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Clearing Crime in Prime-Time: The Disjuncture Between Fiction and Reality

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Abstract

Crime dramas provide entertainment to millions of Americans. The impact of viewing these programs on perceptions and expectations of police is a concern for practitioners, researchers and policy makers. While a growing body of research is identifying factors associated with the probability of clearance in offenses reported to police, a dearth of research looks at the portrayal of police efficiency in apprehending offenders in popular crime dramas. This study examines the depictions of police investigations across four fictional crime dramas. The authors find offenses are cleared at much higher rates than national averages and that several case characteristics typically associated with clearance in actual cases do not share the same relationship in these fictional programs. Results indicate substantial variation between programs in the depiction of the collection and utility of DNA evidence in assisting investigators to identify suspects. Findings are discussed in relation to data collected from actual police departments.

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Notes

  1. When available, data were collected for the entire study period from the selected programs. However, some of the selected programs were not broadcast for the whole duration of the study period. Specifically, Criminal Minds began in 2005 and Without a Trace was discontinued in 2008. Data were collected from these programs when they were broadcast during the study period.

  2. Seven episodes appeared to be about a crime, but in the end, it was determined that no crime was committed. For example, in CSI’s “Long Ball” episode, a presumed homicide is determined to be an accident, with a man accidentally killing himself by slamming his golf club into the ground, causing a piece of metal to fly into his head.

  3. Given research findings identifying stronger victim and offender race effects through the use of dyads (Roberts & Lyons, 2009), the authors explored the possibility of including offender information as well as dyads in the current study. However, a review of the data revealed that offenders commonly have multiple victims in fictional crime dramas. In order to conduct an analysis using techniques similar to Roberts and Lyons (2009) would have resulted in a substantial loss of cases. However, we feel this is an important line for future inquiry.

  4. The “Other” category includes cases such as where the offender died from disease or illness before being arrested, was identified but could not be arrested because of lack of evidence, or was accidentally killed (e.g., shot them self but not on purpose).

  5. Though Schroeder and White (2009) do not provide a clearance rate for all investigations where DNA evidence was collected, we were able to calculate an overall clearance rate based on data presented in table 1 on page 327.

  6. Comparable figures identifying whether DNA evidence directly leads to the identification of offender during investigations conducted by actual police departments are not currently available. The closest figures available at the time of this writing are by Schroeder and White (2009) who find 27.5% of cases where DNA is collected and results are available to investigators are cleared. However, it is not clear what proportion of the cleared cases are the directly the outcome of the DNA results.

  7. We recognize NIBRS data include victim characteristics. However, these data are not representative of the nation, particularly urban areas (Addington, 2008).

  8. Results of the Fisher’s exact test are available upon request from the first author.

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Acknowledgments

This project was supported in part by a University of Northern Iowa’s College of Social and Behavioral Sciences Small Project Grant and a Graduate College Summer Fellowship.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Criminology, University of Northern Iowa, 1227 West 27th Street, Cedar Falls, IA, 50614-0513, USA

    Gayle Rhineberger-Dunn

  2. Criminal Justice and Political Science, NDSU Department 2315, North Dakota State University, 1616 12th Avenue North, Fargo, ND, 58108-6050, USA

    Steven J. Briggs

  3. Department of Sociology, Mississippi State University, PO Box C, Mississippi State, MS, 39762, USA

    Nicole Rader

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  1. Gayle Rhineberger-Dunn
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  2. Steven J. Briggs
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  3. Nicole Rader
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Correspondence to Gayle Rhineberger-Dunn.

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Rhineberger-Dunn, G., Briggs, S.J. & Rader, N. Clearing Crime in Prime-Time: The Disjuncture Between Fiction and Reality. Am J Crim Just 41, 255–278 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12103-015-9300-z

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