Inaccurate Media Influence On Crime

Society is frequently being negatively influenced by the inaccurate media portrayals of crime and the criminal justice system (Levin, 2013). To be more specific, members of society are frequently fascinated by crime and justice; however, the unrealistic portrayals seen on television have led to an inaccurate, almost naive, view of the legal system (Levin, 2013). The way TV crime drama is representing victims, offenders and crime is hurting how young people view and understand how the criminal justice system works. By TV crime drama negatively influencing and shaping young peoples minds on crime and the criminal justice system, it will not only wrongly configure their brains about offenders and victims, but it will also bring forth inaccurate
Due to this, problems arise about how the viewers perceive crime and the criminal justice system. With studies concluding that criminal dramas influence society’s perceptions of crime and the criminal justice system (Levin, 2013), there is a dispute of how viewers are impacted. On one hand, researchers argue that television shows reduce the public’s fear of crime because each episode ends in a resolution of the issue (Sparks, 1995). Even though a resolution of the issue is an effective method to reduce public fear, letting the public see
By watching more and more episodes of criminal dramas like Criminal Minds, people realize that there are immoral and evil people in the world that walk around unnoticed. On the other hand, a more recent study argues that criminal drama increases society fear of crime (Eschholz, Chiricos & Gertz, 2003). Due to the fact that crimes are constantly being over-represented in the media, news outlets, and criminal dramas, society’s view of crime may be incorrectly influenced by the frequency of violent crime as well as what actually constitutes a violent act (Heath & Petraitis, 1987). Furthermore, the media has provoked an increase fear of crime by frequently presenting society with the idea that violent crimes happen often, although, the serious offenses that are over-represented on criminal drama shows and news networks do not happen as frequently than the media wants us to believe. In order to keep the public captivated the media over uses and bombards the public with crimes and offenses that many people see as heinous or extreme (Chermak, 1995). As explained by Potter and Ware (1987), even though murder is one of the least committed crimes in the United States, the media makes society think it is more