Crime Perception

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In 1968, the United States Supreme Court case Terry v. Ohio decided that police may stop a person for questioning and frisk, without probable cause, if they have reasonable suspicion that the person has committed or is about to commit a crime. The New York City Liberty Union website provides a total number of how many people were stopped from the year 2002 to 2016, while also providing a racial breakdown of how many of that total were blacks, whites, and Latinos. According to this website, in 2016 from January to September, there were a total of 10,171 New Yorkers who were stopped and frisked.Of the 10,171 people, 54 percent were black, 29 percent were Latino, and 10 percent were white (NYCLU). These numbers displayed a similar pattern for …show more content…
The researchers looked to examine the relationship between the type of crime-related programs (i.e. drama, local news, etc.) and fear of crime (Eschholz, Chiricos, Gertz, 2003). They did so by conducting random telephone surveys with 1,490 adults in Leon County, Florida (Eschholz, Chiricos, Gertz, 2003). They documented the age, sex, race, education, income, crime victim experience, and neighborhood, as well as the amount of television watched or newspaper read (Eschholz, Chiricos, Gertz, 2003). They found that realistic program types, such as local news, has a relationship with fear of crime, as well as the neighborhood the person resides (Eschholz, Chiricos, Gertz, 2003). They explained the amount of black residents in the community also had a relationship with fear of crime (Eschholz, Chiricos, Gertz, 2003). Additionally, women, non victims, lower income, and younger respondents show a relationship between television and fear of crime (Eschholz, Chiricos, Gertz, …show more content…
Callahan did a similar research to the one discussed above, but in addition to looking at the relationship between media and perceptions of crime, she looked at how the media affects different races/ ethnicities. Callahan analyzed previous data obtained by the Social and Behavioral Research Institute at California State University-San Marcos for the Robert Presley center for Crime and Justice Studies at the University of California-Riverside. The researchers obtained a total of 4,245 completed computer-assisted telephone interviews with a sample of California residents, age 18 and over (Callahan, 2012). The racial background of the respondents consisted of 67.3 whites, 20.9 Latinos, and 11.7 blacks (Callahan, 2012). Callahan looked to examine how crime-related media affected the individuals’ and if it differs by race/ethnicity. Callahans research found many similar results as to the one described above, such as the relationship between the media and perceptions of neighborhood crime risk. However, she also found that realistic forms of media, such as television news and crime-based reality shows, had a greater impact than newspapers and crime dramas on perception of neighborhood crime and fear of crime (Callahan, 2012). Additionally, she found that whites, blacks, and Latinos received crime-related media differently (Callahan, 2012). For example, she stated that whites read the newspaper more often than blacks and Latinos (whites, 4 days; blacks, 3.43

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