Myth-Making Criminal Justice 3

In the original paper Using Content Analysis Projects in The Introduction to Criminal Justice Classroom, in the abstract background the authors Finley (2004), emphasized:

An important component of the project was the lecture about "myth-making" and what "reality" looks like in regard to the profiled criminal justice players, as each student was required to compare his or her individual findings with reality. As noted earlier, this lecture was based on the profile’s students turned in on the first night of class and was formulated from a number of sources. Clearly other instructors who wish to do a similar content analysis project with their classes will want to devise their own lecture based on their specific students' prior knowledge. My lecture was developed primarily from the following sources: Barak, Flavin, and Leighton's (2001) Class, Race, Gender, and Crime; Ferrell and Webs dale’s (1999) Making Trouble: Cultural Constructions of Crime, Deviance, and Control; Kappeler, Blumberg, and Potter's (2000) The Mythology of Crime and Criminal Justice; and Perlmutter's (2000) Policing the Media. While it is not necessary to describe every detail of that lecture here, some examples are included for purpose of illustration.

One thing we discussed was the fact that, contrary to their perceptions, "all" people are not equally likely to be violently victimized; in reality, young, minority males are much more likely to be the victims of violent crime (Barak et al. 2001; Kappeier et al. 2000). Further, while students generally felt that drug offenses were found more fre