Social Construction Of Crime Essay
What impact has the social construction of crime had on fear of crime, our view of victims and offenders and resulting criminal justice policy?
The media has been influential in shaping the way society thinks about certain issues, including crime. This essay argues that social construction has a negative impact on society’s view of the fear of crime, victims, and offenders. It’ll also study how social construction affects government policy.
Social constructionism
A famous study on social construction is Stanley Cohen’s study, originally conducted in 1972, of “mods and rockers” in the UK (Cohen 2011: vi). He studied two groups of young people in the 1960s who were fighting with each other. The media made these people out to be violent: “the
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For example, Rodney King, whose attack by police offers was videotaped, was a victim of police racism, but to many white police officers he was a threatening deviant who encouraged the attack (Lawrence 2000: 70-73). Black males have typically been coined the term “thug” by the media in the 21st century (Smiley and Fakunle, 2016), which may explain why the police think that African Americans are a threat. Therefore, the ‘deviant’ label used for African Americans has a significant impact on the police’s and the public’s view of this group. “White respondents overestimate their risk of crime victimization more than twice as much in heavily black zip codes relative to areas with few black residents” (Quillian and Pager, 2010). This shows that, through the media labelling African Americans as ‘criminals’, white people feel they will be more likely to be a victim of crime in areas where this group is heavily …show more content…
African Americans are more likely to be shown to be offenders rather than victims, despite not being reflective of statistics (Reiner, 2002). This is unfair, as it leads people to believe that if they live near more African Americans, there may be more of a chance of criminal activity, causing unnecessary fear of becoming a victim of crime. The social construction of victims is unfair on African Americans, as they’re ‘tarred with the same brush’ as being offenders. This can make African Americans feel isolated and possibly be subject to racial
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