Sociology of Crime: Crime, Punishment and Pop Culture

 

 Studying crime films, TV shows and video games is important because they have the potential to shape frames of meaning and systems of meaning that are associated with crime. Crime films help shape both the understanding and attitudes towards crime and the justice system and should be studied with the intent of reducing any distortions that may affect how people perceive the courts, law enforcement officers and perpetrators. Television shows often feature influential celebrities. The actor’s attitude towards crime issues may be transferred to the audience. Studying the content featured may help protect impressionable children and youth. Video game content should be closely studied as it creates higher engagement with the player than the one produced by other forms of digital media. The player often participates in violent behavior in a virtual environment through their avatars. Studying video game content and storylines may help reduce the propagation of misleading notions towards crime. Crime films, TV shows, and video games should be studied because they are important influencers on how people respond to crime in society. Methods to study how crime is depicted in digital media should be a combination of quantitative content analysis, qualitative textual analysis to establish a relationship between these quantifiers and the ability to shape the response of the corresponding audiences towards crime issues portrayed.

FILMS

Crime films are popular to diverse demographic groups and form an important portion of social influencers present in society. Violence and unethical actions are often featured in the content in a way that distorts how the justice system works for example by overestimating the success rate of stopping crime, inaccurate ideas are imparted to members of communities that lead them to underestimate the complexities involved in dealing with crime (Doyle 2006:869). People who watch films also tend to imitate the behavior, language and attitudes of their favorite characters. Thus films may serve to popularize deviant behavior. Films also often feature various sociological issues such as mental health and crime, gender inequality, responsibilizing women and girls and economic inequality. Studying films help sociologist evaluate the impact of crime media coverage. Thus, crime films may affect individuals both positively and negatively. Crime films should be categorized as cultural texts that should be researched extensively to stem the popularization of violent behavior often featured in their content.

TELEVISION

Television shows popularize various issues surrounding how crime is interpreted and may pose a danger to viewers who are not trained to critique the attitudes, character traits and behaviors that are depicted. Presenting vices in popular television shows can influence the lifestyle of the audience towards a social environment where crime is more widely tolerated. Studying television shows can help in regulating the nature of the content consumed by the audience in an effort to curtail imitation of violent behavior in real life from television scenes. Television shows also inform the understanding gained by children as they grow up on the concept of wrongdoing and how it is checked through law enforcement activities. This may have the effect of steering some children towards a career in law enforcement while others adopt from young age tendencies to challenge and question authority. Increased access to television shows has translated to a shift in values and attitudes as various cultural concepts foreign to some localities are exchanged. Television show content, storyline and scenes should be studied through qualitative textual analysis that involves finding ways of imparting to the audience the ability to treat the content as a text that should be analyzed for correctness instead of passively accepting the ideas presented as the standard.

VIDEO GAMES

Video games often necessitate active participation in violent activities in virtual environments by the player. Studying video games may help find ways of preventing internalized ideas about violence from manifesting themselves in the daily activities of the game consumers. Video games motivate aggressive behavior by rewarding active participation in violent behavior while punishing players who may hesitate to engage in such behavior by failure to succeed in the game scenes (Fawcett, Christina, and Kohm 2020:266). Children are more vulnerable than adults because they are yet to shape their understanding of acceptable behaviors and those that are not. Video games have been shown to modify the individual’s response to environments that resonate with the aggressive behavior depicted in their content. Studying popular video games by analyzing ideological perspectives they adopt can help inform the researchers’ understanding of how the audience is affected by pop culture and generate ways of directing this influence.

Crime films, TV shows, and video games content should be studied and quantitatively analyzed by observing precise phenomena such as violence, sexual offences and gender-based violence in the media to mitigate any negative impact. Popular films featuring crime are often themed around events that occurred in society, these, in turn, may influence people to participate in crimes thus creating a feedback loop effect where films encourage crimes and in turn crimes, concepts contribute to the main contents of produced films.  Ways of minimizing the stereotypes created about the various participants within the criminal justice system and the contradictory messages that may be presented through television shows should involve critically studying their impact toward social understandings of crime (Doyle 2006:870). Video games also introduce alternate interpretations of law enforcement practices that tend to lessen the confidence of the public in the justice system fulfilling its purpose (Fawcett et al. 2020:267) Quantitative content analysis and qualitative textual analysis are ways that should be used to study crime films, TV shows and video games by both analyzing the content and studying ways to impart the ability of the audience to critique the content instead of merely passively adopting the ideas conveyed. Popular media also acts as a channel through which various concepts and ideas on crime, law enforcement and justice are conveyed to the public. Research should be conducted to both study the effectiveness of the existing methods of investigating popular media and the ways through which negative impacts of media can be averted. Studying crime films, television shows and video games can also help improve the content to be more educational to the audience.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

References

Doyle, Aaron. 2006. “How Not to Think about Crime in the Media.” Canadian Journal of Criminology and Criminal Justice 48(6):867–85. doi:10.3138/cjccj.48.6.867

Fawcett, Christina, and Steven Kohm. 2020. “Carceral Violence at the Intersection of Madness and Crime InBatman: Arkham Asylum and Batman: Arkham City.” Crime, Media, Culture 16(2):265–85. doi:10.1177/1741659019865298