Popular Crime Research Articles

A Review and Current Status of Crime Prevention through Environmental Design (CPTED)

This article reviews the current status of the concept of Crime Prevention through Environmental Design (CPTED). It provides an overview of its history and origins and defines how it is commonly understood and conceptualized. Globally, CPTED is an increasingly popular crime prevention strategy supported by governments all over Europe, North America, Australia, and New Zealand, as well as in Asia and South Africa. This review inspects some of the evidence associated with CPTED and provides a detailed overview of the main criticisms facing this field.

Clearing Crime in Prime-Time: The Disjuncture Between Fiction and Reality

Crime dramas provide entertainment to millions of Americans. The impact of viewing these programs on perceptions and expectations of police is a concern for practitioners, researchers and policy makers. While a growing body of research is identifying factors associated with the probability of clearance in offenses reported to police, a dearth of research looks at the portrayal of police efficiency in apprehending offenders in popular crime dramas. This study examines the depictions of police investigations across four fictional crime dramas. The authors find offenses are cleared at much higher rates than national averages and that several case characteristics typically associated with clearance in actual cases do not share the same relationship in these fictional programs. Results indicate substantial variation between programs in the depiction of the collection and utility of DNA evidence in assisting investigators to identify suspects. Findings are discussed in relation to data collected from actual police departments.

Changing the way we think about character change in episodic television series

Abstract Regular characters in episodic television series do not change, develop or transform. At least this is the way these characters are commonly understood. In television series, the plot focuses on episodic adventures, and the core cast of characters are seen as fairly rigid actants that facilitate those adventures. These apparently static characters of television series are generally understood in contrast to characters in television serials, who do transform over the course of episodes, seasons and years. This view can be found readily in popular discourse as well as writing manuals and scholarly treatises. But there is more to character change in television series. We can also see how characters in television series do change in different ways, displayed chiefly through character action and plot structure. Three kinds of character change on-screen are identified in this article: experiencing significant life events; expressing intense emotions, and displaying contrasting behaviours. Textual analysis of popular crime dramas and sitcoms demonstrates how characters in television series do change continually.

Crime on the Airwaves: The Carter Brown Mystery Theatre

Abstract In the mid-1950s, Carter Brown Mystery books were selling in the millions in Australia; their robust humour and simple plots made them ideal fodder for radio adaptation. The Carter Brown Mystery Theatre did not make a great impact upon Australian radio per se, but it was popular enough to be onsold overseas. This article explores the Carter Brown Mystery Theatre as an exemplar of recuperating an unexplored area of the Australian radio industry: popular crime serials. Finally, it posits a ‘grammar’ of radio.

BECKETT’S INQUESTS: and the Mysteries of the State

Many facets of the trilogy appeal to, and reframe, the conventions of the detective novel (Spraggins; Dearlove, 40; Kenner, 32, 35). This line of enquiry, salient in critical appraisals of Molloy, has also yielded precious insights into Beckett's early fiction; recently, Frederik Smith has read Watt as subverting the syllogistic thinking developed in Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes novels, familiar Beckett since his childhood. It is clear that Beckett was keen and knowledgeable reader of detective fiction: especially during the early 1950s, Agatha Christie whodunnits in English and French were readings of choice, and Beckett's interest in thrillers by Christie, Edgar Wallace, Erne Stanley Garner and Rex Stout continued beyond that point (Knowlson, 390, 553, 562). He also kept abreast of the adventurous explorations of the genre published by the Editions de Minuit and manifested interest in Alain Robbe-Grillet's adaptation of the detective plot in Les Gommes (1953) (Moorjani, 232). His correspondence suggests that the writing of Malone meurt remained circumscribed by literary universe populated by detectives, spies and mysteries awaiting resolution: writing Georges Duthuit in 1951, Beckett deplores his inability read popular crime novels as measure of the taxing demands made upon his creative energies by the completion of Malone meurt and Textes pour rien. Not only is he unable write, but he cannot even read policier[s] - the paperback detective novels and thrillers he was so fond of (Beckett 2011, 231).The cultural and political imaginary that fuels Beckett's post-war work remains powerfully inflected by the premises of detective fiction, as evidenced in the quest of the private investigator Camier, Moran's search for Molloy, and the humble investigations underlying Malone's stories. Beckett initially perceived these three inquests as part of the same series (2011, 80). But the detective plot is reduced its bare bones in Malone Dies: this is, indeed, deeply precarious context for deductive thinking, and Malone's searches, accounts and deductions, although modest in their remit, require relentless labour; even the reliability and existence of pencil are subject speculation. Malone tries preclude material or linguistic imprecisions such as those that might emerge from inappropriate reasoning methods; he aspires the arrangement of his belongings, the unique occasion for a statement at last, to be free from all trace of approximativeness, yet acknowledges that, unlike his own, true lives do not tolerate this excess of circumstance (196-97). However, enigmas are too numerous find resolution: the narrative is littered with allusions mysterious disappearances and conspiracies masterminded by unnamed powers and institutions, which, in turn, frame the attempts of Malone and his creatures find, identify and connect material traces, sequences of events and explainable causes.This essay examines the degree which forms of deduction in Malone Dies are politically and historically grounded; I contend that, through its critique of the forms of determinism, concealment and normalisation upon which the exercise of deduction relies, the novel also engages post-war debates about the roles and responsibilities of state institutions. To analyse the strained relation that Malone Dies maintains the conventions of detective fiction, as I seek do here, is also trace the residual bearing of specific social and political circumstances upon the novel's evocations of disappearances, deaths, searches and inquests. This reading runs against the grain of established interpretations of Malone Dies as subtle reflection on ontology, according the terms defined by its first lines; here, I focus on historically-inflected text concerned about state-sanctioned persecution, whose borrowings from the discourses of detective fiction remain underpinned by the momentous debates about collaborationism and the dehiscence of the French State that are formative of its genesis as French-language novel in 1947 (these debates, as Andrew Gibson has shown, also inform some facets of Mercier et Camier, written in 1946 (Gibson, 19-26)). …

Killer Corn and Capitalist Pigs: Forensic Noir and Television Portrayals of Modern Agricultural Technology

Forensic noir, a subgenre of the popular television crime drama, presents science as the definitive solution for solving crimes. At the same time, forensic noir programs portray technology used for economic gain—such as that used in modern “industrial agriculture”—as detrimental to the human condition. These warring interpretations of science present an intriguing critique of capitalism from within the capitalist structure of commercial entertainment. In this qualitative study, episodes of two programs, CSI: Miami and Bones, were content-analyzed for characteristics of the forensic-noir category as well as for elements illustrating the dual nature of their anticapitalist critique of science, technology, and modern agriculture. In these episodes, the crimes committed were directly related to intensive production agriculture and the owners and operators of those production facilities vilified for disregarding the human and environmental impacts of their businesses in their quest for profit. The visual imagery depicted agricultural facilities as “crime scenes” and treated agricultural products as evidence. The forensic dramas painted a largely negative portrait of modern production agriculture as exploitative and profit-driven—criticisms often lobbed at television as a medium for cultural production.

Food and Crime Fiction: Two Complementary Approaches to the Vietnamese Past in Tran-Nhut's Les travers du docteur Porc

With a series of detective novels set in 17th century Dai-Viet that showcase the traditions, beliefs and customs of an exotic culture, in which the food and food habits of the Vietnamese people play a prominent role, Thanh-Van Tran-Nhut, an engineer-turned-novelist of Vietnamese origins, has carved a niche for herself in the popular crime fiction market in France. This paper focuses on the novel Les Travers du Docteur Porc, in which Doctor Porc, forensic investigator and gourmand extraordinaire, adopts the mantle of chief detective from Tran-Nhut’s usual protagonist, the loyal mandarin Tan. In this movement, we argue, the author has shaped two different but complementary approaches to her birth-country’s turbulent past that coalesce in the gargantuan figure of the (politically unencumbered) doctor and connoisseur of Vietnamese cuisine. Whereas the process of ‘solving the crime’ can be read as an attempt to seek answers and restore order in the wake of senseless bloodshed, it is food, we contend, that emerges, not only as a source of pleasure, succour and stability, but as a cultural heritage that war and upheaval failed to destroy.

Rape, Acquittal and Culpability in Popular Crime Reports in England, c.1670-c.1750

Rape, Acquittal and Culpability in Popular Crime Reports in England, c.1670-c.1750

African Popular Crime Genres and the Genres of Neoliberalism

Of the rich array of popular genre forms that fill book and video shops across the African continent, few engage as complexly as crime novels and films the profound crises of selfhood, sovereignty, and collective obligation wrought by the neoliberal formations of governance imposed on African nation-states by the International Monetary Fund and World Bank’s structural adjustment programs. African creative artists have long tempted their local readerships with the tales of moral corruption, guile, and hard-boiled individualism that are the stock-in-trade of pulp fiction, but it was not until after the implementation of neoliberal governance policies beginning in the early 1980s that popular crime works began to overshadow the social and historical realist narratives and bildungsromans that dominated African literary production from the late colonial era. Where those genres facilitated the cultural production of the imagined national community for the continent’s young nation-states, this emergent body of detective mysteries, police procedurals, trial dramas, and noir thrillers enlists the popular crime tale’s generic preoccupations with unchecked desire, social order, and state authority to interrogate the twinned problematics of individuated self-interest as elucidated by neoliberal ideals of economic self-government and governmental capacity to secure public welfare and security in the wake of market-driven structural adjustment programs. With a focus on Wahome Mutahi and Wahome Karengo’s satirical hardboiled detective novel, The Miracle Merchant (2003), and Abderrahmane Sissako’s film Bamako (2006), my article analyzes one example of how African writers transfigure the crime genre to engage the epistemological crisis provoked by neoliberal governance formations.

Health Promotion Messages in Entertainment Media: Crime Drama Viewership and Intentions to Intervene in a Sexual Assault Situation

Popular crime dramas have tackled sensitive issues such as sexual assault with increasing frequency over the past 20 years. These popular programs increasingly demonstrate the emotional and physical effect of sexual assault on its victims, and in some instances they depict individuals being rewarded for intervening to prevent or stop an assault in progress. It is possible that this content could affect attitudes related to sexual assault prevention. However, no previous research has examined this possibility. In the fall 2008 semester, 508 undergraduates at a large northwestern university completed a questionnaire about media use and bystander intervention in a sexual assault situation. Results from hierarchical regressions lend support for the integrative model of behavioral prediction in that instrumentality, rape myth acceptance, perceived social norms, perceived efficacy related to intervening, and exposure to primetime crime dramas were associated with participants' intentions to intervene in a sexual assault. The results suggest that crime dramas may be a useful venue for prevention messages as exposure to crime dramas uniquely contributed to intentions to intervene in a sexual assault.

Suspicion

Suspicion

The Suspicious Figure of the Female Forensic Pathologist Investigator in Crime Fiction

The Suspicious Figure of the Female Forensic Pathologist Investigator in Crime Fiction

Effects of Violence Against Women in Popular Crime Dramas on Viewers' Attitudes Related to Sexual Violence

In a posttest-only group experimental design, 176 college undergraduates (80 male, 96 female) watched TV crime drama scenes, which included either sexual or physical violence against women, to determine the effects of crime dramas on enjoyment, gender stereotypes, acceptance of the objectification of women, and rape myth acceptance. Male participants who watched sexual violence clips expressed less support for traditional gender stereotypes. There were no significant condition effects for the remaining outcome measures among the male participants except that they perceived the physical violence clips to be the most enjoyable. Results for female participants were mixed. Implications are discussed within the frameworks of social cognitive theory and the potential benefits of well-designed crime dramas to address sexual violence against women.

An Empirical Evaluation of Juvenile Awareness Programs in the United States: Can Juveniles be “Scared Straight”?

Juvenile awareness programs like Scared Straight became popular crime prevention strategies during the 1970s. Juvenile offenders and at-risk youth who participate in these programs are taken to prisons where inmates use confrontational methods to recount stories about violence, sex, and abuse perpetrated by fellow inmates while living a life behind bars. These “get tough” policies have wide public and political appeal. Empirically speaking it is unclear whether juvenile awareness programs help to reduce recidivism or prevent criminal behavior. The purpose of this article is to use an evidence-based approach to determine if there is sufficient empirical evidence to suggest that these programs are effective crime prevention tools. This investigation includes a comprehensive review of the studies that have examined juvenile awareness programs. The studies are evaluated using the most widely accepted tool for assessing scholarly works in criminology, the Maryland Scientific Methods Scale. The results of this study indicate that juvenile awareness programs that use confrontational techniques do not work. However, their nonconfrontational counterparts may show some promise.

Print and the Female Voice: Representations of Women's Crime in London, 1690–1735

Between 1690 and 1735, London experienced a female crime wave. This article examines how this female criminality was represented in the burgeoning world of popular crime literature. Traditional genres of print remained wedded to conventional gender stereotypes, but the new quasi‐official genres of the Old Bailey Proceedings and the Ordinary's Accounts represented female thieves in first‐person narratives which allowed the complex motivations for their crimes to be examined. These provided the background for Daniel Defoe's Moll Flanders, and led to at least one accused criminal telling her story in her own publication. In the longer term, however, such representations of female theft did not proliferate.

Purloined letters: cultural borrowing and Japanese crime literature, 1868-1937

This engaging study of the detective story's arrival in Japan - and of the broader cross-cultural borrowing that accompanied it - argues for a reassessment of existing models of literary influence between unequal cultures. Because the detective story had no pre-existing native equivalent in Japan, the genre's formulaic structure acted as a distinctive cultural marker, making plain the process of its incorporation into late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Japanese letters. Mark Silver tells the story of Japan's adoption of this new Western literary form at a time when the nation was also remaking itself in the image of the Western powers. His account calls into question conventional notions of cultural domination and resistance, demonstrating the variety of possible modes for cultural borrowing, the surprising vagaries of inter-cultural transfer, and the power of the local contexts in which imitation occurs.Purloined Letters considers a fascinating range of primary texts populated by wise judges, faceless corpses, wily confidence women, desperate blackmailers, a fetishist who secrets himself for days inside a leather armchair, and a host of other memorable figures. The work begins by analyzing Tokugawa courtroom narratives and early Meiji biographies of female criminals (dokufu-mono, or poison-woman stories), which dominated popular crime writing in Japan before the detective story's arrival. It then traces the mid-Meiji absorption of French, British, and American detective novels into Japanese literary culture through the quirky translations of muckraking journalist Kuroiwa Ruiko. Subsequent chapters take up a series of detective stories nostalgically set in the old city of Edo by Okamoto Kido (a Kabuki playwright inspired by Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes) and the erotic, grotesque, and macabre works of Edogawa Ranpo, whose pen-name punned on Edgar Allan Poe.

Using multimedia to support jury understanding of DNA profiling evidence

Jury difficulties in understanding and according suitable weight to probabilistic scientific expert evidence about DNA profiling are well established. Traditional legal aids, including note-taking and allowing jury questions, have had limited success in diminishing their problems. This study examined the potential of multimedia instruction to enhance jury comprehension. Mock jurors reviewed a homicide case in which DNA evidence linked the suspect to the crime scene. Instructional media on ‘Forensic DNA Technology’ and/or ‘Random Match Probability’ accompanied the oral expert evidence to support juror understanding. Pre-test–post-test comparisons of juror conceptions about forensic uses of DNA determined whether these multimedia facilitated juror comprehension. Analyses of responses to the expert evidence acknowledged the incidence of ‘CSI’ effects in which jurors have increased expectations of scientific evidence after viewing popular crime investigations on television. Since multimedia instruction for juries can apply to all forms of forensic evidence, we propose the use of structured instructional media for courts developing policies on uses of visual evidence.

The 100-Year Anniversary of the Description of the Frozen Section Procedure

IN CONTEMPORARY SOCIETY, THE PATHOLOGIST IS LARGELY unknown or poorly understood. Accordingly, few lay persons, whether healthy or ill, have direct professional interaction with pathologists. If a poll of the lay public were undertaken, many would respond that the pathologist is “not a physician,” “the keeper of the dead,” or “the person who performs the autopsy.” Certainly, the portrayal of the pathologist in printed press, cinema, and television, notably in the popular Crime Scene Investigation (CSI) television series, is frequently a distortion of reality. While autopsies represent a small and ever-diminishing part of medical practice, most contemporary pathologists are actively and directly involved in rendering care to the living patient through the various facets of the modern clinical laboratory. One of the most crucial tasks of the pathologist is the performance and interpretation of the frozen section or intraoperative consultation for diagnosis, margin assessment, and procurement of tissue for research purposes. This procedure is critical for the performance of accurate surgery: its outcome may guide the surgeon to continue or abort the surgical procedure. From a historical perspective, the advances in the late 19th century in surgical technique, anesthesia, hemostasis, and control of infection became the cornerstones of modern surgical practice. As a result, physicians in departments of surgery or gynecology applied their surgical craft and studied tissues from living patients. Most pathologists of that time, however, were more devoted to autopsies and research and were largely disinterested in practical clinical applications of pathology. Yet there were a few brave pathologists who abandoned the trail of the past and ventured into novel applications of microscopy and histotechnique during their colleagues’ surgical procedures. In 1905, William Mayo told his new chief of pathology at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn, Louis B. Wilson, MD, “I wish you pathologists could tell us if a tissue is cancer or not while the patient is on the table.” A biology teacher familiar with the use of botanical stains, Wilson deduced a very simple technique using methylene blue to stain frozen tissue specimens during surgery. Wilson’s technique allowed for a diagnosis within minutes while the patient was still on the operating table. His technique, with modifications, is still in use at the Mayo Clinic. In the December 2, 1905, issue of JAMA, Wilson published his description of a reliable technique for the intraoperative frozen section (FIGURE). Although various frozen section techniques had been described by other authors for several decades, it is generally recognized that this landmark article in JAMA provided the first well-publicized, consistent method of rendering a dependable frozen section diagnosis that affected patient care during surgery. The impact of the frozen section on patient care since the beginning of the 20th century cannot be overemphasized. As noted in 1927 by Bloodgood, the rate of inoperable cancer at Johns Hopkins Hospital had decreased from 50% in 1900 to less than 5% by 1920 thanks to intraoperative frozen section. During the 20th century, intraoperative frozen section and preoperative biopsy led to vastly improved patient care and to the emergence of the surgical pathologist as a diagnostic consultant to surgeons and other clinicians. December 2005 marks the 100-year anniversary of Wilson’s seminal article. In celebration of this anniversary, the December issue of Archives of Pathology & Laboratory Medicine features a series of 12 articles by recognized experts reviewing current intraoperative consultation and frozen section diagnosis in multiple major organ systems; these 12 articles include more than 300 color images. Even while celebrating Wilson’s historic article, it is important to remember that like many other discoveries and innovations in medicine and other fields, this advance had predecessors and competitors and subsequent modifications. The idea that tissues could be hardened for sectioning by freezing was not new when Wilson published his procedure in 1905. Several other reports of the use of a frozen tissue technique came intermittently from Europe and North America during the 19th century. At the Glasgow Western Infirmary in the early 1880s, frozen sections were used for examination of autopsy tissue, but the technique was not

Use of a Television Crime-Drama Series to Promote Legal Understanding in Mentally Ill, Incompetent Defendants: A Pilot Study

Videotaped material is used for educational purposes in many areas of medicine. In forensic facilities, programs designed to restore competency to stand trial (CST) in incompetent, mentally ill defendants have utilized videotaped courtroom proceedings as learning tools. This pilot study reviewed the progress of incompetent defendants (N = 15) who participated in a program that utilized videotaped segments of the television crime-drama "Law & Order", among other techniques, to promote CST in individuals deemed unfit to stand trial. The authors hypothesized that participation in at least one cycle of the Competency Restoration Group (CRG)'s curriculum would be associated with improvement in the areas of understanding, reasoning and appreciation. In order to assess whether the group was beneficial to the patient's treatment goal of competency restoration, patients were screened using the MacArthur Competence Assessment Tool-Criminal Adjudication (MacCAT-CA) prior to starting the group and after completing a cycle of the group's curriculum. The Wilcoxon signed ranks test was employed to analyze the results from the pre- and post-group MacCAT-CA testing. The tests yielded significant (p < 0.005) post-test differences in the hypothesized direction for each of the three subsections: Understanding, Reasoning, and Appreciation as well as a significant post test improvement in the total MacCAT-CA scores. These results suggest that a didactic program, using a popular crime drama series, can be effective in facilitating learning in competency restoration programs. Limitations of this study include its lack of a control group and small population.

Examining Road Rage / Aggressive Driving

Reports on road rage/aggressive driving imply that most everyone who drives could be involved and affected by such emotions. As victims, witnesses, perpetrators, or protectors, many drivers are confronted with at least some type of aggression and violence on the roadways. Despite inconsistent definitions and subsequent questionable measurements of road rage/aggressive driving, formal social control efforts directed at problematic drivers seem to be the preferred approach for prevention. The present study used newspaper accounts for issue identification regarding the proposed causes of road rage/aggressive driving. It was found that personal/individual factors are more often noted than environmental cues regarding the causes of road rage. In contrast to the more popular crime control approach, a nontraditional application of crime prevention through environmental design, which focuses on traffic facilitation, is offered to address violent and aggressive drivers.