defendants of color in nonviolent criminal conduct rarely see this type of cooperation, which raises some fundamental questions about how the court system treats white-collar defendants as opposed to indigent defendants. There is a not-so-subtle, implied notion that white-collar defendants have “more to lose” and therefore should be treated differently.
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.
