rates, the rates at which parolees become repeat offenders, and the nature and severity of punishment that the legal system metes out.⁶⁷ Increasingly, people rely primarily on the media to get their information regarding what percentage of people on welfare use it as an alternative to seeking a job, the proportion of ex-mental patients who commit crimes, and which minority groups have criminal tendencies. These media messages are often very distorted or incorrect. Examination of media reporting on crime shows that the race of minority offenders, especially for violent crimes, is often disproportionately reported.⁶⁸

One of the prime examples of the media’s influence on public policy can be seen in its description of the intersection of poverty and crime, both of which are portrayed as primarily an inner-city problem affecting people of color. Blacks are often shown not only as poor but also as overrepresented in the juvenile justice system. The public’s understanding of youth crime is shaped in large part by the media’s portrayal of disproportionate minority involvement. Meda Chesney-Lind, among others, has identified the common media practice of demonizing young women of color. Contemporary news accounts of young African American and Latino girls usually show them as gang members, despite the fact that there is little evidence to suggest any significant increase in female gang membership or involvement.⁶⁹ These media distortions of juvenile crime, perpetrator race, and juvenile violence dramatically affect public consumer perception.

Media reports identified violent juvenile crime on the increase in the 1980s and 1990s. Lori Dorfman, director of the Berkley Media Studies Group, and Vincent Shiraldi, president of the Justice Policy Institute, coauthored a report entitled “Off Balance: Youth, Race, and Crime in the News.”⁷⁰ That report discussed the impact of the media on the perceptions of youth violence. The authors examined more than one hundred studies of news content featuring youth and crime.⁷¹ The studies provided overwhelming evidence that news coverage of crime—especially violent crime—is out of proportion to its occurrence, distorts the proportion of crime committed by youth, and overrepresents perpetrators of color while underrepresenting victims of color. Acts of violence are pushed to the foreground despite occurring relatively infrequently.⁷² The end result is a change in public opinion and a corresponding change in public policy.

Some authors have argued convincingly that the popular and political link between serious juvenile crime and race has had a primary effect on the increasingly punitive focus of juvenile justice policy nationwide.⁷³ Much of this coverage has caused the public to lose faith in treatment as a component of the juvenile justice system, just as it lost faith in rehabilitation in adult prisons. The juvenile court is also often portrayed as ineffectual and lenient, without any real effort to analyze, or cover, the working of the court in any systematic fashion. The description of youths of color as predators, thugs, and gangsters has successfully ramped up political efforts to streamline these youths into the adult criminal justice system and ultimately into prison. National and political divisions about race enabled conservative Republican politicians to advocate particular crime and welfare policies for electoral advantage. During this period, news media coverage put a Black face on youth crime, and political campaigns to get “tough on crime” and on youth violence turned juveniles into symbols of race and crime.⁷⁴

I. Conclusions

In thinking about potential remedies for media depictions of race, poverty, and crime, one can easily become pessimistic about any hope of progress because the negative images of people of color are so deeply ingrained in our social fabric. Indeed, Derrick Bell’s notion of the “permanence of racism” in American culture has an uneasy ring of truth, notwithstanding the fact that there are some small, identifiable examples of progress.

In the entertainment industry, there are a few glimmers of hope. At one time, the number of movie directors who were people of color was so small as to make these directors a novelty. While their numbers are nowhere near what they should be, many directors of color are more established and now have the opportunity to paint pictures of characters of color that are less stereotypical and refreshingly different from historical representations. Taking people of color, particularly African American actors, out of the stereotypical roles of pimps, prostitutes, drug dealers, and police informants also helps. The African American media purchasing dollar is very strong. Advertising aimed at people of color during sporting events, targeted television programs, and movies confirms this fact. Movies that focus on audiences of color do well at the box office. In the future, coordinated efforts to lobby movie companies to create more balanced scripts, taking people of color and putting them in different situations, will continue this positive trend. Urging news writers, producers, and outlets to focus on the quantity and quality of their coverage in communities of color will also help in developing more accurate portrayals of what is actually going on in these communities.

Unfortunately, none of these remedies is totally satisfying. If you live in, work in, or are concerned with communities of color, it seems there is little hope that current policies will change in the near future. Journalists, television and movie writers, producers, and corporate advertisers have no vested interest in turning from their established operating procedures. There is no constituency to influence them, no government incentive to lure them toward the truth.