Serial Killers and the Media:
How the Media Affects the Investigation and Public Perception of Serial Killers
Serial killers are one of the most widely covered criminal types in the media, even though the majority of criminals do not fit this profile. Often the psychology and methods of serial killers are sensationalized in the media. Serial killers have also figured prominently as popular characters in film and cinema. This raises some problematic questions about the coverage of serial killers, however. First, is too much attention given to them, versus other,… Continue Reading...
convincing justifications for numerous offenses, with the exception of serial killing. Normally, serial killers lack financial or social motivation, and aren’t members of any specific ethnic/racial minority. The urbanism idea is an example of a structural model which may better explain serial murder. Murder rates are typically the highest in the city of New York, Washington, D.C., Indiana, Miami, Detroit, Alabama, Birmingham, and other heavily-populated urban areas. Urban homicide is largely linked to social disorder, a broken family, alienation, disassociation, fear and destitution. Im-personalization and bumping into strangers frequently is what increases serial-killing likelihood in such highly-populated regions. Consider, for instance, Ted… Continue Reading...
serial killer in America, he is one of the best known of American serial killers. This essay explores the reasons for Bundy’s infamy. It will explore Bundy’s normal guy persona and how that not only helped him gain his victims’ trust, but also helped foster public fascination with Bundy. Bundy committed crimes across multiple states, which helped create national awareness of his crimes at a time when crime reporting was still often confined to local areas. He had multiple successful escapes, which not only created news while authorities searched for him, but also helped support the mythology of Bundy as a genius. His… Continue Reading...
for society, it does have a place in the justice system in certain occasions. These circumstances largely involve remorseless serial killers who are unable to be rehabilitated.
The 1995 film Dead Man Walking directed by Tim Robbins and based on the book by the nun who lived the story, Helen Prejean. The film has the truly difficult task of telling the story of the complexities of capital punishment in America. The film shows us the struggle that a nun has in attempting to comfort and help both a murderer on death row and the families of the victims he killed. The film was critically well-received and is able to… Continue Reading...
have committed similar crimes. It is known, for instance, that serial killers do it for different reasons. Similarly, those caught for violent offences react differently to interrogation (Ebisike, 2007).
Applying psychological evaluation of the accused can help investigators establish whether the accused is likely to have engaged in behaviors that could have led to the offence in focus. The process is a critical one in the assessing the evidence presented by the victim against the suspected offender. The element of regularity is common. There is a link between the personality of an individual and the potential to commit certain crimes.… Continue Reading...
