TY - CHAP

T1 - Representations of Law, Rights and Criminal Justice

AU - Machura, Stefan

N1 - It is unclear to me when the article appeared online: on which day in April. Website just states "April 2017". I was not sent any notice and just found out today (21 May). Eventually, the article will appear in print: Machura, Stefan (2017). Representations of Law, Rights and Criminal Justice. In Nicole Rafter, Katherine Biber, Michelle Brown, Eamonn Carrabine, Gray Cavender and Stefan Machura (eds.). Oxford Encyclopedia on Crime, Media, and Popular Culture. New York: Oxford University Press.

PY - 2018

Y1 - 2018

N2 - Criminal justice and its institutions are key objects of popular culture and attract extensive media attention. The portrayal of the justice system, its rules, professions, and institutions has been invigorated with the invention of new media technology. The authorities’ reaction to wrong doing has proven not less exciting to the audience than the criminal acts themselves. French sociologist Emile Durkheim emphasized that every member of society has an interest in social cohesion and wishes to see perpetrators appropriately punished. The media plays to this basic inclination. From the reactions of the justice system to crime people take clues not only for its effectiveness but the public also wants to see its basic values represented in the work of officials and their decisions. Therefore, aspects of procedural and distributive justice are picked up by popular imagination and exploited to the full by media producers. Beyond recognition that media depictions of criminal justice will follow media conventions and will therefore be distorted in systematic ways, it has to be acknowledged that those representations and the expectations they formed have become a major force in society. Political repercussions and influences on how crime is dealt with are a consequence.

AB - Criminal justice and its institutions are key objects of popular culture and attract extensive media attention. The portrayal of the justice system, its rules, professions, and institutions has been invigorated with the invention of new media technology. The authorities’ reaction to wrong doing has proven not less exciting to the audience than the criminal acts themselves. French sociologist Emile Durkheim emphasized that every member of society has an interest in social cohesion and wishes to see perpetrators appropriately punished. The media plays to this basic inclination. From the reactions of the justice system to crime people take clues not only for its effectiveness but the public also wants to see its basic values represented in the work of officials and their decisions. Therefore, aspects of procedural and distributive justice are picked up by popular imagination and exploited to the full by media producers. Beyond recognition that media depictions of criminal justice will follow media conventions and will therefore be distorted in systematic ways, it has to be acknowledged that those representations and the expectations they formed have become a major force in society. Political repercussions and influences on how crime is dealt with are a consequence.

KW - courts

KW - judges

KW - prosecutors

KW - lawyers

KW - law film

KW - courtroom drama

KW - TV law series

U2 - 10.1093/acrefore/9780190264079.013.201

DO - 10.1093/acrefore/9780190264079.013.201

M3 - Chapter

SP - 1

EP - 27

BT - Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Criminology

PB - Oxford University Press USA

CY - New York

ER -