Television news and the symbolic criminalisation of young people

This is an Author's Accepted Manuscript of an article published in Journalism Studies, 9(1), 75 - 90, 2008, copyright Taylor & Francis, available online at: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/14616700701768105.This essay combines quantitative and qualitative analysis of six UK television news programmes. It seeks to analyse the representation of young people within broadcast news provision at a time when media representations, political discourse and policy making generally appear to be invoking young people as something of a folk devil or a locus for moral panics. The quantitative analysis examines the frequency with which young people appear as main actors across a range of different subjects and analyses the role of young people as news sources. It finds a strong correlation between young people and violent crime. A qualitative analysis of four “special reports” or backgrounders on channel Five's Five News explores the representation of young people in more detail, paying attention to contradictions and tensions in the reports, the role of statistics in crime reporting, the role of victims of crime and the tensions between conflicting news frames.Arts and Humanities Research Counci

Stabbing News: Articulating Crime Statistics in the Newsroom

There is a comprehensive body of scholarly work regarding the way media represent crime and how it is constructed in the media narrative as a news item. These works have often suggested that in many cases public anxieties in relation to crime levels are not justified by actual data. However, few works have examined the gathering and dissemination of crime statistics by non-specialist journalists and the way crime statistics are gathered and used in the newsroom. This article seeks to explore in a comparative manner how journalists in newsrooms access and interpret quantitative data when producing stories related to crime. In so doing, the article highlights the problems and limitations of journalists in dealing with crime statistics as a news source, while assessing statistics-related methodologies and skills used in the newsrooms across the United Kingdom when producing stories related to urban crime

The ABC130 barrel module prototyping programme for the ATLAS strip tracker

For the Phase-II Upgrade of the ATLAS Detector, its Inner Detector, consisting of silicon pixel, silicon strip and transition radiation sub-detectors, will be replaced with an all new 100 % silicon tracker, composed of a pixel tracker at inner radii and a strip tracker at outer radii. The future ATLAS strip tracker will include 11,000 silicon sensor modules in the central region (barrel) and 7,000 modules in the forward region (end-caps), which are foreseen to be constructed over a period of 3.5 years. The construction of each module consists of a series of assembly and quality control steps, which were engineered to be identical for all production sites. In order to develop the tooling and procedures for assembly and testing of these modules, two series of major prototyping programs were conducted: an early program using readout chips designed using a 250 nm fabrication process (ABCN-25) and a subsequent program using a follow-up chip set made using 130 nm processing (ABC130 and HCC130 chips). This second generation of readout chips was used for an extensive prototyping program that produced around 100 barrel-type modules and contributed significantly to the development of the final module layout. This paper gives an overview of the components used in ABC130 barrel modules, their assembly procedure and findings resulting from their tests.Comment: 82 pages, 66 figure

Sketching women in court: The visual construction of co-accused women in court drawings

This paper explores the visual construction and representation of co-accused women offenders in court drawings. It utilises three case studies of female co-defendants who appeared in the England and Wales court system between 2003 and 2013. In doing so this paper falls into three parts. The first part considers the emergence of the sub-discipline, visual criminology and examines what is known about the visual representation of female offenders. The second part presents the findings of an empirical investigation, which involved engaging in a critical, reflexive visual analysis of a selection of court drawings of three female co-offenders. The third part discusses the ways in which the court artists' interpretation, the conventions of court sketching, and motifs of female offenders as secondary actors, drew on existing myths and prejudices by representing the women as listening, remorseless ‘others’

The privatised lifer : an observation of a cohort of life-sentenced prisoners through HMP Wolds December 2003 – July 2005

This research proved a unique opportunity to observe a cohort of 20 life-sentenced prisoners that had already negotiated an often fragmented and difficult ‘system’. These prisoners were at the Category-C stage of their sentence (medium security) and looking to progress to Category-D (open conditions) and ultimately towards release on license. Unusually, they were attempting to do this at a private prison, HMP Wolds in East Yorkshire - the first private prison to open in Europe in 1992. Due to negotiating a new contract in 2001, it became the first private prison house a group of ‘lifers’ in a dedicated Lifer Unit. The research details how progress was made and how this private prison, staffed with predominantly untrained specialised ‘lifer’ supervisors, coped with this type of prisoner and if the prisoners would progress on time. This qualitative research project examines issues such as conditions, staffing, education, work and programmes, mainly through the eyes of the prisoners but also by way of staff interviews and observation. Although no direct comparison could be made with a similar private prison, as no other private prison held lifers at that time, it is a useful observational study with a degree of longitudinal depth. The prison certainly demonstrated that it could hold lifers in very good conditions, overseen by excellent quality staff and three quarters of the cohort had either progressed on time or were scheduled to progress to open conditions at the time the research concluded. From the Director personally, the staff made every effort to do things correctly, not only providing the minimum requirements, but providing pockets of innovation that could lead to universal improvements in the treatment of prisoners in England and Wales – most notably the decent manner in which prisoners were treated by staff, which leads to a much more relaxed atmosphere, and therefore a quieter prison with few disciplinary issues. Cognitive-behavioural programmes were analysed and the research demonstrated that the whole rehabilitative idea, although well conceived, is poorly administered in practice, with no central coordination. The research questions whether lifers are suited to such programmes and whether they should actually take up much sought-after places on such courses considering their potential distance from release. To bring this narrative account to life, the thesis highlights two prisoners and conducts a detailed ‘case study’ of each; one who negotiated the ‘system’ successfully and another who failed to engage. It follows their time at HMP Wolds and explores their experiences of the prison regime generally, conditions and staff and considers such issues as sentence planning, town visits, programme provision and delivery. These two prisoners commented lucidly on their time in HMP Wolds and although they were generally very positive about their experience, these comparative case studies demonstrate the difficulty in negotiating the prison ‘system’. The standard of treatment in HMP Wolds was found to be high, backed up with external inspection reports, with most lifers making progress on time due to excellent staff diligence. The privatisation debate, morally and practically, is discussed at length and the holding of lifers sees an increase in not only numbers, but responsibility in the private sector. It could be argued that following almost two years studying this private prison; that if private establishments prove to be no worse that the public sector and no more expensive, then surely this is all that can be asked of them. There is concern as to whether the currently over-crowded prison system is working, but private prisons have certainly not added to the problem, indeed privatisation may have improved some aspects and therefore relatively, privatisation can and should be labelled a success.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

Rehabilitation by design, influencing change in prison behaviour

Launched at the House of Commons on Monday 10th October, Rehabilitation by Design is a report that examines the way in which prison design can help reduce re-offending rates. It provides recommendations, based on best practice from around the world, as to what should be integrated into the design of a new prison

Media representations of camera sexual voyeurism in Singapore: a medicalised, externalised and community problem

This article examines the Straits Times’ coverage of camera sexual voyeurism (CSV) incidents in Singapore from 2004–2017. Utilising critical discourse analysis, I argue that the threat CSV poses to Singaporean exceptionalism was cohered through three distinct media discourses. Internalisation, which focused attention on medical explanations that pathologised perpetrators. Externalisation, which attributed CSV to camera technology and pornography use. And community intervention, which focused on successful community policing responses to CSV. These discursive oscillations individualised, de-politicised and de-gendered CSV by constituting it as the reprehensible acts of a few behaviourally disordered individuals which could be addressed through medical treatment, lateral surveillance and responsibilisation. By examining media representations of CSV, this article explores whether extant myths and discourses surrounding sexual violence re-emerge in media coverage of technologically facilitated sexual violence (TFSV).</p

Prison on Screen in Italy: From “Shame Therapy” Propaganda to Citizenship Programmes

Italian cinema provides a nuanced view of prison, from short movies produced by the Istituto Luce, during the period 1928–1932, when the Fascist regime’s narratives dominated the Italian cinema screens and prison appeared as a fundamental tool of propaganda, through the post-World War II Neorealist stories set amongst the poor and the working class. Now there is the more contemporary “usage” of prison movies. The chapter considers the link between cinema and prison through penological theories and praxis that mirrors societal changes when it comes to defining the meanings and purposes of incarceration. Adopting a broad semiotic approach, the chapter presents an analysis of the content and ideologies behind the representation of prison on screen through the duality between the “shame therapy” propaganda and the making of movies as art therapy in prison projects. The construction of a genealogy of prison-set motion pictures is more than simply providing an overview of the representations and usages of the prison space. By exploring prison and prisoners’ place in society, we address much more complex issues relating to citizenship and belonging