public safety

Posted in Politics by Ashley : October 12, 2007

I have certainly spent my share of time around “true grue”: newscasts, forensics/crime shows, working in the true crime book section… But I must say that I doubt the advantages of this kind of media. Experiencing things such as: photos of murder victims in books, extensively detailing violent crimes on tv and in books, clearly explaining peoples methods for “breaking, entering, raping and killing”, playing 911 tapes on the air (!), showing gruesome crime scenes… Now not only does it appear in the news and in books everyday, but there are whole tv channels that show it all day long.

I wonder how much of an ulterior motive there is behind this. I don’t just feel like they are being aired/printed just for ratings/sales (though, obviously, that is a big part of it), I can’t help but wonder how much of it is intended to instill more feelings of irrational fear in the general population. Does knowing/seeing this information make people any safer? Or does it actually increase the dangers? I would imagine that while it may not actually inspire much crime, it is certainly bound to inspire more crime than it will prevent. And since I think that a lot of our society (military proliferation, expansion of law enforcement powers, degradation of civil rights, the right to bear arms, homeland security, xenophobia, fear of other religions, consumer desire…) is based on insuring insecurity and fear where there is little or no basis for it, I have to again question the intentions.

I also have to wonder about who is really interested in it and why. Spending three years working in the true crime section, there is a particular portion of the population who are overwhelming the biggest fans of these books. While I’m not going to point out any root cause or reasons for this, it becomes so unquestionably the case that one cannot help but wonder why most of the interest in this subject matter seems to come from white, middle-class, housewives from their mid-20’s through their 50’s. It begins to seem a bit odd. What is the attraction there to seeing other peoples misery?

I used to work with a women who would always have pictures of gruesome accident victims as the desktop on her computer. I asked her once about and she said that it was to remind herself that their were people worse off then herself…

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