By Tess Bartlett - Rethinking Crime and Punishment

from this shift in economic and social arrangements as a result of two furthercoincidental factors:(a) The influence of the mass media on public perceptions ofcrimeThe growth of the mass media enhanced crime visibility, further fuelling concernsabout it. The increasing sophistication of technology during the post­war years sawtelevision become an established part of family life by the 1960s. Initially,programming remained a ‘state­sponsored public service monopoly’ (Hilmes, 2003:14). Since then, however, the deregulation and commercialisation of broadcastinghas seen an increase in private sector enterprises along with the rapid increase incable and satellite channels (Humphreys, 1996; Pratt, 2007). This growth was seen inthe United Kingdom where in 1981 there were just three terrestrial televisionchannels, but by 1995, around 5 million homes had satellite dishes and access toaround 100 channels (O'Malley, 2001). In 2001, pay television had reached 44percent of households in the United Kingdom – 20 percent of all television viewing(Hilmes, 2003). This meant that television channels became competitive.Consequently, there was an increase in crime shows because of their ‘intrinsicattraction’ to viewers (Pratt, 2007: 71). While the professional police officer hasalways been an attractive and popular genre (Reiner, 1992), the more competitivenature of television saw the presentation of crime become simplified andsensationalised, using short, dramatic sequences to entertain the public.The prevalence of crime in the media was then exaggerated by the shift towardstabloid style crime news. Tabloidisation is present in specific media forms and hasbeen made possible by an increase in the ‘commercialization of modern life and acorresponding decline in “traditional values”’ (Turner, 1999: 60). The term ‘tabloid’journalism originated from the New York Daily News and the New York Post andwas used to refer to ‘screaming headlines’ in small copy newspapers (often regardingcelebrity issues) conveyed in a sensationalised format to grab attention and sellissues (Shearer, 2008: 275). More recently, however, it has also been used to refer tocurrent affairs and reality television crime shows, such as 60 Minutes and Cops inBritain, and talk­back television shows such as Oprah in the United States (Turner,1999). This has seen a shift away from informative, knowledge based treatments of14