The Economist - USA (2020-06-27)

68 TheEconomistJune 27th 2020

1

C

rime rates are low in America by his-

torical standards, but television view-

ers could be forgiven for thinking other-

wise. Of the 34 dramas that aired at prime

time on the four big broadcast networks

last autumn, 21 revolved around crime. On

cbsthe figure was 11 out of 14. Cops and rob-

bers are essential and everywhere in the

small screen’s alternative reality.

And on reality television. For 31 years

viewers tuned in to “Cops” to see officers

busting drug-dealers, reckless drivers and

prostitutes. But no longer. Before its new

season began, Paramount Network and its

owner, Viacomcbs, axed the show amid

spiralling protests over police brutality.

The conceit of “Cops” was simple: follow

officers and film their encounters. But crit-

ics said it got access in exchange for favour-

able coverage of police. Many of those ar-

rested may have been too high or confused

to consent to appearing. The show exagger-

ated the role of drugs, which accounted for

35% of arrests, three times the true rate.

Compared with real-life arrest data, black

and Latino men were over-represented.

The ratings for “Cops” were poor, so the

decision to nix it might have been easy. But

“Live pd”, a more popular show on a&e, has

also been cancelled. It had admitted to

erasing footage of a black man dying in po-

lice custody last year. The reckoning has hit

drama series, too, as insiders grapple with

television’s role in distorting perceptions

of policing and normalising abuses.

Warren Leight, executive producer of

“Law & Order: Special Victims Unit”

(“svu”), has said that cop shows are collec-

tively “mis-contributing” to society. Dream

Hampton, a producer and director, has sug-

gested a moratorium on new ones. Too of-

ten, she said, they “justify the cutting of

corners, the throwing away of the constitu-

tion”. They also make policing look more

effective than it is. In real life, just 46% of

violent crimes were resolved with an arrest

in 2018, compared with every one on “svu”.

All this matters, because many people

believe what they see on the box. Over 40%

of Americans think crime shows are realis-

tic. This can have peculiar real-world ef-

fects, such as armchair sleuths telling de-

tectives how to do their job. In one study,

police in Canada confided their frustration

over “csi” fans who tried to interview wit-

nesses and identify evidence themselves.

Overall, tv-watchers are more likely

than others to have confidence in the po-

lice. They are also more prone to think,

wrongly, that police misconduct yields

truthful confessions—not surprisingly,

given how such behaviour is often por-

trayed. A study of a season’s worth of four

American crime shows in 2011 found that,

on average, police acted badly once per epi-

sode. Almost all instances were justified

and went unpunished. Rule-bending actu-

ally boosted officers’ roles as moral enforc-

ers. The effect was to forgive their abuses.

Racism has been swept under the carpet

in a different way. Colour of Change, a pres-

sure group, analysed 26 crime shows that

aired in 2017-18. Racism, it found, was rare-

ly a factor when tvpolicemen acted wrong-

fully. In fact, racial disparities in the

criminal-justice system went largely un-

mentioned. Neither excessive force nor in-

carceration affected minorities dispropor-

tionately, as they do in reality. Aaron

Cops on TV

Watching the detectives

Television has distorted Americans’ view of policing. But it can do better

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