Media Representation of Law Enforcement

Introduction

Crime and detection are a part of the popular culture, and this is reflected in the conceptualisation of popular characters such as Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot, Taggart, and Inspector Wallander. Books, television shows and movies have been made around these characters, even though some of these characters are now over a hundred years old in popular culture. Crime drama and shows have been a staple feature of television for a long time.

This shows the appetite of the general public in crime drama. News media is also source of information for the general public and it has been seen time and again that certain crimes take centre stage and engross the general public (Dowler, 2003). In all this, an important question that arises is how the media and popular culture may affect and impact the popular perceptions about the police. This essay discusses the role that media and popular culture plays in creating a public perception of the police in the mind of the people. The essay finds that there is a significant impact of media reporting on police forces and popular culture representations of police culture on public perceptions.

Portrayal of Police in the Media and Popular Culture

That television crime shows and portrayal of crime in other popular culture and other media, is interesting to the general public, is a fact that has been much gone into in literature (Turnbull, 2014). The reasons why people may in general be interested in media reports on crimes or the popular culture on crime, may be varied; however, one common result of all these representations of crime is that there is a public perception that is drawn around crime and its investigation by the police. This is noted as follows:

“Despite the possibility that people may watch a crime show for all sorts of ‘other’ reasons, the central preoccupation in much of the scholarly and popular literature on the genre has been that of crime and its representation, whether this be the representation of the forces of law and order and their procedures, the victims, the perpetrators, or indeed the crimes themselves” (Turnbull, 2014, p. 14).

Police investigation into crimes is portrayed in various ways in the media. Such portrayal may take the form of journalism in traditional media sources, or fictional or semi-fictional accounts in popular culture. One of the first blockbuster crime dramas was produced at the turn of the last century, this being, The Great Train Robbery (1903). This was the period when both England and USA saw the professionalisation of the police forces (Turnbull, 2014). In a new genre that has found popularity in the United States, which follows actual detectives in their solving of crimes, the concept of infotainment is being used to interest viewers in crime investigation (Kort-Butler & Hartshorn, 2011). The constant evolution of the popular culture in how it represents police forces and criminal investigation is an indicator of how popular crime as a category is for entertainment. The following section discusses how far popular culture and media impact the perceptions of the public about crime, policing and investigation process.

Impact on Citizen’s Perceptions

The critical attitude towards police forces and its link with crime investigation portrayal in the popular culture as well as media has been explored by Dowler (2003). The western public and their interest in crime and justice is the reason why there is a production of significant amount of material, both in the popular culture as well as media, and this in turn leads to the development of stereotypes and perceptions about the police forces (Surrette, 1998; Dowler, 2003). There is therefore, a “symbiotic relationship” between news media personnel and police (Dowler, 2003, p. 111). The news media gets material for reporting through crimes and police investigation and the police gets recognition for their work through media reporting on their cases.

There are two ways in which fictional television, literature and news media, create a stereotypical image of the police forces in the public perception. First, the police forces may be overly dramatised or romanticised in the popular culture which creates an image of the police that is heroic or efficient, beyond what is reasonably true or possible (Dowler, 2003). Crime shows, and literature show that majority of the perpetrators are identified and arrested by the police, which is not always the case in reality.

Second, there is a tendency of negative portrayal of police forces in the news media, which may lead to the perception that the majority of the police forces is inefficient or corrupt (Dowler, 2003; Surrette, 1998). Public perception of the police forces is affected by the negative portrayal of police in the news media. In a study by Dowler and Zawilski (2007), it is reported that media portrayal of policing has both positive and negative representations, which leads to the creation of a complex relationship between media consumption and public attitudes towards the police. The study reveals that people who were heavy consumers of network news, had more negative perceptions of police conduct and were more likely to believe in the frequency of police misconduct (Dowler & Zawilski, 2007). There are also perceptions of discriminatory conduct by the police, especially towards the minorities that are reported to increase with more media exposure (Dowler & Zawilski, 2007). There was also a perception reported in the study that those who are wealthy receive a preferential treatment from the police (Dowler & Zawilski, 2007).

Media does play a role in creating public perceptions of police in contexts of institutional racism within the police forces (Callanan & Rosenberger, 2011). A study set in California, found that there was no impact of news media and crime shows on the White respondents, but the minority respondents, particularly, Latinos, had negative impact of media in contexts of police racism (Callanan & Rosenberger, 2011). In the UK, representations of police detectives on television series has been predominantly that of White, Anglo Saxon male characters (Leishman & Mason, 2012). Two categories of people have largely been missing in the fictional narrative of police forces and criminal investigations, which are, minorities and women (Leishman & Mason, 2012, p. 93). Therefore, the television dramas are not reflecting the diversity of the police forces and this may give the impression to the general public that the hero figures in the police forces are indeed generally white male police officers (Leishman & Mason, 2012). Even television shows that include Asian and Black officers in the cast, may usually relegate such characters to the lower ranks .

It has been noted that it is unusual in English crime drama to find ethnic minority officers being promoted beyond the rank of a sergeant, whereas in reality, more than 5 percent of serving ethnic minority officers have the rank of inspector and above (Leishman & Mason, 2012, p. 98). This leads to a perception of a police force that is largely dominated by white officers, with little scope for ethnic minority officers to excel. There is also a tendency to portray black and Asian characters in television crime dramas as having a definite purpose that has a racial undertone, such as, a black officer who is involved in cleaning up a black neighbourhood (Leishman & Mason, 2012). An example can be seen in the character of DS Oswalde in Prime Suspect II (Leishman & Mason, 2012, p. 98). Such characters are the rare black hero cops of the television crime shows.

Television crime drama has been critiqued on this point that it leads to the creation of a skewed perception in the mind of the viewers as to the depiction of crime and criminal investigation (Turnbull, 2014, p. 10). The depiction of crime and the balance between fact, fiction, and the need to provide entertainment, is said to play an important role in the making of the public perception of law and order (Turnbull, 2014). One perception that is created through these shows is of a dangerous world, full of criminals, kept in check only by the heroic police officers and criminal investigators (Surrette, 1998). As Surrette (1998) notes the discrepancy in the actualities of crimes and their investigation and the portrayal of the same in popular culture is due to the tension between the perception that media must report the crimes as they really are and the expectation from the media that it would also be able to reimagine crime as a form of entertainment.

Newspaper stories on crime and police investigations into crimes, also leads to an impact on the public perception about police (Payne & Dozier, 2007). These stories do not always reflect positively on the role of police as noted by Payne and Dozier (2007) that accounts of misconduct by the police also frequently appear in the press and other media, which leads to a negative perception of the police. In a study based in the United States, it was found that the public attitudes about the prevalence of racial profiling by the police forces, are affected by the manner in which media construct incidents of police misconduct (Graziano, et al., 2010). The study suggested that there is a need to understand in greater depth as to how media constructions of police misconduct influence community–police relations (Graziano, et al., 2010).

Another impact on the citizen perception of crime and its portrayal in media and popular culture is in the form of ‘CSI effect’, which is a term that signifies the impact of crime investigation television shows that create an unrealistic expectation of science and forensic science in revealing inconclusive evidence regarding crimes (Turnbull, 2014, p. 15). The ‘CSI effect’ impact has been reported in some studies that have shown that criminal judicial process may get impacted when jurors have unreasonable expectations of forensic science due to their exposure to popular crime shows (Brickell, 2008). Wise (2010) also reports that there are negative impacts of crime shows on the criminal justice process. He writes that the ‘CSI effect’ has led to the changes in juror verdict requirements as jurors increasingly deliver a verdict according to the presence or absence of forensic evidence in the particular case (Wise, 2010).

CSI effect is seen where jurors ask for additional forensic evidence and this puts more burden on the resources in the criminal justice system as well as the police officers, scientists and lawyers within the system (Wise, 2010). Ultimately, both victims and offenders suffer due to this CSI effect and the police particularly is perceived to be inefficient if it cannot get evidence that can provide forensic links between the accused and the crime (Wise, 2010). Thus, the popular depiction of crime and the police investigation of the crime, creates an unreasonable expectation from the police services, who are perceived negatively if the police is not able to provide evidence for the crime in the same way as popular culture depicts them to do in fictional accounts.

Conclusion

Popular culture depicts police forces either as heroic saviours or as flawed or corrupt institutions. Media too represents police forces in either of the two extremes. Popular culture and media play a very important role in shaping public perceptions towards the police forces. Such public perceptions can be unreasonably high in expectations, such as the ‘CSI effect’, or these perceptions may be negative with a tendency to view police officers as corrupt, racist or inefficient functionaries. Neither of these two extreme positions are the correct representation of the actual policing. However, police and media do also share a symbiotic relationship. The media gets a lot of material from the actual crimes and police work for both fiction as well as documentary work. The police get recognition as a force that is essential to the maintenance of law and order in the country.

Bibliography

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