Media's Depiction Of The Criminal Justice System In New Zealand

One notable factor found in the existing survey questionnaires examining public attitudes to crime and punishment, is the role of media depictions of crime as opposed to personal experience as a basis of attitudes (Hough and Roberts, 2007). Attitudes are dependent upon knowledge; and levels of public knowledge vary greatly across different branches of the criminal justice system. Despite a low level of knowledge about the criminal law or the criminal justice system in New Zealand, people have negative or ambivalent views about the different parts of the system (Brunton, 2013). The various literature on public attitudes to crime suggests that the source of the public’s perception of ever-rising crime rates is the media (Hough and Roberts, 2007). This essay aims to explore the way in which the news media shapes people’s attitudes about crime and punishment in New Zealand.

The Colmar Brunton survey revealed a significant gap of perception that violence is increasing on a nationally level (66%), than increasing in their own local neighbourhood (12%) (Brunton, 2013). Similarly, Bradley, Rowe and Sedgwick (2010) found that with local crime, people rely on their own experiences and tend to talk about nuisances. On a national level, people tend to focus on extreme events seen or heard from the news, for instance, rape and murder (Bradley, et al. 2010). Thus, most people form opinions about crime and punishment in the absence of careful study or indirect experiences (Brunton, 2013). This emphasises the importance of studying media representations of crime, as the understandings of crime are constructed through the exposure to the news media and media