True crime podcasting: Journalism, justice or entertainment?

2019 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 161-178
Author(s):  
Kelli S. Boling
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Criminal Justice System ◽  
Justice System ◽  
Qualitative Interviews ◽  
The Political ◽  
Audience Engagement ◽  
Emerging Media ◽  
True Crime ◽  
Practical Implications ◽  
Insight Into

This study examines true crime podcasts with a critical/cultural lens to explore how podcasts are impacting the true crime genre, public opinion and the criminal justice system. Four in-depth qualitative interviews with true crime podcast producers offer insight into both the political economy of podcasts and effective audience engagement. Ultimately, this study argues that true crime podcasts are impacting the criminal justice system in unprecedented ways and that the future of this emerging media could challenge both criminal justice and media reform. Practical implications for genre-specific media are also discussed.

The Political Responsiveness of Violent Crime Prosecution

2018 ◽  
Vol 71 (4) ◽  
pp. 936-948
Author(s):  
Ethan D. Boldt ◽  
Christina L. Boyd
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Criminal Justice System ◽  
Violent Crime ◽  
Justice System ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Factors ◽  
Operational Constraints ◽  
Insight Into

Is a federal prosecutor’s decision whether to pursue violent crime charges political? While prosecutors frequently assert their decision-making independence, their selection and operational constraints suggest a very different story. We assess whether political factors related to the prosecution priorities of the president, Congress, and the local public affect federal prosecutors’ decisions to pursue or decline charges in violent crime matters. To empirically examine this, we utilize data from 89 U.S. Attorneys offices from 1996 to 2011. The results provide rich new insight into when and why federal prosecutors’ decisions to pursue or decline prosecutions are driven by the preferences of the president, Congress, and the local public. The findings also have important broader implications for the role of political factors in a U.S. criminal justice system believed by many to be in crisis.

Instrumental and Symbolic Politics in Policing

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cheryl Allsop
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Criminal Justice System ◽  
Justice System ◽  
The Political ◽  
Police Legitimacy ◽  
Symbolic Politics ◽  
Political Background ◽  
Cold Case ◽  
Police Practices

This chapter considers the development of, and growing interest in, cold case reviews, distinguishing between the instrumental and symbolic politics which surround their development. What becomes clear in this chapter is that the rise in interest can be attributed to a number of individual and interlocking events, including changes in police legitimacy, the introduction of a number of police reforms, and initiatives resulting in changes to police practices, pressure from victims’ rights groups for more attention from the criminal justice system, and advances in scientific techniques and technologies with increasing uses found for them. The chapter briefly considers the political background to cold case reviews, and how this connects with the broader politics of policing along with the instrumental politics of maintaining major crime review teams and the symbolic politics which helps to justify expenditure in cold case reviews.

Reforming the criminal justice system – an ethical leadership approach

2017 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 64-75 ◽  
Author(s):  
Verl Anderson ◽  
Riki Ichiho
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Criminal Justice System ◽  
Ethical Leadership ◽  
Justice System ◽  
Ethical Issues ◽  
Content Type ◽  
The Public ◽  
Moral Perspective ◽  
Conceptual Paper ◽  
Practical Implications

Purpose The current criminal justice system is pledged to serve and protect society while preserving the rights of those who are accused. The purpose of this paper is to explore the premise of “innocent until proven guilty” and examine whether this assumption truly prevails under the current criminal justice system, or be modified to accommodate a sliding continuum of virtuosity. Design/methodology/approach This paper is a conceptual paper which relies heavily on the current literature about criminal justice and related ethical issues. Findings The paper argues that today’s criminal justice system fails to meet the standards of the virtuous continuum and that those who oversee that system need to rethink how the system operates and is perceived by the public if they wish the criminal justice system to be perceived as just, fair, and ethically responsible. Research limitations/implications Because this paper is a conceptual paper it does not present research hypotheses. Practical implications This paper suggests that “virtue” and “ethics” must be the foundation upon which the criminal justice system is evaluated, and criminal justice must incorporate an ethical standard which is virtuous and fair to all parties and leaders who oversee that system must meet the standards suggested by the virtuous continuum. Originality/value This paper is among the first to identify the viewpoint of the virtuous perspective, moral perspective, amoral perspective, and immoral perspective in the criminal justice system.

West Belfast

The Hoods ◽  
2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Heather Hamill
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Criminal Justice System ◽  
Justice System ◽  
Political Conflict ◽  
The State ◽  
The Political ◽  
Irish Republican Army

This chapter argues that, from the early days of the political conflict in the 1970s the conditions were such that the Irish Republican Army (IRA) adopted some of the functions of the state, namely the provision of policing and punishment of ordinary crime. The hostility of the statutory criminal justice system, particularly the police, toward the working-class Catholic community dramatically increased the costs of using state services. The high levels of disaffection and aggression among working-class Catholics toward the police meant that the state could no longer fulfill its function and police the community in any “normal” way. A demand for policing therefore existed. Simultaneously, this demand was met and fostered by the IRA, which had the motivation, the manpower, and the monopoly on the use of violence necessary to carry out this role.

scholarly journals Challenges of Effective Communication in the Criminal Justice Process: Findings from Interviews with Victims of Sexual Offences in Australia

Laws ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 31
Author(s):  
Rhiannon Davies ◽  
Lorana Bartels
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Criminal Justice System ◽  
Justice System ◽  
Sexual Offending ◽  
Qualitative Interviews ◽  
Effective Communication ◽  
Skills Training ◽  
Sexual Offences ◽  
Justice Process ◽  
Criminal Justice Process

This article focuses on gendered experiences of the criminal justice system, specifically the experiences of adult female victims of sexual offending and the communication difficulties they experience during the criminal justice process. Drawing on the findings from qualitative interviews about sentencing with six victims and 15 justice professionals in Australia, we compare the lived experiences of the victims with the perceptions of the justice professionals who work with them, revealing a significant gap between the information justice professionals believe they are providing and the information victims recall receiving. We then analyse the international literature to distil effective communication strategies, with the goal of improving victims’ experiences of the criminal justice system as a whole. Specifically, we recommend verbal communication skills training for justice professionals who work with victims of crime and the development of visual flowcharts to help victims better understand the criminal justice process. We also recommend that Australian victims’ rights regimes be reformed to place the responsibility for providing information about the criminal process on the relevant justice agencies, rather than requiring the victim to seek this information, and suggest piloting automated notification systems to help agencies fulfil their obligations to provide victims with such information.

Closure and Justice: A Qualitative Study of Perspectives From Homicide Survivorship Experts

2018 ◽  
Vol 33 (5) ◽  
pp. 830-854
Author(s):  
Larissa Saco ◽  
Danielle Dirks
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Criminal Justice System ◽  
Justice System ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Qualitative Interviews ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Policy Practice ◽  
Homicide Survivors ◽  
Murder Victims ◽  
The Media

The criminal justice system and the media perpetuate the rhetoric of closure, which frames the end of grief for homicide survivors, or murder victims’ loved ones, as an attainable goal on their path to healing. Public discourse has also framed the death penalty as justice for survivors. However, little scholarly attention has addressed survivors’ experiences and perceptions of closure and justice. This research addresses this gap in the literature using in-depth, qualitative interviews with 36 community, academic, and criminal justice experts on homicide survivorship, 12 of whom are homicide survivors themselves. Using grounded theory, we derived six themes on closure and justice from the data. The majority of respondents indicate that survivors do not experience closure, and that they consider the term misleading. The question as to the meaning of justice produced more disparate responses. While many indicated that justice has unique meanings for individual survivors, holding the perpetrator accountable emerged as the most common theme. Half of the respondents also indicated that justice does not exist in homicide cases because of their difficult experiences with the criminal justice system. The findings have implications for policy, practice, and future research.

The 1983 Strike-Hard Campaign in China: a Moral Panic?

2020 ◽  
Vol 60 (5) ◽  
pp. 1220-1241
Author(s):  
Mengliang Dai
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Criminal Justice System ◽  
Justice System ◽  
Moral Panic ◽  
Decisive Role ◽  
Deep Insight ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Historical Materials ◽  
Chinese Criminal Justice ◽  
Insight Into

Abstract Though more than three decades have passed since the launch of Strike Hard in 1983, its impact on crimes remains. Most of the literature on the campaign so far has been theoretically and methodologically limited. Using historical materials and interview data, this paper establishes an integrated theoretical framework and aims at investigating whether and how a moral panic was constructed. This study argues that the top leader played a decisive role in engineering the moral panic during the 1983 Strike Hard operated through a top-down approach under the Chinese political structure. In short, exploring events from the perspective of moral panic, this study gives a deep insight into the Chinese criminal justice system in response to crimes.

scholarly journals Social justice, history, and inequity in Cleveland: An overview

2019 ◽  
Vol 80 (2) ◽  
pp. 105
Author(s):  
Amy Wainwright ◽  
Michelle Millet
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Juvenile Justice ◽  
Criminal Justice System ◽  
Justice System ◽  
Juvenile Justice System ◽  
Food Deserts ◽  
Short Version ◽  
Rust Belt ◽  
True Crime

When we first volunteered to be on the Local Arrangements Committee for the ACRL 2019 conference, and to write this specific piece for our colleagues who were coming to our city, neither of us had a clue that the entire third season of the true crime podcast Serial1 would focus on the criminal justice system of Cuyahoga County. But since it was so popular, we considered it a good framing device for a discussion about social justice in Cleveland.If you haven’t listened to Serial, the short version is Cleveland and Cuyahoga County’s criminal and juvenile justice system are shining examples of the inequity that exists in the region. Poverty, segregation, violence, food deserts, crime, and an unfair justice system are all parts of the larger system that remains unjust and unequal in the heart of a Rust Belt city desperate to rise again.

3. Statistics and official publications

2019 ◽  
pp. 37-58
Author(s):  
Emily Finch ◽  
Stefan Fafinski
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Criminal Justice System ◽  
Justice System ◽  
Criminal Behaviour ◽  
Crime Policy ◽  
Probation Service ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Insight Into

A number of government and other official agencies collect statistics that provide insight into the extent of criminal behaviour, and produce reports that explore issues such as the impact of crime; policy considerations concerning responses to crime; and evaluations of the work of the various agencies involved in the criminal justice system, such as the police, the courts, prisons, and the probation service. This chapter describes the various types of statistics and reports available, explains how they can be used in the study of criminology, and details where they can be found.

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