Is America Getting "Tougher" on Crime?

Many people wonder nowadays if the criminal justice system in America is "getting tougher" on crime. I looked into this issue, and overall I don't believe that our system as it is today is making an overly significant difference in trying to lessen the crime rate in our country. As I tried to make sense of the idea, I investigated some statistics on crime, statistics on jails and prisons, and lastly I tried to connect the idea of this perceived increase in crime and concrete evidence of overcrowded prisons to one of the main avenues by which crime data is sent out into the world to us as citizens: the media.

According to the United States Bureau of Justice Statistics, the trend in violent crimes since 1994 have decreased to a level that, in 2005, was the lowest it had ever been. In that year, there were about 20,000 people who committed violent crimes, which would include crimes such as "rape, robbery, aggravated assault, simple assault, and homicide" (http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/glance/cv2.htm).

However, during those same years (1994-2005), the number of people in prisons went from about 990,000 all the way up to roughly 1.5 million people. Add to those numbers the people in local jails, and the total rises to around 2 million people as of 2006. So where did these other several thousand people come from? Surely all of these people combined didn't commit "violent" crimes. While those questions may not be readily answered, an area that we can explore and gain a lot of knowledge from is that of the relationship between the popular media (which now includes the Internet) and the perceived increase in crime, which I believe the media has a significant amount of control over, at least in terms of our daily interactions with the data behind crime.

James Q. Wilson argues that the problems in the United States in terms of crime are a result of our justice system's failure to get tough on the issue. In one of his essays, he says "the average citizen thinks it obvious that one major reason why crime has gone up is that people have discovered that it is easier to get away with it" (qtd. in Hickey 4). I would add to this argument my thoughts on the popular media, and furthermore point out how those thoughts offer a stronger case as to why society sees this increase in crime.

There are many factors that go into this relationship of media to crime, and one of the key factors that comes to light again and again is the idea of wording, or more broadly, rhetoric. For example, Weitzer and Kurbin believe that this kind of thinking falls into the "cultivation thesis," which they say means that "the greater one's exposure to the media, the more likely it is that one's perceptions of the real world will match what is most frequently depicted in the media." (Weitzer and Kurbin, 499). Simply put, what one sees on television will ultimately become his or her view of reality. The problem within that circular thesis is that there is no room for a foreseeable change. The media of today is filled with soundbytes and flashes of images (both meant to distract and draw attention), and so since the media isn't likely to change their reports, individuals have no choice but to follow along and believe that crime is this gigantic problem.

Barry Glasner offers a startling piece of information in one of his articles that coincides perfectly with how the media severely overblows the nation's crime problem.
Glassner says that "between 1990 and 1998, the murder rate in the United States decreased by 20 percent" (Glassner, 820, emphasis added). He also adds that within that same time frame, the media's broadcasting of murder increased a shocking 600 percent! Certainly, that kind of discrepancy cannot be looked at as mere coincidence. It is clear to me that there is a serious problem when it comes to us as citizens being able to trust the media in terms of reporting crime, and perhaps reporting any kind of information in general.

Interestingly enough, Weitzer and Kurbin agreed with the information discovered by Liska and Baccaglini, which stated that "coverage of crime in other cities makes people feel safe by comparison" (372). That is also very disturbing to me because it again shows our willingness as a society to play follow-the-leader with the media, with few (if any) of us actually investigating what we hear to see if it is indeed true. In closing, I find it incredible that we can simultaneously believe in reports that crime is on the rise when it is statistically not, and also feel "safer" when we hear that crime is more of a problem in some other city than our own, when in the larger picture, neither one of our cities, by the numbers, has a crime increase.

Works Cited

Glassner, Barry. "Narrative Techniques of Fear Mongering." Social Research. (Winter 2004): 819-26.

Hickey, Thomas. Taking Sides: Clashing Views in Criminal Justice. Dubuque, IA: McGraw-Hill, 2007.

Liska, A. and Baccaglini, W. "Feeling safe by comparison: Crime in the newspapers. Social Problems 37. (1990): 360-374.

"Serious violent crime levels declined since 1993." Bureau of Justice Statistics Four Measures of Serious Violent Crime. 18 Sept 2006. US Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Statistics. 6 January 2008. < http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/glance/cv2.htm>.

Weitzer, Ronald A. and Kurbin, Charles E. "Breaking News: How Local TV News And Real-World Conditions Affect Fear Of Crime." Justice Quarterly. (Sept 2004): 498-520.