Humans and Monsters: Reintegrating Perpetrators of Mass Violence to Society

Introduction

Crime is one of the most popular topics for coverage across all popular media, with documentary and dramatization being two of the most popular forms produced and broadcast globally. Sumser (1996) explains that crime dramas in particular present polarized conflicts between good and evil, with Kelner (1995) providing further contextualisation by outlining that the things that we see, hear and read in the media “help shape our view of the world and our deepest values; what we consider good or bad, positive or negative, moral or evil” (p. 24). A logical link might then be inferred that to at least some extent, the ways in which those that break the law are consistently presented through different forms of media, the more the perceptions of the general public may be shaped by that presentation.

Poniewozik (2004) notes that the number of crime dramas in particular have increased since the September eleventh terrorist attacks in 2001, and linked with this Shaheen’s (2009) research shows that there is a greater presence of both Arab and Muslim individuals within crime dramas in America today than there was prior to the attacks on the World Trade Center. Importantly, Shaheen argues that the negative portrayals of these people significantly outweighs the number of positive portrayals, where those individuals will often be scripted to be the criminal or antagonist. Saleem and Anderson (2013) go a stage further and note explicitly that across this form of media, Arab and Muslim individuals are consistently portrayed as being involved in terrorism or with other violent tendencies, reinforcing stereotypes that many have already internalized. The real consequence of this is then shown by Greenhouse (2010) who argues that in the years following the events of 2001 the workplace for both Arabs and Muslims, and importantly also those that others simply perceived to be Arab or Muslim, became a hostile environment where they suffered increases in discrimination compared to the years prior to 2001.

The nature and frequency of different categories of crime is further misrepresented through the media, where the most frequent forms of crime being reported or portrayed fall under the categories of violent or predatory offences, whereas official crime statistics consistently show that these types of criminality are by far a minority of offences as compared to non-violent ones (Chermak, 1997; Garofalo, 1981). Sacco explains that this overrepresentation of violent crime has helped to create a widely held, but false, perception amongst the general population that there is an “epidemic of random violence” (1995, p. 149), whereby there is a high chance of anybody falling victim to a violent crime at any given moment. Indeed, Reiner, Livingstone and Allen further quantify the problem of false perception when they argue that around two-thirds of crime-related news stories reported cover sexual or other violent offences, yet “these account for less than ten percent of crimes recorded by the police” (2003, p. 19). Pollak and Kubrin (2007) conclude that the reason for this exaggeration is perhaps a cynical one on the part of the media who seek to increase the value of any news item by including an element of drama within it. This conclusion is backed by Chermak (1997) who argues that the reality perceived by those that consume media, and broadcast news in particular, is socially constructed through bureaucratic decision-making by producers regarding which stories are selected for reporting, and how such stories should be reported.