THE CONFLICT THEORY & YOUTH, RACE & CRIME IN THE NEWS

Warm up 5: Questions What is your perception of a typical criminal? What gender is the criminal? How did you describe their background? What kind of crime are they participating in?

CONFLICT THEORY The most powerful members of a society determine who will be regarded as deviant Industrial society requires a willing workforce=those don’t work are deviant Those that threaten private property Society needs a respect for authority- people that show a lack of respect are regarded as deviant

Race, Ethnicity, and Crime Conflict theory supports the idea that minorities receive unequal treatment in the American justice system African Americans and Latinos more likely to be convicted Also serve more time

Relationships between Minorities and Crime African Americans make up 12% of our total population 17 out of 30 of inmates on death row are African American in 2016 (FBI: UCR 2015) African Americans & Latinos make up over 60% of the U.S. inmate population. (Newman 2012) Combined the two races only make up about 27% of the general population (FBI: UCR 2015, Newman 2015)

Minorities and crime Black males are incarcerated at a rate of 2.6 times higher than Latinos 7 times more likely than white males. According to the justice Policy Institute (2002) there are more African American Men in jail than in college African Americans account for 39% of all arrests for violent crime 30% of arrests for property crime 34% for drug crimes These rates go up when it just comes to conviction

Why are they Treated so Differently? Economic resources to buy legal services Crimes against whites tend to be punished more severely Society sees minority interests as less important VICTIM DISCOUNTING: Process of reducing the seriousness of a crime that injure people of lower status.

What Is The News Media’s Role? We depend on “pictures in our heads," many of them delivered by the news- Walter Lippmann What does this quote mean to you?

Conflict Theory: Media and Crime Three quarters (76%) of the public say they form their opinions about crime from what they see or read in the news (Newman 2015) The other individuals state that they get their primary information on crime from personal experience (24%). (Newman 2015)

How Accurate Is The News? 1. Does news coverage reflect actual crime trends? 2. How does news coverage depict minorities and crime? 3. How does news coverage disproportionately depict youth of color as perpetrators of crime?

Media and Crime On network newscasts, crime and violence are covered more than any other topic on the news. In general, TV crime reporting is the inverse of crime frequency. That is, murder is reported most often on the news though it happens the least.

Media & Crime In some studies, the number of victims was the strongest predictor of whether or not a crime would be covered. Other factors that increase the likelihood of a homicide being reported in the news are multiple offenders, an unusual method, a White victim, a child, elderly, or female victim, or occurrence in an wealthy neighborhood.

Crime coverage has increased while real crime rates have fallen Nationally, crime dropped by 55% from 1993 to 2015 while network television showed an 83% increase in crime news. (DoJ 2015) From 1993-2000, homicide coverage was increasing on network news by 473% while homicides were down 40.9%. (DoJ 2015)

FINDING: The news media, particularly television news, unduly connect race and crime, especially violent crime.

While many crime stories do not identify race, there is some evidence that the news are more likely to identify race in a crime story when an African American is the criminal. In 9 of 12 (75%) case studies, minorities were overrepresented as offenders of crime. (Mayer 2000) 6 out of 7 (86%) case studies, clearly identify the race of victims found more attention was paid to White victims than to Black victims (Hamel 2000) Several studies found that Black victims are less likely to be covered in newspapers than are White victims, 1 of the case studies found that newsworthiness increases when the victim is White. Homicides of White victims resulted in more and longer articles than homicides of Black victims. (Stoller 2010)

AS VICTIMS: The Study found that 80% of homicide victims in Los Angeles were Black or Hispanic. Yet Blacks were half as likely to be depicted as homicide victims as Whites in the Los Angeles Times, and Hispanics were two thirds as likely to be depicted as homicide victims as Whites. (Hamel 2000) AS PERPETRATORS :A study of murder coverage in Indianapolis newspapers found that the percentage of articles about Black suspects reflected the percentage of Blacks arrested for murder (60% and 61%, respectively), but if the suspect was Black, the average article length was longer than for a White suspect. (Hamel 2000)

How are African Americans depicted in crime stories? Professor Robert Entman documents that Blacks are most likely to be seen in television news stories in the role of criminal, victim, or demanding politician. Black suspects were less likely to be identified by name as were White suspects; were not as well dressed as White suspects on the news; and were more likely to be shown physically restrained than Whites. He also found that Blacks are more frequently reported in connection with violence, and that Black suspects and their defenders were substantially less likely to speak in the stories than were their White counterparts.

YOUTH AND CRIME One out of every two (53%) local TV news stories concerning children or youth involved violence, while California crime data show that one out of every 50 (2%) young people in California were either victims or perpetrators of violence in 1993. (Jasmin 1994) Seven out of 10 local TV news stories on violence in California involved youth, but young people only made up 14.1% of violent arrests. (McConatha 2002)

WHITE COLLAR CRIME White collar crime- any crime committed by respectable and high-status people in the course of their occupations. It is used for economic crimes like: Price fixing Insider trading Illegal rebates Embezzlement Tax evasion The costs of white-collar crime are 18 times higher than the costs of street crime.

Punishment of White Collar Crime They are usually treated more leniently even though it costs society a lot of money Usually receive probation and less likely to be imprisoned Shorter sentence if they do go to prison Go to prisons with better amenities

Stats on Crime https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2015/crime-in-the-u.s.-2015/tables/table-43 https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/2016-sentencing

Problems with Conflict Theory Critics of conflict theory often accuse it of being too radical. This paradigm often becomes synonymous with the idea that powerful people oppress the weak. A simple reading of conflict theory can also seem to make the notion of conflict seem like a bad thing. Doesn’t competition breed excellence?

WHAT SHOULD BE DONE? Scenario: It seems with every passing day, crime rates are on the rise. More and more people are noticing minorities are overwhelmingly being depicted in the media for committing crimes. As leaders, you have a 3 million dollar budget that needs spending. The public wants you to fix this growing crime rate and minority issue. Your job is to create a display/presentation of how you plan to spend this money to fix the problem. You must have justification as to why you want to spend the money in every area. You and your partner are leaders of your city You will pick a city in the United States for your crime rates. Come up with a name to your city. (Can be anything that is school appropriate) You were giving the task to research the growing crime rates in your city; specifically about minorities or race/ethnicity. Come up with different ethnicities that may occupy your city. You need to have at a minimum of 4 races. Can not be races we already know! EX: African Americans, Whites, Latinos, etc….. Submit to Schoology