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Covering
Crime and Justice Introduction: Story Ideas
By
Ted Gest
Many stories cover rates of violent or serious crime overall, but
what is happening in your community on significant crime categories,
such as robbery or burglary? You may find that lumping all serious
crimes together masks interesting trends. For example, it may turn
out that the overall rate is driven by the total of simple assaults
– a category that may be virtually meaningless to many viewers
and readers.
Government agencies, public interest organizations and for-profit
businesses operate a variety of projects aimed at preventing crime.
Many of them run for many years without any serious evaluation.
One example is DARE (Drug Abuse Resistance Education), which long
was popular until a study found that it might actually stimulate
drug use among some youths. Another is gun buybacks by police, which
evaluations have found ineffective. Take a look at programs in your
area. Whether they provably work, or don’t, could be newsworthy
either way.
Take a look at the "funnel effect" of how crime cases
are processed in your area, starting with the number of reported
crimes and continuing with the proportion that result in charges,
trials, guilty pleas or other dispositions, and the average amount
of time that convicts spend behind bars or on probation. The result
may not be an immediate story, but it should give you a better picture
of the strengths and weaknesses in your local system. You might
compare your findings with the police "clearance" rate,
which usually includes cases that officers are confident they have
"solved" even if they lack enough evidence for prosecutors
to bring charges.
Story Examples
Boca Raton crime statistics scandal, Sun-Sentinel, Ft. Lauderdale,
Fl; April 24-May 23, 1999
Uncounted crimes/rape squad investigation, Philadelphia Inquirer,
Mark Fazlollah, Craig McCoy, Michael Matza, Clea Benson, October-December
1999
Omaha World-Herald, November 8, 1998, Carol Napolitano,
et al.; a detailed look at crime in Omaha neighborhoods, 1990-1997
San Francisco Police Department dead last in homicide clearances,
David Parrish, Jaxon Van Derbeken, San Francisco Chronicle,
May 19-20-21, 2002
Sources
"Crime & Politics," Ted Gest, Oxford University Press,
2001
"Crime: Public Policies for Crime Control," James Q.
Wilson, Joan Petersilia, Robert B. Hawkins, Institute for Contemporary
Studies, 2002
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