Author: Ian Marsh and Gaynor Melville
ISBN No: 978-0-415-81390-7
Review date: 16/12/2025
No of pages: 240
Publisher: Routledge
Publisher URL:
http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415813907/
Year of publication: 14/04/2014
Brief:
Crime, Justice and the Media, second edition, by Ian Marsh and Gaynor Melville
price
£ 29.99
The media has power. Why else were two CCTV tapes taken from Sheffield Wednesday, the night after the Hillsbrough disaster in 1989, and never recovered?
As a textbook on crime and the media points out at the beginning, you only have to look at the TV listings or what’s on at the cinema to see that the public has a ‘vat and seemingly insatiable interest’ in crime, or rather the criminals. Indeed, why else would the book be in a second edition? It’s right up to date, including the Leveson inquiry into phone hacking, and Edward Snowden’s US-spying revelations from last summer. The book takes criminals, victims, the criminal justice system, and cybercrime separately, after an opening chapter on ‘applying theoretical perspectives’ which is not as painful as it might sound. The book covers plenty of ground, which itself shows how important the media are in our understanding of crime and life generally. One intriguing page looks into the similarities between a detective and a journalist. Amateur filming on camera-phones, of protests for example, can go on the internet and make the news when picked up by broadcasters – and be used by police (and private investigators) as evidence. In other words, data is rampant, and the ways it’s used are blurring. The book can help you understand – though the field is changing fast.
