Prison Policy In Media Driven America

Stossel's ”20/20” story actually led to the creation of a task force among different attorney general's offices. The task force created policies designed to make prisoners' access to the courts more difficult.

In 1996, the Supreme Court issued a ruling known as Lewis v. Casey that reversed a ruling from 20 years earlier that prisoners must have access to either a law library or an attorney to assure their access to the courts. As a result, a number of states have been cutting back inmates' access to law books.

That same year, Congress passed legislation that severely limited prisoners' access to legal help. The Prison Litigation Reform Act limited the fees lawyers can collect after winning civil cases taken on behalf of prisoners, thus making even sure-fire cases very unattractive. Congress also passed restrictive funding on the Legal Services Corporation, a nonprofit organization founded by Congress to provide legal services on behalf of low-income people. The nonprofit can no longer provide funding to groups that represent even a single prisoner—no matter how strong his or her case or the need for legal aid.

Still, many Americans believe that people who do something to end up in prison get what they deserve. Wright argues, however, that “this isn't because of a natural consequence of their thinking process. Rather it is the carefully inculcated notion that comes after years of bombardment on what to think by the media.”

According to studies by communications professor George Gerbner, people who watch just a moderate amount of primetime television drama are entertained by an average of 21 violent criminals each week, who (together with the “good guys”) commit approximately 150 acts of violence, including 15 murders.

“Reality” shows like “America's Most Wanted” paint the nation as filled to the brim with depraved murderers, brutal serial rapists, and career con artists—all with callous indifference to their ever-increasing stream of victims.

Dramas like Law & Order, CSI, and NYPD Blue leave one expecting to find a body no matter what corner they turn. Police and victims are depicted as having to battle against a mountainous number of unfair technicalities and uncaring defense attorneys, while alleged perpetrators are most often shown to be common thugs.

Even shows like The Practice—which sends the radical message that any person accused of a crime deserves a good defense—also send the message that any person accused of a crime gets a good defense. Lawyers from the program's expensive private law firm constantly take on the cases of indigent defendants, getting them off of all sorts of charges even though the lawyers, clients, and viewing audience all know the person is guilty and plans to break the law again.

Our so-called objective, neutral, and balanced mainstream news doesn't do much to correct this slanted image of the world. In fact, most television news works to actually increase America's culture of fear.

Paul Klite, the late Executive Director of Rocky Mountain Media Watch (RMMW), once pointed out that “Murder, one of the least common crimes, is the number one topic on newscasts.” According to the group Children Now, while the homicide rate dropped 33 percent during the period between 1990 and 1998, news coverage of homicides actually increased by 473 percent.

An RMMW study of local TV newscasts across the country shows that 40 to 50 percent of all news airtime is devoted to violent topics. It's little wonder that, no matter what people's education, age, income, gender, race or neighborhood, heavy television viewers are more afraid of crime than more infrequent TV viewers in the same demographic.

Children Now recommends that parents speak with their children about the levels of violent crime reported in the news and express to them that crime reporting is not an accurate representation of reality.

They should keep in mind Gerbner's findings that adults who watch more television—again, regardless of demographic group— are more likely than less-frequent viewers:

• to believe that their neighborhoods are unsafe
• to state that fear of crime is a very serious personal problem
• to buy new locks, watchdogs, and guns “for protection”

Think these people are just better informed? Think again. No matter what the neighborhood, heavier TV viewers are also more likely:

• to overestimate their chances of involvement in violence
• to assume that crime is rising, regardless of the facts of the case

Perhaps people exposed to mainstream media—people for whom irrational fear has become a part of their daily reality—are also more likely to support tough-on- crime sentencing and repressive prison policies. While only further study can say for sure, it seems like a valid theory given the “lock 'em up and throw away the key” attitudes of many Americans.

Add to the mix the facts that people of color are disproportionately depicted as criminals in local television news; that teenagers are disproportionately portrayed as violent in almost all forms of media; and that white collar crime is almost nonexistent on the media radar, and next-to-never portrayed as a form of violence.

Through the mainstream media's lens on the world, America's insane prison system seems almost right. Calls for less for prisoners—“the worst of the worst in society,” in the words of one mainstream newscast—seem just about on target.                            Z