Forensic psychology is a subspecialty of psychology that works within the criminal and civil legal system. This allows forensic psychologists to contribute in different ways to the court. These services including assessing those that are accused of their fitness to stand trial based on their mental health, jury selection and interrogation techniques (Roesch, 2015). The legal system, which regulates our life and society makes perfect sense to depict in television dramas. Law & Order: Special Victims Unit premiered in 1999, and the premise of the show is showing how detectives investigate and convict criminals of sexually based crimes (NBC, 2015). Newer shows like, How to Get Away with Murder which is about a law professor and criminal defense
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Majority of the episodes designate their plots to finding a criminal who eventually confesses and gets convicted of a crime. However, these conditions are not translated to real life situations. “One obvious characteristic of TV crime is that it is almost always unsuccessful. Nearly nine out of every ten crimes (88 per cent) were solved. Comparable data from the FBI report indicate that for the seven index crimes only 23 per cent are cleared” (Dominick, Joseph R., 2015 pg. 246). There is a small percentage of criminals that are actually convicted of their crimes. TV shows do not take into account that some charges are dropped, people are not convicted or cases go unsolved and become cold. The real life legal system is not as efficient as television therefore all of the accused are not sentenced for their crimes. In addition, crime dramas show an unattainable depiction of crimes pertaining to sexual …show more content…
Women are victimized of being rape and are afraid to come forward. The criminals of these sex acts also do not get convicted. Furthermore, it’s a prevalent problem in the legal system for women. Law & Order defies this statistic by arresting and prosecuting all of their sex offenders. In episode nine of season thirteen, a young woman who also has a mental disorder was being sexually abused by her uncle since she was a child. In the latter, her uncle was convicted of multiple counts of sexual assaults. Her like other characters in this show, prevail their abusers and find justice. However, this is not accountable for real life women and children. Thus the correlation between conviction rates in real life and television are not
Majority of the episodes designate their plots to finding a criminal who eventually confesses and gets convicted of a crime. However, these conditions are not translated to real life situations. “One obvious characteristic of TV crime is that it is almost always unsuccessful. Nearly nine out of every ten crimes (88 per cent) were solved. Comparable data from the FBI report indicate that for the seven index crimes only 23 per cent are cleared” (Dominick, Joseph R., 2015 pg. 246). There is a small percentage of criminals that are actually convicted of their crimes. TV shows do not take into account that some charges are dropped, people are not convicted or cases go unsolved and become cold. The real life legal system is not as efficient as television therefore all of the accused are not sentenced for their crimes. In addition, crime dramas show an unattainable depiction of crimes pertaining to sexual …show more content…
Women are victimized of being rape and are afraid to come forward. The criminals of these sex acts also do not get convicted. Furthermore, it’s a prevalent problem in the legal system for women. Law & Order defies this statistic by arresting and prosecuting all of their sex offenders. In episode nine of season thirteen, a young woman who also has a mental disorder was being sexually abused by her uncle since she was a child. In the latter, her uncle was convicted of multiple counts of sexual assaults. Her like other characters in this show, prevail their abusers and find justice. However, this is not accountable for real life women and children. Thus the correlation between conviction rates in real life and television are not