This week we discussed the use of surveillance for monitoring crime.
In Jewkes article, "Crime and Surveillance Culture", she delves into how the use of surveillance in our culture has adapted to the change in our culture. She discusses surveillance and how it applies to controlling the body of people, Governance and governmentality, profit, voyeurism and entertainment, and the idea of panopticism. Over time, society has used surveillance techniques to have control, power and authority over people in order to keep society safe and to have order. Surveillance techniques have been used in prisons, and see this in Bentham's panopticon design so prison guards can monitor the prisoners. As the advancement of technology has changed, so has surveillance techniques. We have switched from reactive to proactive measures in surveillance in crime control. instead of catching the criminal after the fact, we now use surveillance techniques to look for precursors to criminal activity in a way to try and stop the criminal before he commits the crime. However, this switch in proactive measures has created some bias as to what indicators that people look for such as specific races, appearance, etc. Crime is also seen as occurring out of opportunity instead of strictly blaming the individual for criminal activity. if people can better track the whereabouts of criminals by using surveillance to see what areas are more conducive for crime, then we can possibly reduce the crime rate. Surveillance can also be applied to everyday lives of people. For instance, the use of baby monitors and other high-tech advancement are used to keep track of a child's wherabouts. However, there are also downsides to this increased use of surveillance. Society has felt the need to become hyper-aware of what people are doing all the time, and as a result, this has made many people paranoid.
I thought this was an interesting article about the surveillance culture because i don't really think about it that much in my day to day life and the idea that my behavior is being monitored to a degree is interesting. Societies preoccupation with human activity and the need to monitor our behavior is an interesting phenomenon in our culture that has become more prevalent with technological advances, and it will be interesting to see where this leads in the future in attempting to control criminal activity.
Monday, October 24, 2011
Monday, October 17, 2011
Week Eight Blog
This week in class we looked at cinematic representations of prison
In Paul Mason's reading hedelves into how prison films are portrayed and the genre conventions that have been used over the past century. Overal, the prevelence of prison films in the mdia is not very high, but most of the same character types are used. We see an innocent man who was wrongly convicted of a crime, sent to prison where he has to deal with a malevolent warden who makes his time as hard as possible. We usually end up sympathizing with the main character, and hope that in the end he gets out of prison. This character usually makes friends as well as enemies in prison films. We see the prison as a dirty, corrupt place where people are trying to survive. These general images that used throughout most prison films feeds into our ideas about what the prison system is like, as well as life on the inside. In many cases, films and documentaries choose to show the prison as an unsafe, violent place where murder and fighting is rampant. However, daily life in prison is not always this exciting.
Rafter expounds more on the prison film and the same genre conventions that are discussed in Paul Mason's article are discussed in her book. However, she also mentions prison documentaries and they are focused on redemption and in some ways dramatized.
The Shawshank Redemption was an inspirational prison film to watch because it focuses on the relationship between Andy and Red. Andy is wrongly convicted of murdering his wife, and ends up spending more than 20 years in prison, going through a lot of experiences. At first, it wasn't easy, because he was attacked and the film also suggests that he was gang raped. After a while, he becomes good friends with Red and forms a deep bond. All throughout the movie, he is portrayed as a hero, who only trys to do good for the prison guards, fellow inmates, and the warden. He gets money to build a library, helps educate a young man to get his highschool diploma, helps the warden with his finances, and helps people with their taxes. The warden is portrayed as corrupt and evil throughout this film, and will go to any lengths to keep Andy in prison. Andy escapes from prison by digging his way out, and in the end we see him meet up with Red in Mexico. I thought this film was heart warming because we see the innocent man escape from prison finally, and it mentions things about hope throughout the film. Red said that hope is dangerous thing, and Andy said that hoep is a very good thing. We see the evil warden kill himself and two best friends who get to spend the rest of their lives together in Mexico. Justice has been achieved.
At CNN.com i found an interesting article about a man who had been arrested for 70 days on account of the disappearance of a woman he was vacationing with in Aruba. His attorney has asked for his release, and claims that he is not responsible for her disappearance. He argues that the courts do not have enough evidence to continue to detain him, but the court did not agree. The man claims that while him and the woman were out snorkeling, he signaled for her to come back, but she was no where in sight. Is he innocent? is he guilty? when there is not enough evidence to prove someone innocent or guilty, the verdict usually leans towards locking them up instead of letting them off in most media trials. However, some recent trials have shown the contrary in which the socially guilty, but legally innocent are not locked up. In the media we see this going both ways, and in prison films, we tend to see the innocent accused of a crime they did not commit.
http://www.cnn.com/2011/10/17/justice/aruba-missing-woman/index.html?hpt=ju_c2
In Paul Mason's reading hedelves into how prison films are portrayed and the genre conventions that have been used over the past century. Overal, the prevelence of prison films in the mdia is not very high, but most of the same character types are used. We see an innocent man who was wrongly convicted of a crime, sent to prison where he has to deal with a malevolent warden who makes his time as hard as possible. We usually end up sympathizing with the main character, and hope that in the end he gets out of prison. This character usually makes friends as well as enemies in prison films. We see the prison as a dirty, corrupt place where people are trying to survive. These general images that used throughout most prison films feeds into our ideas about what the prison system is like, as well as life on the inside. In many cases, films and documentaries choose to show the prison as an unsafe, violent place where murder and fighting is rampant. However, daily life in prison is not always this exciting.
Rafter expounds more on the prison film and the same genre conventions that are discussed in Paul Mason's article are discussed in her book. However, she also mentions prison documentaries and they are focused on redemption and in some ways dramatized.
The Shawshank Redemption was an inspirational prison film to watch because it focuses on the relationship between Andy and Red. Andy is wrongly convicted of murdering his wife, and ends up spending more than 20 years in prison, going through a lot of experiences. At first, it wasn't easy, because he was attacked and the film also suggests that he was gang raped. After a while, he becomes good friends with Red and forms a deep bond. All throughout the movie, he is portrayed as a hero, who only trys to do good for the prison guards, fellow inmates, and the warden. He gets money to build a library, helps educate a young man to get his highschool diploma, helps the warden with his finances, and helps people with their taxes. The warden is portrayed as corrupt and evil throughout this film, and will go to any lengths to keep Andy in prison. Andy escapes from prison by digging his way out, and in the end we see him meet up with Red in Mexico. I thought this film was heart warming because we see the innocent man escape from prison finally, and it mentions things about hope throughout the film. Red said that hope is dangerous thing, and Andy said that hoep is a very good thing. We see the evil warden kill himself and two best friends who get to spend the rest of their lives together in Mexico. Justice has been achieved.
At CNN.com i found an interesting article about a man who had been arrested for 70 days on account of the disappearance of a woman he was vacationing with in Aruba. His attorney has asked for his release, and claims that he is not responsible for her disappearance. He argues that the courts do not have enough evidence to continue to detain him, but the court did not agree. The man claims that while him and the woman were out snorkeling, he signaled for her to come back, but she was no where in sight. Is he innocent? is he guilty? when there is not enough evidence to prove someone innocent or guilty, the verdict usually leans towards locking them up instead of letting them off in most media trials. However, some recent trials have shown the contrary in which the socially guilty, but legally innocent are not locked up. In the media we see this going both ways, and in prison films, we tend to see the innocent accused of a crime they did not commit.
http://www.cnn.com/2011/10/17/justice/aruba-missing-woman/index.html?hpt=ju_c2
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
Week seven blog
In this weeks lecture, readings and viewing, we looked into the legal system, courts, film lawyers and how they are portrayed in criminal law films.
In this weeks reading entitled "Film Lawyers: Above and Beyond the Law", Greenfield delves into describing the image of lawyers in crime films and how they are portrayed. The quest for justice seems to be a prominent theme throughout movies, and issues of right and wrong regarding the legal system as often fuzzy and complicated. Lawyers are not always the good guys and the legal system does not always achieve justice. Often times, they are both incompetent, and the images we see of lawyers are not always accurate. Most lawyers in Law films get a good review and try to give justice for their clients in every way possible. Sometimes they fail in their endeavors, but we usually see them in a positive light throughout law film history.
The various types of criminal law films were discussed in Rafters reading this week and she delves into the different types during the different time periods. In the 1930s and 40s there was the law film Noirs where crime films and the lawyers were portrayed as fighting an corrupt system and justice was not always upheld in this case. The scenes and imagery in these movies are dark, mysterious, dirty streets where lawyers have to get down to the nitty gritty realities of crime and fighting for justice. In the 50s and 60s time period we see lawyers being portrayed as heroic as in To Kill a Mockingbird. We see Lawyers as smart, capable, morally good people who are willing to fight for justice at any costs. From the 1970s on we see a decline in the appearance of law films, as well as a decline in quality. The reason given by rafter for this is that issues in the legal system were being worked out, so law films were not as prevelent, reflecting the time period and culture. Rafter does an effective job at outlining the different types of law films throughout the 20th century in America, and shows how ideas about lawyer and the legal system have changed over the years. Lawyers can be portrayed as competent, effective and good, even if it means bending the rules a bit and going around the system to get justice. The justice system can be portrayed as ineffective and also a source of authority.
After watching Presumed Innocent and discussing it in class, I thought about what Rafter discussed about the decline in law films during this time period. I thought the movie was intriguing, complicated, as well as perplexing in the plot line as well as the ideas that it images and ideas it conveys regarding the legal system, lawyers, law enforcement, and how they go about their jobs and solving crime. This movie gives us a complicated story about the murder of an attorney. She is portrayed as promiscuous with the men in her office and ends up having an affair with one of them (Harrison Ford). His wife is upset and decides to kill her and frame him using every possible method in order to make him look guilty, pointing all evidence that he was the man who committed the crime. She doesn't want him to go on trial and get out of hand, but it does and other attorneys in the office try to convict him of the murder, and use manipulation and deceit to hide and construe the evidence. The judge decides to let the case go, but we don't find out until the end that it was the wife who committed the murder. We are strung along in the movie to believe that maybe he actually did kill this woman he had an affair with. Evidence was also lost and hidden in the film by investigators and police officers. Evidence was overlooked in his house when the police had a search warrant to look for a murder weapon. The twisted plot and makes for an interesting film about crime and the ideas we have about the justice system. There is more corruption in the legal system than we might believe. We assume that lawyers and law enforcement officials are always competent and accurate, but this movie shows us otherwise.
I looked up the Michael Jackson murder trial on CNN.com because i thought it was interesting pertaining to our topic of discussion this week.
http://www.cnn.com/2011/10/11/justice/california-conrad-murray-trial/index.html?hpt=ju_c1
Conrad Murray is the man accused of accidental manslaughter of Michael Jackson after giving him too much propofol to help him sleep. In court, The pathologist they showed the jury the picture of Michael Jackson's autopsied body showing evidence of a homicide. The pathologist said that it would be an easy mistake to misuse the drug and give an over dosage. Murray has claimed in defense that the overdose was an accident, and that he didn't intend to give him too much, but was actually trying to wean him from the drug, because he supposedly had a dependency on it. Murray said that he didn't know he was also taking other drugs at the time which led to his intoxication and death. If he actually is convicted of involuntary manslaughter, then he could spend 4 years in prison and loose his medical license. This is another trial story in the law that eludes to the messy, complicated legal system that he have. Nothing is usually black and white when convicting someone of murder. sometimes trials last for a long time, even if all the evidence is there, pointing the person, the jury and judge cannot always discern who is innocent or guilty. Sometimes people are wrongly convicted, and technically speaking someone could be innocent, but socially guilty in the public's eyes. Other times, people are let off, when they are guilty and get away with heinous crimes.
In this weeks reading entitled "Film Lawyers: Above and Beyond the Law", Greenfield delves into describing the image of lawyers in crime films and how they are portrayed. The quest for justice seems to be a prominent theme throughout movies, and issues of right and wrong regarding the legal system as often fuzzy and complicated. Lawyers are not always the good guys and the legal system does not always achieve justice. Often times, they are both incompetent, and the images we see of lawyers are not always accurate. Most lawyers in Law films get a good review and try to give justice for their clients in every way possible. Sometimes they fail in their endeavors, but we usually see them in a positive light throughout law film history.
The various types of criminal law films were discussed in Rafters reading this week and she delves into the different types during the different time periods. In the 1930s and 40s there was the law film Noirs where crime films and the lawyers were portrayed as fighting an corrupt system and justice was not always upheld in this case. The scenes and imagery in these movies are dark, mysterious, dirty streets where lawyers have to get down to the nitty gritty realities of crime and fighting for justice. In the 50s and 60s time period we see lawyers being portrayed as heroic as in To Kill a Mockingbird. We see Lawyers as smart, capable, morally good people who are willing to fight for justice at any costs. From the 1970s on we see a decline in the appearance of law films, as well as a decline in quality. The reason given by rafter for this is that issues in the legal system were being worked out, so law films were not as prevelent, reflecting the time period and culture. Rafter does an effective job at outlining the different types of law films throughout the 20th century in America, and shows how ideas about lawyer and the legal system have changed over the years. Lawyers can be portrayed as competent, effective and good, even if it means bending the rules a bit and going around the system to get justice. The justice system can be portrayed as ineffective and also a source of authority.
After watching Presumed Innocent and discussing it in class, I thought about what Rafter discussed about the decline in law films during this time period. I thought the movie was intriguing, complicated, as well as perplexing in the plot line as well as the ideas that it images and ideas it conveys regarding the legal system, lawyers, law enforcement, and how they go about their jobs and solving crime. This movie gives us a complicated story about the murder of an attorney. She is portrayed as promiscuous with the men in her office and ends up having an affair with one of them (Harrison Ford). His wife is upset and decides to kill her and frame him using every possible method in order to make him look guilty, pointing all evidence that he was the man who committed the crime. She doesn't want him to go on trial and get out of hand, but it does and other attorneys in the office try to convict him of the murder, and use manipulation and deceit to hide and construe the evidence. The judge decides to let the case go, but we don't find out until the end that it was the wife who committed the murder. We are strung along in the movie to believe that maybe he actually did kill this woman he had an affair with. Evidence was also lost and hidden in the film by investigators and police officers. Evidence was overlooked in his house when the police had a search warrant to look for a murder weapon. The twisted plot and makes for an interesting film about crime and the ideas we have about the justice system. There is more corruption in the legal system than we might believe. We assume that lawyers and law enforcement officials are always competent and accurate, but this movie shows us otherwise.
I looked up the Michael Jackson murder trial on CNN.com because i thought it was interesting pertaining to our topic of discussion this week.
http://www.cnn.com/2011/10/11/justice/california-conrad-murray-trial/index.html?hpt=ju_c1
Conrad Murray is the man accused of accidental manslaughter of Michael Jackson after giving him too much propofol to help him sleep. In court, The pathologist they showed the jury the picture of Michael Jackson's autopsied body showing evidence of a homicide. The pathologist said that it would be an easy mistake to misuse the drug and give an over dosage. Murray has claimed in defense that the overdose was an accident, and that he didn't intend to give him too much, but was actually trying to wean him from the drug, because he supposedly had a dependency on it. Murray said that he didn't know he was also taking other drugs at the time which led to his intoxication and death. If he actually is convicted of involuntary manslaughter, then he could spend 4 years in prison and loose his medical license. This is another trial story in the law that eludes to the messy, complicated legal system that he have. Nothing is usually black and white when convicting someone of murder. sometimes trials last for a long time, even if all the evidence is there, pointing the person, the jury and judge cannot always discern who is innocent or guilty. Sometimes people are wrongly convicted, and technically speaking someone could be innocent, but socially guilty in the public's eyes. Other times, people are let off, when they are guilty and get away with heinous crimes.
Monday, October 3, 2011
Week Six Blog
This week in class we discussed the portrayal of Law enforcement in the media, specifically focusing on CSI, private eyes, and vigilante's.
In the article CSI and Moral Authority: The Police and Science, the phenomenon of the crime show CSI and society's obsession with it were discussed. Portrayals of the police and forensic scientists are not completely accurate, and often their roles are glamorized and the accuracy of science is exaggerated. When people watch CSI episodes, they trust the police as a moral authority, and get the impression of science being infallible. In CSI, science is what the police and law enforcement officials rely on to solve crime. Science can prove or disprove, and has a certain power with new technology. The degree of accuracy and the speed at which crime solving takes place in CSI episodes is also exaggerated. In reality, crime solving is a slower, more bureaucratic process involving scrupulous procedures. Forensic scientists are not always accurate and perfect in their work, and sometimes they do fail. However, in CSI we do not see this. CSI is an example of what crime investigation could be like if the police and the new forensic science could come together and work in perfect cohesion, solving crime at an unrealistically fast pace, and with an unrealistic infallibility. My eyes were opened after reading this article because i didn't know how unrealistic CSI is/ was. I used to watch it quite frequently, and didn't even think about how the police and forensic scientists are portrayed. The script is portrayed in such a way that makes it believable to the average person watching it.
After watching the latest CSI episode in class, we discussed how many of these typologies are still being used today. We noticed techniques that they use to make science look sexy, smart, and high-tech, as well as the people who seem to have a wealth of knowledge over a wide range of topics, making crime solving seem easy and effortless. Most of the crimes portrayed in CSI are violent and complex. We are given a complicated story through which the crime is entangled, which makes it seem interesting and keeps viewers engaged in the show with an interesting story line. After watching several CSI episodes, we can expect the same type of images and portrayals in subsequent episodes. I think that is interesting to analyze a show such as CSI, because it is one of the most popular television crime dramas, and many people don't even think twice about these kinds of ideas when watching an episode.
After thinking about how crime investigation is portrayed through CSI, I looked at an article in CNN news about a real investigation story http://www.cnn.com/2011/10/03/justice/california-interstate-shooting/index.html?hpt=ju_c2 San Diego police have been trying to find a highway gunman accused of hit and run shootings as well as drive-by shootings. So far, police don't have any specific leads and this did not convince me of police or scientific infallibility. This just reminded me how unrealistic CSI portrays crime investigation. Many crime investigation departments in the country do not use high-tech forensic science like we see in CSI. Crime solving takes time, and the police are not always accurate in identifying perpetrators and we cannot always rely on science to give us the true facts.
In the article CSI and Moral Authority: The Police and Science, the phenomenon of the crime show CSI and society's obsession with it were discussed. Portrayals of the police and forensic scientists are not completely accurate, and often their roles are glamorized and the accuracy of science is exaggerated. When people watch CSI episodes, they trust the police as a moral authority, and get the impression of science being infallible. In CSI, science is what the police and law enforcement officials rely on to solve crime. Science can prove or disprove, and has a certain power with new technology. The degree of accuracy and the speed at which crime solving takes place in CSI episodes is also exaggerated. In reality, crime solving is a slower, more bureaucratic process involving scrupulous procedures. Forensic scientists are not always accurate and perfect in their work, and sometimes they do fail. However, in CSI we do not see this. CSI is an example of what crime investigation could be like if the police and the new forensic science could come together and work in perfect cohesion, solving crime at an unrealistically fast pace, and with an unrealistic infallibility. My eyes were opened after reading this article because i didn't know how unrealistic CSI is/ was. I used to watch it quite frequently, and didn't even think about how the police and forensic scientists are portrayed. The script is portrayed in such a way that makes it believable to the average person watching it.
After watching the latest CSI episode in class, we discussed how many of these typologies are still being used today. We noticed techniques that they use to make science look sexy, smart, and high-tech, as well as the people who seem to have a wealth of knowledge over a wide range of topics, making crime solving seem easy and effortless. Most of the crimes portrayed in CSI are violent and complex. We are given a complicated story through which the crime is entangled, which makes it seem interesting and keeps viewers engaged in the show with an interesting story line. After watching several CSI episodes, we can expect the same type of images and portrayals in subsequent episodes. I think that is interesting to analyze a show such as CSI, because it is one of the most popular television crime dramas, and many people don't even think twice about these kinds of ideas when watching an episode.
After thinking about how crime investigation is portrayed through CSI, I looked at an article in CNN news about a real investigation story http://www.cnn.com/2011/10/03/justice/california-interstate-shooting/index.html?hpt=ju_c2 San Diego police have been trying to find a highway gunman accused of hit and run shootings as well as drive-by shootings. So far, police don't have any specific leads and this did not convince me of police or scientific infallibility. This just reminded me how unrealistic CSI portrays crime investigation. Many crime investigation departments in the country do not use high-tech forensic science like we see in CSI. Crime solving takes time, and the police are not always accurate in identifying perpetrators and we cannot always rely on science to give us the true facts.
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