Crim 402 Week 4: Moral Panics & Representation PDF

Crim 402: Week 4: Moral Panics and Representation Objectives Discursive frames and the power of representation Stereotype: What are its impacts and how does it relate to things like appearance and race? Get into the main empirical case study of Goetz and Zimmerman and decipher the complicated readin...

Crim 402: Week 4: Moral Panics and Representation Objectives Discursive frames and the power of representation Stereotype: What are its impacts and how does it relate to things like appearance and race? Get into the main empirical case study of Goetz and Zimmerman and decipher the complicated reading Question: Does the public subscribe to a criminal stereotype? Representation: For most people in Canada, knowledge about criminals is based onn mediated/filtered, forms of information Media, online, television, movies, music, education These sources dont simpy tell you WHAT to think, but rather HOW to think? Vehicle of Representation: Discursive Frames Discursive frame: Words, symbols and ideas we use to represent something and create meaning Text uses notions like ‘unattractive” “tough” looking to illustrate how society represents and creates meaning about “criminal” types Mass media relies on discursive frames (certain words, symbols and ideas) to represent and create a “criminal’ type Are you thinking “some represtnetioans of criminals are true?” Issue is not how how “true” a stereotypical repesnation is. Rather.. How are dominant representations of stereotypes of criminals created and used by dominant groups to facialite conformity to their visions of how society should operate. Paul Secord and Carl Backman: Stereotypes: Assign certain attributes to a social identtiitiy or group Some agreement on these attributes They are fixed and limited Stereotype: Impact Sterotypes do not need to be negative at face value (ex: the stereotype that Black folks are good at sports, Asian folks are good at math) BUT They are reductionist and deny diversity and complexity Authorize stigmatization and naturalize the socioeconomic, political and racial status quo Impacts on those sterotyped People can incorporate these negative stereotypes and absorb them When deviance is viewed as inborn= feeling hopeless The persons acceptance of the idea that they possesses an inborn “criminal” trait is likely to create a self-fulfilling prophecy as there appears to be little alternative to a deviant lifestyle Sterotype and Crime: Why its important? When the public is misled about crime via sterotypes then crime control policies may be misdirected Ordinary citizens activate the machinery of justice in a case by notifiting police of a criminal act: Citizens serve as eyewitnesses in the investigation of a crime and at trail, they serve as jurors, judges and lawyers Represnetion is Vital to Critical Criminology: For the official version of law, representation is largely irrelevant Studies demonstrate that senetnced imposed by the courts are influenced bu such things as the attractiveness of the suspect or accussed Also, sentences imposed by the courts are influenced by things such as race, gender, class and sexualityf of the suspect or accused But Stereotype and Physical Apperance Studies confirm that less attractive children were judged as more likely to repeat their aggressive atcs than were attractive children The fact that many people link criminality with facial appearance suggests that facial attrativness is indeed an important aspect of criinal stereotypes Steroype of Attractivness The indentificaqtion of offenders in police line ups, findings of gguilt or innocence, and the sentence imposed by the court are influenced by such things as the attractiveness of the suspect or accused Simulated Jury Experimenht Jury members tend to make a link between attractiveness and guilt Less attractive people, according to that study, are more likely to be convicted than are attratice people, where the facts of the case are the same Where a conviction does occur, unattractive defendants tend to be punished more severely than attractive defendants Race and Racilazation: 1: Shifting Process: Physical differences used to construc and give meaning to racial groups 2: These meanings are then used to organize racial groups into a hierarchy (allocates unequal distribution of power) Race, Crime and Sterotypes Cont: Black crimnial suspects as compared to whites,a re more memorable and treated with more suspicion Black folks are also more likely to be misidnetified by readers as criminal suspects in violent crime stories Images of ambiguous objects are more likely to be identified as guns when associated with Black folks than with white folks Scholars suggest that these associations play a critical role in driving racial disparities inarrsts, police justifiable, homicides, and incarceration Challenging Sterotypes Critical criminologists argue that the meaning of representation are not fixed, rather they are contested by those who do not have the power to shape dominant representations Moral Panic: A condition, episode, person or group of persons emerges to become defined as a threat to moral norms Moral panic formulates threats as individualized folk devills that harm the basis of society and hus call for collective solutions Moral Breach: Moral breach, competing narratives cross to produce debate over the form of social harm and the distribution of blame In a moral breach, the blameworthiness of specific indians is contested, whereas moral panics designate the folk devil unproblematically