Critical Criminology: Racism - Essay Example

?Q Critical analysis of prison films revolves around two elements first being the graphic exploitation of violence and sexual assault in prison films which are predominantly depicted voyeuristically thus remain severed from any meaningful context; therefore, suitable for entertainment to the viewer. Nevertheless, scenes of brutality present opportunities for prison films to challenge the existing penal state since any opposition discourse is subject to an entanglement similar to a scene of violence and sexual assault. Secondly, presentation of prisoners as dehumanised and deserving of harsh treatment together with acceptance and normalization of death penalty reaffirm prison as a cornerstone for criminal justice sanctions; thus, prison films offer information to viewers. Many films represent prisons as brutal and uncivilised places that punish, humiliate and degrade; therefore, such construction of the penal system often suggests a discourse of reform. Exploration of futility and inhumanity of incarceration visible in prison films present opportunity for raising the profile of public debate that mobilises opinion toward reform and elimination prison industrial complex. However, in these films, scenes of brutality, death and rape exist for the pleasure of the spectators, which is a generic feature in prison films. These acts are present in narratives across prison films with exploitative agenda where violence, rape and other assaults are the most prominent features. Prison is habitually constructed in a discourse of violence and fear where films define prison through its capability for brutality and ability to instil terror. A viewer experiences initial steps in a prison from the standpoint of a new convicted prisoner who is processed through the system. Construction of the penal state reinforces prison as a fundamental element in the criminal justice system (Mason, 2006). Prison films mostly involve a prisoner who usually has been convicted recently, thus, prison life is experienced through an individual who entered the penal system. Systematic depiction of prisoner offers an opportunity for prison films to investigate injustice and cruelty of incarceration. Through an innocent, harshly treated man or woman, the penal system can be exposed although this ostensibly appears to be in the prison discourse, which is achieved through representing the prison population as dehumanised animals and monsters (Greer and Jewkes, 2005). Prison hero/heroine is often an afforded character with the rest being cut out cliche thus prison is depicted as essential to keep psychotic deviants caged and incapacitated. Nevertheless, despite the emphatic portrayal of several prisoners, the meaning of prison is often portrayed around danger and fear, which inevitably underscores the apparent necessity of prison’s existence. By fixing prisoners, appearances as well as differences to prison hero/heroine lead to the construction of pro-prison discourse. However, prison is often depicted as dangerous, morally deprived and away from redemption; it remains to be the only institution accomplished to offer a solution. Depiction of heroic, often innocent prisoner seems to present the possibility of abolitionist discourse however; this opportunity is used for the reverse. Genealogy of prison discourse articulated by prison films suggests emphasis on prison violence and depiction of prisoners as inhuman in commonplaces (Mason, 2006). The principal reason regarding the consistency and durability of the discourse of prison is commercial viability. Commoditization of entertainment in post-war western cinema led to the consideration of formal conventions in Hollywood movies and external social and cultural pressures, which regulate movies as products of mass production and distribution. Prison films compared to other genres has reduced prison narratives and themes to just a handful with violence and brutality being the key ones. Consequently, prison violence is part of media representation practice that construes prison population to be inhuman, which generates fear in public hence promoting the need for locking prisoners. Prisoners are depicted as lacking any humanity, thus deserving nothing else other than harsh and brutal punishment. Discourse in prison cinema is constricted by generic convention, which remains largely silent on fundamental flaws inherent in imprisonment, focussing on violence and cruelty. Prison heroine/hero is depicted compassionately by their innocence or harsh treatment, played against a backdrop of prison populated by psychotic and brutal prisoners (Mason, 2006). Films challenging death penalty side-step abolitionist dispute and instead choose to concentrate on appropriateness of punishment and its consequent technological aspects framed within a discourse of bureaucracy. Violence sells since stories exploring socio-economic factors underpinning inherent injustice in the penal industrial complex never sell. These cinematic constructions contribute to imprisonment discourse that presents incarceration as an effective way of incapacitation and punishment. Prison films are reluctant to explore the reasons regarding the existence of prisons although its narrow discursive regime of incarceration justifies the existence of prisons. There is contention regarding prison’s sense of permanence which is aided by prison films which show prisons to be naturalised part of the social landscape. Nevertheless, discourses in prison cinema contribute to public knowledge regarding incarceration and convince audiences that they know what happens in prisons. As an essential component for the construction of incarceration and the lack of public knowledge about prison, discourse in prison cinema reduces how prison is talked about in public opinion and government (Mason, 2006; Wilson and O'Sullivan, 2005). Through generic imposition regarding the meaning of prison as one of scopophilic constructions of brutality and dehumanising prisoners hence normalising death penalty since few counter-representations exist resulting in enhanced viewers’ approval for increased use of penal sanctions. Accounts of prison films suggest exceptional practices through representation; thus, episteme of prison films help bolster support for prison in countries like Britain and US, where injustice, inefficiency, cruelty and dysfunction remain endemic (Mason, 2006). Therefore, the implications of media representations of justice and crime influence viewers’ judgement and decision regarding criminal justice policy. In the media-constructed crime world, the psychotic offender has become the dominant social construction of criminality; therefore, such portrayals usually conform to the “good defeats bad” narrative structure, which necessitates retribution to elicit favourable response from viewers. Therefore, media construction of crime heightens the belief in public that people are constantly threatened by predatory outsiders. The constructions of the crime problem; even though in prison films tend to be for entertainment purposes, heighten public fear, which consequently orients viewers toward retributive model of justice and punishment. Nevertheless, media narratives offer viewers complex, realistic constructions of crime and criminality compatible with alternative models of justice like restorative justice. Q.2 This section of the paper seeks examine the prevalence of institutionalized state racism in the United Kingdom. Institutionalized state racism is illustrative of a systemic and prejudicial distribution of power, resources, and opportunities for the benefit of the native while excluding minority groups. Over the years, this has emerged as a matter of concern for many ethnic and racial minority communities in the United Kingdom. Institutional racism or the systematic discrimination of the black people and other minority communities operates in the United Kingdom’s criminal justice system, labour market, housing, education, and health services sector. In the past decades, the extent, degree, and nature of institutionalized state racism are among aspects that have evoked concern and focus in public and political spheres. The debate and concerns of institutionalized state racism in the British society was fuelled by the murder of Stephen Lawrence in 1993 where it emerged that the London Metropolitan police were linked to his death. The judicial public inquiry led by Macpherson reached a decision that racism existed within all organizations and institutions in the United Kingdom. The prevalence of institutional state racism is a clear pointer on the failure of the government to adopt long-term practices and procedures to promote diversity. Presently, institutional arrangement and distribution of resources in the society serves to safeguard and reinforce the advantages of the white people while discriminating against ethnic and racial minority groups. Institutionalized state racism has been indicated to deepen and evolve in sophistication while enjoying the full protection of the law and in this regard, racism is hidden among institutional practices. Institutionalized racism continues to be expressed more openly and blatantly years following the publication of the Macpherson inquiry report. Although the report made in mandatory for the police service to be inspected by government inspectors, institutional racism remains widespread. The handling of victims of crimes, especially ethnic and racial minority persons in the United Kingdom has, and continues to elicit backlash from members of the public (Bourne, 2001). Racial profiling refers to the law enforcement practices that are based on race, ethnicity, or nationality prejudices as the basis of discretionary judgments on suspects. In essence, racial profiling occurs when the race and ethnicity are used as the primary basis for judgments about the activities of minority persons in the society. Furthermore, the concept of racial profiling is based on the erroneous misconceptions that target certain individuals owing to their race or ethnicity. Such misconceptions are guided by the belief that certain racial backgrounds are more likely to engage in misconduct or carry out the investigation than individuals of other races or ethnicities. In fact, black people in concert with other minority groups in the United Kingdom are more likely to be stopped and searched, arrested, imprisoned and die in custody. In addition, minority groups are seen as co-perpetrators in crimes even in cases where they are victims (Bourne, 2001). This is opposed to the treatment accorded native whites in similar situations who are seen to receive better treatment. The propagation of racial profiling by law enforcement officers and the criminal justice system is biased, and unfair to the minority ethical or racial communities. The use of race and ethnicity is a discriminatory and biased manner is not restricted to the in the criminal justice system alone but it also used to profile the public lives of minority persons in other spheres such as driving, loan application, shopping, real estate purchase and placement in public. The Macpherson report sought to impose more restrictions on the use of race and ethnicity in making routine or spontaneous law enforcement decisions such as stops and searches. The report sought to overhaul the manner in which the police conduct routine stops, searches, and other law enforcement investigative procedures. The television and film industry has also been implicated in propagating racial profiling. This evidenced by the depiction of minority groups dominating criminal gang and drugs cartels in a majority of their productions. As such, the industry imprints on the society that minority groups are often involved in criminal activities, which forms the basis of racial profiling In light of this, racial profiling has been used to monitor and limit the movement of persons based on their racial background, especially, outside enforcement. The United Kingdom has made significant progress in tackling racial profiling in the criminal justice system. Central to this is the Macpherson report that recommends a raft of measures and intervention strategies that are aimed at curbing racial profiling by subjecting the police to greater public control, enshrining the rights for victim of crime, and extending the number of offenses that are classified as racists. The death of Stephen Lawrence, a black British man in 1993 after a racial attack led to the formation of the Macpherson inquiry. The inquiry faulted the police force for their role in the murder investigations with regard to the poor and discriminatory handling of the case. In the Macpherson report, the law enforcement officers in London were labelled as institutionally racist and they were criticized for making fundamental errors that bordered on racial profiling (Green et al, 2000). It was after the publication of the Macpherson report that the United Kingdom government unveiled various intervention strategies and measures targeting racial attacks. Although the United Kingdom has seen significant progress in resolving the troubled relationship between the police and the black and minority ethnic communities, through the implementation of the recommendations from Macpherson report, police control is still prevalent. Recent statistics reveal that police control, more so, on ethnic and racial minority communities in Britain has tripled in the last ten years after the publication of the monumental Macpherson report. It emerged from the research that in the ten years after the publication of the Macpherson report, ethnic minority Britons have been subjected to over a million stops and searches by the police (Dodd, 2013). The stop and searches for racial and ethnic minorities, especially, for black and Asian have tripled while the stop and search rate for white people has risen by a slight margin, which depicts the increase in control after the Macpherson inquiry. The research conducted by Ben Bradford of Oxford University revealed that in the first ten years after the publication of the Macpherson report ( 1999-2010), the stop and search rate for black people in the Britain was 4.9 per 100 population while between 2009-2010, the stop and search rate was 10.8 per 100 black people (Dodd, 2013). Furthermore, according to the report, it was also evident that the stop and search rate for Asian people also doubled while the rate for white people increased marginally from 1.5 to 1.6 stops and searches per 100 citizens. The continuous restriction of the mobility of ethnic and racial minority groups in the United Kingdom provides evidence that suggest proliferation institutionalized state racism. The rise of institutionalized racism in the United Kingdom indicates a radical departure from the recommendations of the Macpherson report. There is need more action from the government in addressing the issue of institutionalized state racism that is widespread, especially in the criminal justice system where it is evident that the police is still targeting racial and ethnic minority groups. The imperative to stem out institutionalized racism in the United Kingdom should be strongly embedded across all government sectors and departments including education, immigration, labour, and banking. It is high time for the government transcends the normativity that usually characterizes the declarations on institutionalized state racism. It is critical that the government demonstrates commitment to the Macpherson report by transforming the inquiry’s recommendations into an action plan. Q.3 For many centuries now, there has been an increase in media coverage of crimes in society and the more violent crimes such as murder have always been a common phenomenon on media since the world war (Reiner, n.d). Media representations of crime have been a major concern to many people and the worrisome concern has always centred on the coherence and accuracy of the presentations of the crime problem as portrayed by media. Many studies have revealed that indeed there is a moral panic created through media representations of crime; the media’s pervasive view of crime raises fear in society as it is often exaggerated. This paper examines the question of whether or not a coherent picture of the crime problem can be discerned from media representations of crime, and if it can be accurate. The media plays an informative role of informing the public of topics of concern to society that the average citizens may not have a clue about; in this regard, media representations are able to capture the moral issues bedevilling society such as crimes that happen in society. Media representations of crime largely define the public’s view on social issues such as crime and crime rates, and the general state of the society (Reiner, n.d). However, it is not easy to discern a coherent picture of the crime problem from media representations of crime, especially because the representations are often skewed to certain ends. The media decides what information to present and this does not provide a representative sample for making any critical inferences; besides, the information is always presented subjectively to lead viewers into believing certain ideas. This means that media representations of crime cannot be accurate because they are subjective and limited in scope. Most of the media representations of crime are based on content analysis of crimes, but such reports are disfigured by biases, ignorance and conflicting interests; media decides what to report on and how to report it. To media, anything that bleeds will pass for a crime and a potential lead to the crime problem, and this is a fertile ground for digging news, as it will yield a newsworthy item for the prime bulletin. Violent media representations seem to be marketable for the media because they result into a boon for the business by satisfying people’s curiosity (Mason, 2003); the resulting effect is that the public is cheated into worrying about issues that are not a direct danger to them. In this case, media representations of crime cannot be taken as a coherent representation of the real crime problem because there is more to what meets the eye and to get a coherent picture of a crime problem requires a thorough vision. Media representations of crimes always focus on the widespread sympathetic victims (Greer, 2007), and the horror of the dramatic cases of crime to elicit public fear and this magnifies the whole situation into a moral panic. Responses to such moral problems as portrayed through media representations are always exaggerated moral outbursts of the worried public, and this magnifies the fears regarding the widespread of crime victims. The media makes profits by feeding the public with violence (Mason, 2003), and such depictions of violence attract a large audience that is curious about the prevalence of social problems such as crimes in society. Eventually, media seems to miss the point, as it focuses more on the extent of the events rather than the content of the events; it captures the public’s imagination on the widespread victimization as opposed to the actual crime problem. It becomes hard for anyone to state with outright surety of mind what could is the real crime problem from such depictions that only focus on perceived prevalence rather than the actual problem itself. Overall, there is an increase in media representations of crime, and serious attention is focused on the more violent ones in society; however, media introduces variations in the scenes and amplifies the proportions of the crimes represented inversely to official statistics. Media also exaggerates the demographic profile of both the victims and offenders, as old and of higher status than those documented by the criminal justice (Reiner, n.d). The risks of crimes as portrayed through media representations of crime are magnified both qualitatively and quantitatively as opposed to what has actually been recorded by the justice department. Individual victims and their sympathetic suffering story are given high priority in media representations of crime because they elicit large audiences and public concern in society (Greer, 2007). In addition to these, the media always portrays a very positive image of the law enforcing agents and the justice system by highlighting their success and integrity at combating social problems. However, media representations of crime tend to raise questions concerning the effectiveness of law enforcement, justice and honesty in a subtle criticism. Ultimately, there is need for a thorough content analysis and evaluation of media crime representations to discern what they articulate, and to gauge its accuracy in relation to reality. Messages and images portrayed by the media may not necessarily be a coherent picture of crime problems, as stereotypes, scepticisms, and conflicting interests often disfigure them in relation to the real problems. What is clearly emerging throughout many content analyses of media representations of crime is that media cannot be relied upon to give a coherent picture of the actual crime problem in most of the crime instances. The media has a tradition of giving its own slanting perspective on issues, disfiguring facts and presenting a limited scope of information that is often both misguided and misleading. The media ends up raising a moral panic regarding the pervasiveness of crimes in society and the perceived gravity of the risk to the society in general; it blows truths out of proportion, especially on violent crimes, to attract audiences. The truth of the matter is that media representations of crime are amplified versions of the actual crime problems that are actually recorded by the justice system, and they should not be taken as coherent pictures of the crime problems. References Bourne, J. 2001. The life and times of institutional racism. Race and Class 43(2), pp. 7-22. Dodd, V 2013, Minorities stopped disproportionally in decade after Macpherson report. The guardian [Online] Available at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/law/2013/apr/22/ethnic-minority-britons-stop-search-white [Accessed 27/05/2013]. Green et al 2000, Institutional Racism and the Police: Fact or Fiction? Institute for the Study of Civil Society. [Online] Available at: http://www.civitas.org.uk/pdf/cs06.pdf [Accessed 27/05/2013]. Greer, C., (2007). News Media, Victims, and Crime. Uk.sagepub.com. [Online] Available at: http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CDMQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.sagepub.com%2Fupm-data%2F15712_02_Greer_Ch_02.pdf&ei=_wyjUb6GDNSg0wWq3ICYBw&usg=AFQjCNEB6XbVjGSfBzlDzd_lW2BNfNgMLQ&sig2=VVkEY3qw5_47JBLUpmx3GQ&bvm=bv.47008514,d.d2k [Accessed on: 27th May, 2013] Greer, C., and Y. Jewkes. 2005. Extremes of otherness: Media images of social exclusion. Social Justice 32:20 Mason P. 2003. Criminal Visions: Media Representations of Crime & Justice. Washington: Willam Publishing House. Mason, P 2006, 'Prison Decayed: Cinematic Penal Discourse and Populism 1995–2005', Social Semiotics, 16, 4, pp. 607-626. Reiner, R., (n.d). Media made criminality: The Representation of Crime in the Mass Media. media made criminality. Print. [Online] Available at: http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=2&ved=0CDwQFjAB&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.oup.co.uk%2Fpdf%2Fbt%2Fmaguire%2Fch12.pdf&ei=kwqjUemNNueO0AXOnYGQDA&usg=AFQjCNG0hObmU1NvPhOKhlQ-BxTeo3qNjw&sig2=qF-NIiSBzlQZ6Jkdd5b1YA&bvm=bv.47008514,d.d2k [Accessed 27/05/2013] Wilson, D and O'Sullivan, S (2005) ' Re-theorizing the penal reform functions of the prison film.' pp. 471-491 in Theoretical Criminology Vol. 9, No. 4. Read More