MSc Criminology Programmes

Crime, Media and Popular Culture

2017-18

Crime, Media & Popular Culture 1

Crime, Media and Popular Culture 2017-18

Course Coordinator: PGT Course Administration:

Dr Sarah Armstrong Sociology and Politics Postgraduate
Ivy Lodge, 63 Gibson St Administrator
Tel: 0141 330 7715 Room 208C, Ground Floor, Adam Smith
Email: [email protected] Building, 40 Bute Gardens
Office hour: Fridays 2-3 pm 44 (0)141 330 4088, Email:
[email protected]

Course Meets: Tuesdays, 2-4 pm, 10 University Gardens 203

Seminar Dates and Topics

Date Week Seminar Topic

9 Jan 1 Every Picture Tells a Story / Course Introduction

16 Jan 2 Bad Publics: Myth and semiotics of ad campaigns

23 Jan 3 Bad Mothers: Media representation of women

30 Jan 4 Bad Criminals: Mugshots and the photographic image

6 Feb 5 Bad Migrants: Policy discourses

13 Feb 6 Bad Prisoners: The prison film

20 Feb 7 Good Students I: Fieldwork exercise and in class analysis

27 Feb 8 Good Students II: Fieldwork exercise and in class analysis

6 Mar 9 Bad Neighbourhoods: Representations of space and place

13 Mar 10 Bad Kids: Moral panic theory and young people

Crime, Media & Popular Culture 2

 Crime, Media and Popular Culture

What This Class Is About

Crime and punishment are common if not dominant themes in literature, film, the news, on
TV as well as in video games and on the internet. In this course we will be concerned with
the dynamics and implications of various media representations of crime and justice issues,
interrogating some key issues:
o What images of crime, punishment and (criminal) justice are circulating in popular
culture? What wider cultural narratives do they embody or challenge?
o How do popular cultural representations of crime and criminal justice issues relate to
academic and policy representations?
o How do these representations affect the way we think about criminal justice? How do
they fit with academic and practitioner knowledges?
o How do different media affect the way that ‘stories’ can be told about crime and
justice?
o What techniques are useful to understand the meanings and effects of media
representations?

In the class we work with a range of media (photography, internet/social media, academic
research and policy, film, video games, memes and more) and how they represent particular
crime and justice issues (crime, criminals, prison). The class is practically focused but
theoretically rich; in each session we read about relevant theory and methods of media
analysis and devote class time to applying these. This course will be of interest to anyone
seeking an introduction to visual culture and studies as well as those interested in narratives
of crime and justice. No criminology background is required.

Moodle

The organisation and communication for the course will take place through the Moodle2
online learning environment. Important information about seminars and assessments will be
posted here, as will copies of overheads, handouts and other useful material. It is important,
therefore, that you familiarise yourself with the Moodle2 system and that you check the site
regularly for updates and announcements.

All e-mail messages will be sent to your official university e-mail address. If you want to use
another address you must arrange for these to be forwarded to whichever address you
regularly use.

Crime, Media & Popular Culture 3

Aims
This class aims to:
• Provide a grounding in and understanding of the ways in which media and popular
cultural forms represent and engage with crime and criminal justice issues; and
• Enable students to participate knowledgeably and critically in debates about crime,
criminal justice and popular culture.

Learning Outcomes
The learning outcomes of the class are for students to be able to:
• Demonstrate an understanding of the key theories about representation, crime and
criminal justice in contemporary society;
• Distinguish and evaluate the different media which participate in representation and
circulation of crime and criminal justice messages; and
• Learn about and have an introductory understanding of applying a range of methods to
evaluate representations of crime and justice in a range of media.

Teaching and Learning Methods

This module will consist of discussion heavy seminars in which student participation is
essential. Seminars will be premised on students having done the required reading (and
sometimes watching) on the week’s topic in advance of the seminar. We also do a lot of
small group work and peer review.

Assessment
Students have a choice of one of two options:

(1) An essay of 4,500 – 5,000 words (100%)

OR

(2) Two media reviews of 2,500 words each (2 x 50%)

Topics for the essay and reviews are to be selected by students and agreed with the course
tutor. Essays and reviews have the same deadline (and both reviews are due at the same
time): 16 April 2018. A handout explaining how to prepare a media review will be made
available.

Submission procedure: All assessed work is to be submitted both electronically (ie. as a word
document or pdf attached sent to [email protected]) and also in two hard
paper copies to the programme administrator by 2 pm on the relevant date of submission. All
work must be word processed and spell-checked. Please use URKUND, the University
approved anti-plagiarism software package.

Crime, Media & Popular Culture 4

All assessed work for each module must be submitted with an accompanying cover sheet
giving name of module, type of assessment (e.g. essay, review etc.) title of essay, name of
module co-ordinator and student’s matriculation number.

Formative Assessment: Halfway through the course, students will collect a media sample
that we will analyze together in class. This acts as a formative assessment with feedback from
the instructor and classmates provided.

Key Sources

If you are going to buy anything, the following would be good investments and provide
thorough coverage for many of the topics covered in the course (though there are also
multiple copies of each available on short loan in the main library):

M. Valverde (2006) Law and Order: Images, Meaning, Myths, Abingdon, Oxon:
Routledge-Cavendish.
C. Greer, ed. (2009) Media and Crime: A Reader, Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge.
Y. Jewkes (2004) Media and Crime, London: Sage.

Journals and Newspapers

Dip into the following journals so you can see how scholars write about these issues, and also
find resources to support your own assessments.

Crime, Media, Culture

Social Semiotics
Discourse and Society
Theoretical Criminology
Punishment and Society
Media, Culture and Society
New Media and Society
Social Media and Society
Visual Studies (Visual Sociology prior to 2001)
Visual Anthropology
Critical Criminology
British Journal of Criminology
Internet Journal of Criminology
Journal of Criminal Justice and Popular Culture (student journal, I think, no longer
publishing as of August 2013, but archive available online)

National Newspapers: Please try and regularly read a source of news (newspaper, online,
whatever) throughout this course, keeping in mind how criminal justice (i.e. not just
crime) is covered. The Guardian’s Wednesday Society section often has stories on
criminal justice and social welfare worth reading (and also a regular column by Mark
Johnson, an ex-prisoner, called User’s Voice)

Crime, Media & Popular Culture 5

 Class 1
Every picture tells a story

In this first class I will overview what the course is about, how the seminars will be run and
what will be covered. We will also briefly discuss the assessment for the course.

To prepare for class, please read the assigned readings (the required ones are marked with a
*; everything else is optional). In addition to this, explore several (AT LEAST three) of the
pictures and stories in Robert Gumpert’s Locked and Found project (website link below). The
project involves taking a photograph of a jail inmate, posed however they want, in exchange
for a story (audio) from them about anything they want to talk about.

For our discussion, think about these questions: What is the point of this project? Do the
stories resonate with the pictures? How do these pictures and stories compare to the pictures
and stories about ‘criminals’ in newspapers? This will be a great way of introducing the two
key themes of the course: first, how are issues of crime and justice represented in diverse
media?, and second, what narrative techniques and possibilities exist within this field?

Reading (*REQUIRED)
*Greer, C and Jewkes, Y (2005) ‘Extremes of Otherness: Media Images of Social Exclusion’, Social
Justice, vol 32(1): 20-31
*R Gumpert (2006 to present) ‘Locked and Found’, arts project in the San Francisco County Jail
(http://takeapicturetellastory.com/category/locked-and-found/). Look at and listen to at least three
people featured on this site and note down the names so we can explore them together in class.
Valverde, M (2006) ‘Representations and their social effects: A template’, Chapter 3 in Law and Order
Christie N (1986) ‘Crime Control as Drama’, Journal of Law and Society, vol 13(1): 1-8
Moran L (2012) ‘Review essay Visual justice’, International Journal of Law in Context vol 8(3): 431–446
Y Jewkes (2011) ‘The Construction of Crime News’, Crime and Media, Chapter 2
J Prosser and T Loxley (2008) Introducing Visual Methods, NCRM Paper, available here:
http://eprints.ncrm.ac.uk/420/1/MethodsReviewPaperNCRM-010.pdf
Berger, J (1972) Ways of Seeing. London: Penguin Books.
Jacobsen M H (ed) (2014) The Poetics of Crime: Understanding and Researching Crime and Deviance
Through Creative Sources, London: Routledge
Other sound resources:
http://www.oralhistoryforsocialchange.org/archives/
http://jfmresearch.com/home/oralhistoryproject/
http://prisonsmemoryarchive.com/

(There is some academic work on penal soundscapes if anyone is interested in researching in this
area)

Crime, Media & Popular Culture 6

 Class 2
Bad Publics: Myth and semiotics in ad campaigns

Images often tap into widely held beliefs and stories about the way the world works. They
both impose and reflect social and cultural meaning. What underlying beliefs and systems of
meaning are drawn on in typical stories and imagery about crime, criminals and ‘dangerous’
people? In this session we will learn about the concepts of myth and narrative as these have
been developed in cultural studies. Narrative can be understood simplistically as the story arc
of a given representation (which may be visual or lexical, or have another/multiple sensory
dimensions). The concept of myth, in its most general terms it is the claim that no image, no
representation has a neutral and independent meaning. Rather to make sense of an image we
are also drawing on, and often guided to draw on, wider systems of meaning and value, or
dominant ideologies. We will discuss some dominant myths and narratives of Western
culture and analyse a range of crime and justice media to explore these, asking: What is the
problem? Who is being targeted? What myths and narratives are commonly invoked in
criminal justice arenas?

Reading (*REQUIRED)
*Storey, J (2009) Cultural Theory and Popular Culture: An Introduction, Chapter 6 excerpt (pp. 89-103)
*Valverde, M (2006) ‘Social Semiotics: The Basics’, Law and Order, Chapter 2
*Watch and listen to the video about knife crime in Scotland (from a Government campaign titled, ‘No
Knives, Better Lives’): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgjcC5kWOE4
Van Leeuwen, T and Jewett, C (Eds) (2001) Handbook of Visual Analysis, Sage
Hall, S (1980) Encoding-Decoding excerpt, Reading 4 in Crime and Media Reader (C Greer, ed)
Sasson, T ‘Frame Analysis,’ Reading 12 in Crime and Media Reader (C Greer, ed)
Barthes, R (1972) Mythologies
Barthes, R (1975) ‘Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narratives’, New Literary History, Vol. 6(2):
pp. 237-272
‘Barthes for beginners’: http://visual-memory.co.uk/daniel/Documents/S4B/sem06.html

Crime, Media & Popular Culture 7

 Class 3
Bad Mothers: Media representation of women

This class takes a particular subject of representation – women, and specifically women who
have killed their children. Methodologically, think about how women’s stories are presented
in different media (e.g. newspapers, autobiography). The readings suggest that particular
narratives are available to women. Do you agree? What are the subtle and not so subtle cues
we are given in different media formats to evoke the image of the ‘bad mother’ or the good
woman? Also think about how gender and criminality are overlaid with issues of race and
class.

Reading (*REQUIRED)
*Barnett, B (2006) ‘Medea in the media: Narrative and myth in newspaper coverage of women who kill
their children’, Journalism Vol. 7(4): 411–432
*Steedman, C. (2000) ‘Enforced Narratives: Stories of Another Self’, in Feminism and Autobiography:
Texts, Theories, Methods, ed. Tess Cosslett, Celia Lury, and Penny Summerfield, New York:
Routledge
*Find a news item (newspaper, video or radio clip) on crime and women (whether perpetrator, victim or
something else!) and consider it in the context of the assigned readings. Bring it to class for
discussion.
What Does It Mean to Be a Good Mother? Radio 4 broadcast (2016):
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04b5kqg
Jewkes, Y (2011) ‘Media Mysogyny: Monstrous Women’, Media & Crime, Chapter 5
Cecil, D. (2007) Looking Beyond Caged Heat: Media Images of Women in Prison. Feminist
Criminology, Volume 2 Number 4, pp.304-326
Miller, J. (2002) The Strengths and Limits of “Doing Gender” for Understanding Street Crime.
Theoretical Criminology, 6: 433–60.
Fair, K. A. (2001) Defeminizing and Dehumanizing Female Murderers: Depictions of Lesbians on Death
Row. Women & Criminal Justice 11(1), pp. 49-66.
Brennan, PK Vandenberg, AL (2009) Depictions of female offenders in front-page newspaper stories:
The importance of race/ethnicity. International Journal of Social Inquiry Volume 2(2): 141-175
Berrington, E and Honkatukia, P (2002) An Evil Monster and a Poor Thing: Female Violence in the
Media. Journal of Scandinavian Studies in Criminology and Crime Prevention vol 3(1)
Chesney-Lind, M and Eliason, M (2006) From invisible to incorrigible: The demonization of
marginalized women and girls, Crime, Media, Culture
Presser, Lois (2009) The narratives of offenders, Theoretical Criminology, Volume 13(2).
Presser, Lois and Sveinung Sandberg (eds) (2015) Narrative Criminology: Understanding Stories of
Crime: New York University Press, New Yor.

Crime, Media & Popular Culture 8

 Class 4
Bad Criminals: Mugshots and the photographic image

A photo captures one moment in time and, at least documentary photography, purports to
show the exact reality of what it documents. Unlike a film or a novel, this means its meaning
and narrative are wholly contained in a single image or set of images, and its truth relies on a
claim of accuracy. In this session we will discuss the ethics, claims, readings and challenges
of photography as a mode of representing crime and justice. We will use the paradigmatic
photographic representation in criminology – the mug shot – as a way of applying our
thinking.

Reading (*REQUIRED)
*Lashmar, P (2014) How to humiliate and shame: a reporter's guide to the power of the mugshot, Social
Semiotics 24:1, 56-87
*Jones, P. and Wardle, C. (2008) ‘“No emotion, no sympathy”: The visual construction of Maxine Carr’,
Crime, Media, Culture, vol. 4: 53-71
*Heith Copes and Jared Ragland (2016) Considering the Implicit Meanings in Photographs in Narrative
Criminology Crime Media Culture Vol. 12(2) 271
Valverde, M (2006) Chapter 4 Science and the Semiotics of Deviance, in Law and Order: Images,
Meanings, Myths, pp. 59-89
Carrabine, E (2015) Visual Criminology – History, Theory and Method, Routledge Handbook of
Qualitative Criminology (Chapter 8)
Torborn Rodland Photography: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/05/arts/design/torbjorn-rodland-
photography.html?_r=0
Ayers, T. and Jewkes, Y. (2012), ‘The Haunting Spectacle of Crystal Meth: A Media-Created
Mythology?’, Crime, Media, Culture, 8 (3): 1–18.
Hall, S. 1973. ‘‘The Determination of News Photographs.’’ In The Manufacture of News: A Reader,
edited by S. Cohen and J. Young. London: Sage.
Sturken, M and Cartwright, L (2001) Practices of Looking: Images Power and Politics (Chapter 1)
Prosser J and Loxley T (2008) Visual Representation, Chapter 6 in Introducing Visual Methods, NCRM
Paper, available here: http://eprints.ncrm.ac.uk/420/1/MethodsReviewPaperNCRM-010.pdf
Barthes, R (1977) Image-Music-Text, Chapter 1 (‘The Photographic Message’) and Chapter 2
(‘Rhetoric of the Image’)
Sontag S (2001[1977]) In Plato’s Cave, Chapter 1 in On Photography, Ferrar, Straus and Giroux
Carney, P. (2010), ‘Crime, Punishment and the Force of the Photographic Spectacle’, in K. Hayward
and M. Presdee, eds, Framing Crime: Cultural Criminology and the Image, 17–35. Routledge.
van Dijk J (2008) ‘Digital photography: communication, identity, memory’, Visual Communication, vol
7(1), pp. 57–76

Crime, Media & Popular Culture 9

Schonberg, J. and Bourgois, P. (2002), The politics of photographic aesthetics: Critically documenting
the HIV epidemic among heroin injectors in Russia and the United States, The International
Journal of Drug Policy, 13(5): 387–392.
Butler J (2009) Frames of War: When is Life Grievable? (Verso)
Zelizer, B. (1998) Remembering to Forget: Holocaust Memory through the Camera’s Eye
Hawtin M (2010) ‘Representations of Prisons in French Contemporary Photography’, Masters Thesis
available via Scribd.
Morrison W (2004) ‘Reflections with Memories: Everyday Photography Capturing Genocide’ Theoretical
Criminology 8, 3: 341-358
Mirzoeff, N. (2006), ‘On Visuality’, Journal of Visual Culture, 5: 53–78.
Sekula, A (1986) ‘The body and the archive’, October, Vol. 39 (Winter), pp. 3-64
Jager, J (2001) ‘Photography: a means of surveillance? Judicial photography, 1850 to 1900’, Crime,
History & Societies, Vol. 5, n°1, pp. 27-51. http://chs.revues.org/1056#tocto1n2
Sontag S. (2004) ‘Regarding the Torture of Others’, available in C. Greer (ed.) Crime and Media
Reader, or online: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/23/magazine/regarding-the-torture-of-
others.html
Girling, E. (2004) ‘“Looking Death in the Face”: The Benetton Death Penalty Campaign’, Punishment
and Society, vol. 6(3): 271-288
Valier C (2004) ‘Introduction: The power to punish and the power of the image.’ Punishment and
Society 6(3): 251–254.
Cohen K (2005) ‘What does the photoblog want?’, Media Culture and Society, Vol. 27(6): 883–901
Ferrell, J. (2012), ‘Crime and the Visual: Critical Criminology and the Photodocumentary Tradition’,
Critical Criminologist, 21: 1.
http://www.prisonimage.org/portfolio

Crime, Media & Popular Culture 10

 Class 5
Bad Migrants: Policy discourses

In this session we will approach policy documents as if they were crime thrillers. Who are the
good guys and bad guys? How convincing is the plot? What devices are employed to
convince the reader of its value and veracity? Reading a policy text this way helps us focus
on the narrative and other technical strategies of such writing which are generally implicit.
One of the tools we will use to draw out the meaning and power of policy texts is discourse
analysis. The article by Phillips and Hardy focuses on the concept of the ‘refugee’ and shows
how this is an identity constructed through a range of discursive settings and actors. We will
also learn about metaphor analysis, considering how social policy discourse is full of
metaphorical ways of framing problems and solutions.

Reading (*REQUIRED)
*Phillips N and Hardy C (1997) Managing Multiple Identities: Discourse, Legitimacy and Resources in
the UK Refugee System, Organization vol 4(2): 159-185
*Schön D (1993[1981]) ‘Generative metaphor: A perspective on problem-setting in social policy’, in A
Ortony (ed) Metaphor and Thought, pp. 137-163
Hunter, S. (2008) ‘Living documents: A feminist psychosocial approach to the relational politics of policy
documentation’, Critical Social Policy vol. 28(4): 506 – 528
McDonald, C, Marston, G and Buckley, A (2003) Risk technology in Australia: the role of the Job
Seeker Classification Instrument in employment services’, Critical Social Policy Vol. 23(4): 498–
525
Fairclough N (2003) Analysing Discourse: Textual Analysis for Social Research (Routledge)
Drake, D. and Henley, A. (2014) ‘Victims’ Versus ‘Offenders’ in British Political Discourse: The
Construction of a False Dichotomy’, The Howard Journal, Vol 53 No 2., pp. 141–157
Stone D (1989) ‘Causal Stories and the Formation of Policy Agendas’ Political Science Quarterly, Vol.
104(2), pp. 281-300
Swan E (2010) ‘States of White Ignorance, and Audit Masculinity in English Higher Education’ Social
Politics Vol 17(4): 477–506
Riles, A (2006) Documents: Artifacts of modern knowledge, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan
Press
Stoler, A. L. (2002) Colonial Archives and the Arts of Governance, Archival Science 2: 87–109
Lakoff G and Johnson M (1981) Metaphors We Live By, University of Chicago Press
Good A (2006), ‘Writing as a Kind of Anthropology: Alternative Professional Genres,’ in G. De Neeve
and M. Unnithan-Kumar (eds.), Critical Journeys: The Making of Anthropologists
Ericson RV (2003) ‘The Culture and Power of Criminological Research’, in L Zedner, and A Ashworth
(eds) The Criminological Foundations of Penal Policy (Oxford University Press), pp. 31-78
Shore C and Wright S eds. (1997), Anthropology of Policy: Critical Perspectives on Governance and
Power (Routledge).

Crime, Media & Popular Culture 11

 Class 6
Bad Prisoners: The prison in film

The prison film is a well-established fiction genre. There is a standard formula to prison
films, just as there are in classic Westerns or romantic comedies. What are the key elements
of this formula, and can you think of any films which challenge or deviate from this? The
required preparation for this week is to watch and to read. Nicole Hahn Rafter considers the
prison film formula – do these apply to the film(s) you watched? Also, evaluate the claims
made in the article by David Wilson and Sean O’Sullivan that prison films promote
understanding and reform. What happens if we switch the medium of representing the prison
to a different format: TV programme, video game, official website, newspaper, documentary,
policy document? What stories and meanings are possible or encouraged? What qualities and
capacities does each format offer? We will discuss these questions and consider how different
representations of prison interact and mutually inform our understanding of prison.

Reading (*REQUIRED)
*Rafter N (2000) Prison and Execution Films excerpt, Shots in The Mirror: crime films and society
Oxford University Press
*Wilson D and O’Sullivan S (2005) Re-theorising the Penal Reform Functions of the Prison Film:
Revelation, Humanisation, Empathy and Benchmarking, Theoretical Criminology 9(4)
*Watch a prison film of your choice (see some examples below)
*Watch this 9 minute video ‘No Jail Time: The Movie’ here:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/05/opinion/courtroom-sentencing-videos-
lawyers.html?_r=0&auth=login-email
Pete Brook’s Prison Photography photoblog: http://prisonphotography.org/ . Read his notes for a history
of prison photography, here: http://prisonphotography.org/2011/02/12/a-brief-history-of-prison-
photography/ Go down to the section in the left hand column called Prison Photography Archives
and explore his coverage of different artists here (if you go to the list of photographers, it takes
you to their personal sites where not all images have been maintained).
Hawtin, M. (2009) Representations of Prisons in Contemporary French Photography, Masters Thesis,
available here: https://www.scribd.com/document/40312428/Representations-of-Prisons-in-
Contemporary-French-Photography
Vera Institute of Justice, Reimagining Prison campaign, https://www.vera.org/reimagining-prison/
Valverde M (2006) Law and Order, Ch. 6
Nellis M (2009) ‘The Aesthetics of Redemption: Released Prisoner Movies’, Theoretical Criminology,
vol 13(1): 129-146
Mason P (2006) ‘Prison Decayed: Cinematic Penal Discourse and Populism 1995-2005’, Social
Semiotics, vol 16(4)

Crime, Media & Popular Culture 12

Kearon AT (2012) ‘Alternative Representation of the Prison and Imprisonment: Comparing Dominant
Narratives in the News Media and in Popular Fictional Texts’, Prison Service Journal No. 199: 4-10
Nellis M (2006) ‘Future Punishment in American Science Fiction Films’, Mason P (ed) Captured by the
Media: prison discourse and popular culture
Foucault, M (1977) ‘The examination’ in Discipline and Punish, London: Vintage.
Mason P (2003) ‘The Screen Machine: cinematic representations of prison’, in Mason P (ed) Criminal
Visions: media representations of crime and justice
Wilson, D. and O’Sullivan, S (2004) Representations of Prison in Film and Television Drama, Waterside
Press.
Valier, C. and R. Lippens (2004) `Moving Images, Ethics and Justice’, Punishment and Society 6(3):
319—33
Picturing Justice website: http://usf.usfca.edu/pj// (discontinued journal; archive of articles on crime and
justice in film and on TV)
Bennett, J. (2006) ‘The Good, the bad and the ugly: the media in prison films,’ The Howard Journal of
Criminal Justice, vol 45(2): 97-115
Rafter, NH and Brown, M (2011) Criminology Goes to the Movies, NYU Press.
B Yousman (2009) Prime time prisons on US TV: representation of incarceration
Alber, J (2011) Cinematic carcerality: Prison metaphors in film, The Journal of Popular Culture, vol
44(2): 217-232
Alber, J (2007) Narrating the Prison, Cambria Press.
Rosenburg Alyssa (2016) ‘How police censorship shaped Hollywood’, Washington Post (October 24)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/opinions/2016/10/24/how-police-censorship-shaped-
hollywood/?utm_term=.92c20460f6b9

Films:
Hunger (d Steve McQueen 2008)
Birdman of Alcatraz (d John Frankenheimer 1962)
Cool Hand Luke (d S Rosenberg 1967)
The Shawshank Redemption (d Frank Darabont 1994)
The Woodsman (d Nicole Kassell 2004)
A Prophet (d J Audiard 2009)
Ghosts of the Civil Dead (d J Hillcoat 1988)
Short Eyes (1977; bonus: soundtrack by Curtis Mayfield)
A Man Escaped (1956)
Another film of your choice (but consult with Sarah on this)

Crime, Media & Popular Culture 13

 Class 7&8
Good Students: fieldwork exercise

Over two session students will undertake their own media selection and in class analysis in
preparation of the assessment. Depending on the size of the class, students individually or in
small groups will carry out the exercise.

Assignment: Observe any representation that can be connected somehow to crime or justice.
This might be a billboard, YouTube video, museum, piece of public art, a film, a public
campaign, a crime novel, meme, a song, a podcast, a video game, a blog, etc.. Collect a
meaningful sample of it and send this to me – a picture, audio or video clip, a gift store item,
a quote, a graph, a meeting minute or newspaper story, screen shot – anything which can be
displayed in class that stimulates our discussion of it as a representation of punishment. Take
notes as you are conducting your field research:
• Describe the example and give background on its creation.
• What meaning can be drawn from it?
• What contextual factors give it meaning?
• How does it say it? What techniques does it use?
• How effective is the representation in communicating its message?
• How stable is its meaning? Are there contradictions or inconsistencies in the
message?

We will look at the various representations collected by the class and analyse them using
some of the techniques and methods we have applied so far: e.g. content/form/context,
content analysis, narrative analysis, semiotics, discourse analysis, metaphor analysis,
thematic/qualitative content analysis, etc. The required preparation for this week in addition
to collecting and making notes about your media sample is to review the prior weeks’
readings, focusing on their methodologies. No one will analyse their own sample in class.

Timing:
1. By the 5 PM the day before class (20th February), email or otherwise deliver to me a
sample of your representation and tell me what it is and any necessary background
information needed to analyse it.
2. I will upload all samples on Moodle2.
3. IN CLASS: Be prepared to analyse the media samples displayed guided by these
questions:
(1) What is it – what type of media, what is it about? (2) What meanings
(implicit/explicit) can be drawn from it? (3) What methods will be most useful for
analyzing it? (4) Is it significant or important? (5) What readings or additional media
would be useful for preparing a review or essay on it?

Crime, Media & Popular Culture 14

Class 9
Bad Neighbourhoods: Representations of Space and Place

Think about the difference of looking at a space from above (a birds’ eye view), as through a
map, or at eye level, for example by walking through a neighbourhood. Hot spot crime
mapping is an example of the former, and has become a desired tool in crime prevention.
What qualities of an area are hidden and highlighted in different perspectives of ‘the street’?
What effects do representations like crime maps have – do they reduce or amplify fear of
crime? How do they represent and make sense of people in particular spaces? What are
alternative means and consequences of spatialising crime and justice? This seminar takes on
the representation of space and its implications in criminology. The reading takes you
through some familiar territory in criminology’s approach to space, such as the Chicago
School and situational crime prevention. We will discuss the underlying premises of such
thinking about space

Reading (*REQUIRED)
*M. Valverde (2006), Law and Order, Chapter 8
*Taylor, I (1995) ‘Private Homes and Public Others: An Analysis of Talk about Crime in Suburban South
Manchester in the Mid-1990s’ British Journal of Criminology, vol 35(2): 263-285)
E Lynch (2013) ‘Bad neighbourhoods: Keeping the “Other” at a distance’, in Scripting the street:
exploring geographies of crime in popular films, University of Ottawa doctoral thesis, pp. 66-72:
https://www.ruor.uottawa.ca/handle/10393/26275?locale=fr [EXCERPT]
Chak, Tings (2014) Undocumented: The Architecture of Migrant Detention http://we-make-money-not-
art.com/undocumented_the_architecture/
Abigail Reynolds (2010), Mount Fear, sculpture based on London crime mapping:
http://flowingdata.com/2009/06/23/20-visualizations-to-understand-crime/
Gillanders D (c. 2013), Glasgow and knife crime, available at:
http://www.davidgillanders.com/news/knife-crime-winning-the-war-2/
Campbell, E (2012) Landscapes of performance: stalking as choreography, Environment and Planning
D, vol 30, pp. 400-417
Ratcliffe JH (2002) Damned if you don’t, damned if you do: Crime mapping and its implications in the
real world. Policing and Society 12(3): 211–225.
Fyfe NR (1996) Contested visions of a modern city: planning and poetry in postwar Glasgow,
Environment and Planning A Vol 28(3): 387-403
H Lefebvre (1991) Chapter 1, The Production of Space
Valverde, M (2015), Chapter 6 Chronotopes of Security in Chronotopes of Law: Jurisdiction, Scale and
Governance, Routledge
Scott J (1998) Seeing Like a State
K Hayward (2012) ‘The Five Spaces of Cultural Criminology’, British Journal of Criminology, 52, 441–
462
Jarman, N. (1996). Violent men, violent land: Dramatizing the Troubles and the landscape of Ulster.
Journal of Material Culture, 1(1), 39-61.

Crime, Media & Popular Culture 15

Mowlabocus S (2015) ‘Y’all need to hide your kids, hide your wife’: Mobile applications, risk and sex
offender databases, New Media & Society
Quinton P (2011) The impact of information about crime and policing on public perceptions: The results
of a randomised controlled trial. National Policing Improvement Agency Report
http://www.natcen.ac.uk/media/41354/impactcrimepolicinginformationfullreport.pdf

Crime, Media & Popular Culture 16

 Week 10
Bad Kids: Moral panic theory and young people

The last session will allow us to review the themes of the module as a whole, reviewing the
main media, theories and methods covered through the course. However, we will also be
touching on one last major theme of crime and justice representation – bad kids. We will
examine this topic while at the same time critically assessing a dominant theory of analyzing
media and crime, moral panic theory. There will be a short lecture on moral panic theory
covering key originators and contemporary scholars with time for questions.

Reading (*REQUIRED)
*Jewkes Y (2004) Media and Crime, Chapter 3
*McRobbie A. and Thornton S. L. (1995) Rethinking 'Moral Panic' for Multi-Mediated Social Worlds, The
British Journal of Sociology, Vol. 46, No. 4 (Dec., 1995), pp. 559-574.
Cohen S (1972) Folk Devils and Moral Panics.
Goode E and Ben-Yehuda, N Moral Panics: The Social Construction of Deviance (2009[1994])
Garland D. (2008), ‘On the Concept of Moral Panic’, Crime Media Culture, vol. 4(1): 9-30
British Journal of Criminology (2009), Special Issue on Moral Panic vol 49, no 1
Ashgate Handbook to Moral Panics

Crime, Media & Popular Culture 17