"Newsmaking" criminology or "infotainment" criminology?

• Jurisdiction: Australia
• Date: 01 August 2004
• Author: Buckingham, Judith I.

The role of the media in mobilising public opinion about crime motivates some criminologists to participate as experts in media constructions of crime and social control. These public discourses help shape the social construction of offending, the public response to victims of violence and the organisation of popular consent for particular crime control strategies. This article reviews and critiques the empirical and theoretical foundations of a criminological discourse of gender symmetry in domestic violence, and gender bias in the criminal justice system, that has galvanised the popular press in New Zealand and disrupted widely accepted views of domestic violence and criminal justice processes.

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In the late 1980s, Gregg Barak urged criminologists to engage with mass media representations of crime and social reality through the practice of "newsmaking criminology". Barak's invitation to progressive criminologists "to participate in the presentation of 'newsworthy' items about crime and justice" (1988, p. 565) proposed a sharing of criminological insights with the public to demystify and recast media constructions of crime and social control. Five years later, in their critique of mass-mediated themes of domestic violence and a general reluctance to acknowledge the role of existing power relations in perpetuating violence against women, Martin Schwartz and Walter DeKeseredy (1993) recommended feminists avoid limiting their presentations to academic settings and adopt Barak's newsmaking method. Although those who oppose mainstream interpretations of the news have been less successful in courting this form of publicity, this article examines the foundations of a remarkable capture of New Zealand media and popular discourses on issues of domestic violence and gender inequality.

Media constructions of domestic violence and the criminal justice response to female and male offenders in New Zealand have amplified the criminology of Greg Newbold, an Associate Professor at the University of Canterbury, who has animated public opinion with his analysis of female offending in which women's rates of violence in the home equal or exceed those of men, and women are sentenced more leniently by the courts. This gender bias demeans women "by not taking their violence seriously and not demanding that they take responsibility for their actions" ("Violence by Women 'Ignored'", 1996). Over a number of years, these themes have been rehearsed by Newbold in television interviews, radio talk shows, articles and newspaper reports (for example, "Jail 'Less Likely for Women'", 1999; "Girls Gone Bad", 2000; "Seeking an Equality of Revulsion", 2000; "Off the Hook", 2000; "Study Finds Violent Women Risk Retaliation", 2002) and they reappear in Newbold's academic text, Crime in New Zealand (2000), and a critique of gender bias in the criminal justice system by his former PhD student, Samantha Jeffries (2001). Major discrepancies between claims that male violence against women is a pervasive social problem (Leibrich, Paulin, & Ransom, 1995; Morris, 1998) and assertions of gender symmetry in the use of violence between intimate partners can create significant confusion among policy makers and the general public. Images of a perverse criminal justice system that routinely trivialises serious offending by women logically imply harsher treatment for female offenders; an equality strategy that Newbold has not shied away from ("Seeking an Equality of Revulsion", 2000; "Off the Hook", 2000).

In this article I review the research and evidence finding discrimination against men in the New Zealand criminal justice system. I argue that methodological shortcomings resulting from inattention to context and insufficient knowledge of law and the legal principles relevant to this critique of sentencing outcomes, confound the gender analysis and produce seriously flawed results. I compare research findings of gender symmetry in domestic violence with research by well respected agencies finding gender asymmetry and suggest these apparently discordant findings can be reconciled as the result of different methodologies, different conceptualisations of violence and a failure to distinguish between types and context of violence. I conclude that the production and consumption of the criminology in this review reflects the conventions and commercial imperative of popular media in its "infotainment" approach to newsmaking.

Gender Bias in the New Zealand Criminal Justice System

In 1999 the media announced preliminary results of Jeffries' (2001) PhD study, Gender Judgments: An Investigation of Gender Differentiation in Sentencing and Remand in New Zealand, supervised by Newbold, (2) which found that in comparison with women, men were more likely to be imprisoned and would serve longer terms of imprisonment when sentenced for the same or "similar" offending ("Jail 'Less Likely for Women'", 1999). At the time these findings were released to the press, significant differences existed between men and women in this sample which might have accounted for differential sentencing outcomes and Jeffries had not yet completed her case studies. The timing of this media release is curious as the research is supposedly modelled on Daly's (1994) study, which does not support claims of gender bias and cautions against drawing conclusions from statistical analyses in the absence of in-depth case studies (p. 268). In 2001, accompanied by a great deal of media hype, Newbold and Jeffries announced subsequent research had confirmed their preliminary findings of bias against men in the New Zealand criminal justice system. According to one media report:

With women, judges look for an explanation and an excuse for their offending. Whereas men are just men its a case of all men are bastards, said Jeffries ("Sugar and Spice", 2001). This research and its methodology was foreshadowed in Newbold's (2000) Crime in New Zealand, which also received extensive media coverage of its claims of gender bias in sentencing outcomes. On the jacket, the book is described as the "first comprehensive study of crime in New Zealand to be published since 1970 and ... one of the most detailed works on the subject ever written". The author seeks to redress a perceived deficit in official data by exposing the true nature and extent of female offending, discussing it generally throughout the work and specifically in a chapter on "women's crime". Although Newbold is portrayed as an iconoclast, who tramples over "popular notions" about sex and gender, the text is truly remarkable for its methodology. This relies on discredited stereotypes of women, emotive-persuasive appeals to popular prejudices and inferences drawn from small bites of decontextualised data to analyse sentencing outcomes for female defendants. Under the rubric of "women's crime" Newbold asserts that criminal law traditionally patronised female offenders as fragile, weak-willed, often witless, thralls of their husbands:

In spite of the advances that have been made in gender equity since then, serious offending by women still tends to be trivialised as an odd aberration, precipitated by supposedly extenuating circumstances. On this basis, sentences far below the normal tariff are frequently awarded (p. 70). A "Normal" Sentencing Tariff?

As evidence of this claim, Newbold provides a selection of extracts from New Zealand newspaper reports. These newspaper snippets, described as "contemporary examples" of gender bias in sentencing outcomes, are presented as self-evident data in the absence of detailed citation or discussion of the cases. The following snippets illustrate this approach:

* In February 1993 a woman who had been convicted of breaking both her baby's arms was jailed for 18 months by Wanganui District Court. Without detailing them, the judge said there were "mitigating circumstances" (Dominion, 1993, as cited in Newbold, 2000, p. 70)

* In July 1993 [the female offender] was sentenced to 21 months' imprisonment after being convicted of the manslaughter of her 11-mth-old son by the High Court in Greymouth. The child had been poisoned by being fed large quantities of salt (Dominion, 1993, as cited in Newbold, 2000, p. 70) (3)

* In January 1997 in Christchurch, [the female offender] threw her baby with such force that it turned blue and suffered permanent brain damage. She received two years' supervision and eight months' periodic detention (Dominion, 1997, as cited in Newbold, 2000, p. 71).

Without the case citations that provide access to legal reports, or comparison with reported decisions on the facts of these cases, the reader is required to infer that these newspaper snippets are probative of claims of judicial paternalism or chivalry. However, the validity of these data as evidence of sentencing outcomes which fall "far below the normal tariff' is substantially undermined by a failure to provide details of the standard against which sentences for female offenders are measured. Presumably, the "normal tariff' relates to the sentencing of male offenders. Yet no information regarding male offenders is provided. This omission may be the result of Newbold's belief that child abuse is predominantly a female crime (p. 59). The claim does not accord with official data on convictions for child abuse (Ministry of Justice, 2001) (4) and a variety of newspaper reports provide the opportunity for comparison. Had Newbold, for example, undertaken a comparative analysis it might have incorporated the following newspaper snippets:

* Male--convicted on two charges of intentionally injuring his 7-week-old son. On one occasion, the infant's skull was fractured with a headbutt, and on another, the offender broke the child's forearm by taking the limb into his two hands and snapping it. On this occasion the offender also broke the child's leg. Sentenced to 12 months prison and 12 months supervision (Evening Standard, 1997, July 23)

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