{"id":1510,"date":"2012-07-18T19:01:35","date_gmt":"2012-07-19T01:01:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/pubcrim\/?p=1510"},"modified":"2012-07-18T19:54:59","modified_gmt":"2012-07-19T01:54:59","slug":"images-of-felons-and-voting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/pubcrim\/2012\/07\/18\/images-of-felons-and-voting\/","title":{"rendered":"images of felons and voting"},"content":{"rendered":"

As our friends at sociological images<\/a>\u00a0so ingeniously demonstrate, images send powerful messages. Here on\u00a0pubcrim<\/a> and in\u00a0related articles<\/a>, Michelle and I\u00a0have argued\u00a0that popular images of crime and justice often serve to\u00a0widen the gap between public perceptions and the best available scientific evidence\u00a0— and that evaluating and reframing these images is a\u00a0central task for public criminology.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Since\u00a0releasing a new Sentencing Project report<\/a>\u00a0last week\u00a0with Sarah Shannon and Jeff Manza, I was reminded of the pervasiveness of certain stock images\u00a0and the challenge of finding good alternatives.\u00a0As I mentioned on the Ed’s Desk<\/a>, the report\u00a0presented some new numbers on the people affected by U.S. felon voting restrictions. Some outstanding articles have since appeared in a good range of print and broadcast\u00a0outlets, including\u00a0the New York Times<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>and NPR<\/a>.\u00a0I’m always impressed by how quickly smart journalists can master a complex issue and then write an informed piece that really teaches readers about the subject. Of the\u00a0articles that quoted me directly,\u00a0I especially appreciated passages like this one, in Eliza Shapiro’s story in the Daily Beast<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Four million of the 5.85 million disenfranchised are currently out of prison, some on probation and parole. \u201cThe murderer behind bars,\u201d waiting to cast his vote, \u201cis an atypical case,\u201d says Christopher Uggen, professor of sociology at the University of Minnesota and lead author of the Sentencing Project report.<\/em><\/p>\n

Yes! That’s an angle that is too rarely mentioned in stories on felon voting. I’ve tried for years<\/em> to convey how only a minority of disenfranchised felons are locked up\u00a0— and that\u00a0a much larger number\u00a0are already\u00a0living and working in our communities.\u00a0The relative rarity of the “murderer behind bars” is\u00a0both an evocative image and\u00a0a demonstrable social fact, so I\u00a0felt like\u00a0I’d done my small bit for\u00a0public criminology.\u00a0Before I could dislocate my shoulder patting myself on the back\u00a0, however,\u00a0I noticed something else in the article.<\/p>\n

\"\"The story was accompanied by the even more<\/em> compelling\u00a0Reed\u00a0Saxon\/AP\u00a0photograph\u00a0at left, showing faceless inmates in uniform\u00a0lined up along\u00a0a wall. Regardless of what I might’ve said about the “typical case,” I suspect that readers will call to mind a picture like this when they think of felon voting.\u00a0 Having edited Contexts<\/em> magazine and the Society Pages<\/em>, I know how challenging it can be to illustrate such stories. Even if the typical disenfranchised felon is a fortyish\u00a0white\u00a0guy who has served his\u00a0time, how do you tell his<\/em> story\u00a0in a way that will visually engage readers? Show a picture of\u00a0Uggen watering his lawn? Not likely.<\/p>\n

Well, in this case, the editors found\u00a0many creative ways to illustrate the story. The Courier-Journal<\/a><\/em>\u00a0created a graphic to show the disenfranchisement rate among African American voters; the Huffington Post<\/a><\/em>\u00a0offered a woman casting a ballot in Mississippi; Tampa Bay Online<\/a><\/em>\u00a0used a woman passing a VOTE sign; the Crime Report<\/a><\/em> showed a sign labeled POLLING STATION; and, the Times-Picayune<\/a><\/em> used a head shot of a former inmate and activist. Still, many outlets relied on prison imagery: the National Journal<\/a><\/em>\u00a0offered a picture of\u00a0hands sticking through prison bars; the Grio<\/a> <\/em>showed inmates with their hands up, being searched\u00a0near a chain-link fence; and WTVR<\/a> showed inmates’ feet walking along a yellow line.<\/p>\n

There’s no right or wrong way to illustrate this story or any other, though I certainly have my preferences. Knowing how hard Sarah Shannon worked on\u00a0our report’s maps, however, I was most <\/em>happy to see the stories that reproduced them directly<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As our friends at sociological images\u00a0so ingeniously demonstrate, images send powerful messages. Here on\u00a0pubcrim and in\u00a0related articles, Michelle and I\u00a0have argued\u00a0that popular images of crime and justice often serve to\u00a0widen the gap between public perceptions and the best available scientific evidence\u00a0— and that evaluating and reframing these images is a\u00a0central task for public criminology.\u00a0 Since\u00a0releasing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1510","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/pubcrim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1510","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/pubcrim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/pubcrim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/pubcrim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/pubcrim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1510"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/pubcrim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1510\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1516,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/pubcrim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1510\/revisions\/1516"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/pubcrim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1510"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/pubcrim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1510"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/pubcrim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1510"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}