NCJ Number
80739
Journal
Urban Life Volume: 9 Issue: 4 Dated: (January 1981) Pages: 371-394
Date Published
1981
Length
24 pages
Annotation
Police criteria and procedures for determining what crime news accounts to issue to the press are discussed, with particular attention to the New York Police Department.
Abstract
Crime incidents reported by the police to the press are selected on the basis of police concern to manage public order and the police department's image. Reported incidents focus on crime in the public sphere: crime in public places, crime between strangers, and disruptions of the flow of business as usual in the city. Thus, the police provide newsrooms with the most extreme examples of street crime, punctuated by larger disturbances of public order, such as bombings and violent demonstrations. Just as journalists implicitly adopt a police perspective of crime, so do the police assume a journalistic perspective. The police use 'newsworthiness' as a standard for selecting unusual incidents. Periodically, influential police officials wish to target a certain aspect of crime, such as crime against the elderly, crime on buses, or school crime. The social problems highlighted in a city are thus largely controlled by police policy orientations at a given time, which may in turn be influenced by political forces; however, so long as the law enforcement net is fixed on troubles in the public sphere, the press reinforces a climate of opinion that keep the police concerned with 'crime in the streets.' A graph, table, 16 notes, and about 30 references are appended. (Author summary modified)