The crime control of true crime best sellers

ABSTRACTIn criminology, social and legal eras are often referred to as dominated by either due process or crime control narratives. In general, crime control narratives focus on the need for tough-on-crime policies and on the terror of criminals wreaking havoc in society. By contrast, due process narratives focus on the need to move slowly and methodically through our justice process to avoid mistakes and violations of human rights. These eras swing back and forth, neither wholly related nor unrelated to the conservative/liberal pendulum of broader politics. Arguably, despite a conservative and nationalist moment in US politics, our criminal justice policy pendulum is again swinging in the due-process direction. This is evidenced in policy reforms and popular calls for policy reform such as monitoring the police, ending cash bail, legalizing marijuana, and so on. Contrary to prevailing trends, best-selling true crime books remain crime control oriented regardless of the historical/cultural era.KEYWORDS: Due processcrime controltrue crimecriminal justice policytough-on-crimecrime and popular culturecultural criminologypopular criminologymass mediabest sellers Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 Truman Capote arguably invented a new style of storytelling he called the ‘non-fiction novel’. While this is disputed, it is undeniable that In Cold Blood was a best selling work that shaped true crime writing to come. See Ralph F Voss, Truman Capote and the Legacy of in Cold Blood (The University of Alabama Press 2011).2 See ibid.3 See Megan Boorsma, ‘The Whole Truth: The Implications of America’s True Crime Obsession’ (2017) 9 Elon Law Review 209.4 e.g. legally not-guilty v. factually innocent.5 ‘[H]omicides account for almost 80 percent of the total crimes recounted in the true crime books’. Alexis M Durham III, H Preston Elrod and Patrick T Kinkade, ‘Images of Crime and Justice: Murder and the “True Crime” Genre’ (1995) 23 Journal of Criminal Justice 143, 146.6 Jean Murley, The Rise of True Crime: 20th-Century Murder and American Popular Culture (Praeger Publishers 2008) 3.7 Diana Rickard, ‘Truth or Doubt: Questioning Legal Outcomes in True-Crime Documentaries’ (2022) 17 Law and Humanities 1, 3.8 Also called websleuths, armchair detectives, and cyber detectives.9 Elizabeth Yardley and others, ‘What’s the Deal with ‘Websleuthing’? News Media Representations of Amateur Detectives in Networked Spaces’ (2018) 14 Crime, Media, Culture 81.10 See Herbert Packer, The Limits of the Criminal Sanction (Stanford University Press 1968); Herbert Packer, ‘Two Models of the Criminal Process’ (1964) 113 University of Pennsylania Law Review 1.11 Packer, ‘Two Models of the Criminal Process’ 12.12 ibid 5.13 ibid 13.14 ibid.15 Kent Roach, ‘Four Models of the Criminal Process’ (1998) 89 Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology 671.16 Roach (n 15) 692.17 It is beyond the scope of the work here but most crime is not reported, and most reported crime is never solved. This is one of the insights that makes Packer’s models unworkable as models of an actual system.18 Roach (n 15) 672.19 Packer, ‘Two Models of the Criminal Process’ (n 10) 12.20 Robert Fitzgerald and Phoebe C Ellsworth, ‘Due Process vs. Crime Control: Death Qualification and Jury Attitudes’ (1984) 8 Law and Human Behavior 31.21 M Sandys and others, ‘Stacking the Deck for Guilt and Death: The Failure of Death Qualification to Ensure Impartiality’ in JR Acker, RM Bohm and CS Lanier (eds), America’s Experiment with Capital Punishment: Reflections on the Past, Present, and Future of the Ultimate Penal Sanction (3rd edn, Carolina Academic Press 2014).22 Richard Jones, ‘Populist Leniency, Crime Control and Due Process’ (2010) 14 Theoretical Criminology 331, 335.23 Laura Vitis and Vanessa Ryan, ‘True Crime Podcasts in Australia: Examining Listening Patterns and Listener Perceptions’ (2021) 30 Journal of Radio & Audio Media 1, 2.24 Lisa A Kort-Butler and Kelley J Sittner Hartshorn, ‘Watching the Detectives: Crime Programming, Fear of Crime, and Attitudes about the Criminal Justice System’ (2011) 52 The Sociological Quarterly 36, 48.25 Colleen M Ray and Lisa A Kort-Butler, ‘What you See is What you Get? Investigating How Survey Context Shapes the Association between Media Consumption and Attitudes about Crime’ (2020) 45 American Journal of Criminal Justice 914, 928.26 Susan Weiner, ‘True Crime: Fact, Fiction, and the Law’ (1993) 17 Legal Studies Forum 275, 287.27 Walter Lee Campbell, ‘From Tough-on-Crime to Smart-on-Crime: The Racial Impact of Policing Felony Drug Offenses in the 21st Century’ (PhD dissertation. Rutgers University-Graduate School-Newark 2019) 5–10.28 Sara M Walsh, ‘Safety Spheres: Danger Mapping and Spatial Justice’ (2015) 22 Race, Gender & Class 122, 123.29 Anita Biressi, ‘Death in the Good Old Days: True Crime Tales and Social History’ in Cultural Studies and the Working Class (Bloomsbury Publishing 2000) 180; Amanda M Vicary and R Chris Fraley, ‘Captured by True Crime: Why are Women Drawn to Tales of Rape, Murder, and Serial Killers?’ (2010) 1 Social Psychological and Personality Science 81, 82.30 Nicole Hahn Rafter, Shots in the Mirror: Crime Films and Society (2nd edn, Oxford University Press, USA 2006).31 Mark Seltzer, True Crime: Observations on Violence and Modernity (Routledge 2013), 37.32 Murley (n 6) 2, 6.33 ‘Each NIBRS offense belongs to one of three categories: Crimes Against Persons, Crimes Against Property, and Crimes Against Society. Crimes Against Persons (e.g. murder, rape, and assault), are those whose victims are always individuals. The object of Crimes Against Property (e.g. robbery, bribery, and burglary), is to obtain money, property, or some other benefit. Crimes Against Society (e.g. gambling, prostitution, and drug violations), represent society’s prohibition against engaging in certain types of activity; they are typically victimless crimes in which property is not the object.’ National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program, Crimes Against Persons, Property, and Society 2012).34 See Bergen Evans website: www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~immer/booksmain. His page ‘The Books of the Century’ contains, among other lists, the top ten bestsellers in nonfiction, by, year, as recorded by Publishers Weekly.35 Alice Payne Hackett and James Henry Burke, 80 Years of Best Sellers: 1895-1975 (New York: RR Bowker Company 1977), 198.36 David Stout, ‘Vincent T. Bugliosi, Manson Prosecutor and True-Crime Author, Dies at 80’ The New York Times (9 June 2015) <www.nytimes.com/2015/06/10/us/vincent-t-bugliosi-manson-prosecutor-and-true-crime-author-dies-at-80.html> accessed 7 December 2023.37 Keith L Justice, Bestseller Index: All Books, by Author, on the Lists of Publishers Weekly and the New York Times Through 1990 (McFarland 1998).38 Publishers Weekly, Top 25: Top 25 Best Sellers of the 1980s (Deseret News 1989).39 Christine Mai-Duc, ‘Ann Rule Dies at 83; True-Crime Writer Penned Account of Ted Bundy’ Los Angeles Times (27 July 2015) <www.latimes.com/local/obituaries/la-me-ann-rule-dies-20150727-story.html>.40 Simon & Schuster, ‘Ann Rule’ <www.simonandschuster.com/authors/Ann-Rule/1692136> accessed 7 December 2023.41 Daniel Immerwahr, ‘The Books of the Century: 1990–1999’ <www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~immer/books1990s> accessed 7 December 2023.42 Publishers Weekly, ‘Publishers Weekly Annual Adult Bestsellers 1990–2013’ <www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/bookselling/article/74149-publishers-weekly-annual-adult-bestsellers-1990-2013.html> accessed 7 December 2023.43 The New York Times Book Review, ‘Paperback Nonfiction’ The New York Times (4 March 2018) <www.nytimes.com/books/best-sellers/2018/03/04/paperback-nonfiction/>.44 Witness by Amber Frey (January 23, January 30, 2005), Blood Brother by Anne Bird (March 20, March 27, 2005), A Deadly Game by Catherine Crier (April 3, 2005), The City of Falling Angels by John Berendt (October 16, October 23, 2005), For Laci by Sharon Rocha (January 29, February 5, 2006).45 The New York Times Book Review, ‘Combined Print & E-Book Nonfiction’ The New York Times (29 April 2018) <www.nytimes.com/books/best-sellers/2018/04/29/combined-print-and-e-book-nonfiction/>.46 Seltzer (n 31) 35.47 Weiner, ‘True Crime: Fact, Fiction, and the Law’ (n 26) 284.48 Stella Bruzzi, ‘Making a Genre: The Case of the Contemporary True Crime Documentary’ (2016) 10 Law and Humanities 249, 251; Elizabeth Yardley, Emma Kelly and Shona Robinson-Edwards, ‘Forever Trapped in the Imaginary of Late Capitalism? The Serialized True Crime Podcast as a Wake-Up Call in Times of Criminological Slumber’ (2019) 15 Crime, Media, Culture 503, 512.49 Voss (n 1) 147.50 Murley (n 6) 1.51 Brian Jarvis, ‘Monsters Inc.: Serial Killers and Consumer Culture’ (2007) 3 Crime, Media, Culture 326, 329.52 ‘The conventions of true crime’s forensic realism are immediately visible. That realism involves the sudden eruption of violence from beneath a therefore deceptively normal surface of things; that is, it involves the convention of penetrating beneath convention, beneath the clichés, of an everyday and statistical normality (a Wednesday, a school day, a neighborhood, a family). This is, more precisely, the stripping away of a fiction of normality-- the normal fiction: a normality that looks nothing but a self-exposing childhood fantasy of innocence, a Robin Hood story, a paradise lost’. Seltzer (n 31) 41–42.53 Rachel Franks writes that the detective came to replace God in true crime writing in the late 1800’s, that the detective ‘is uniquely equipped to identify, hunt down, and bring the abhorrent offender to justice … The detective is all-knowing and all-powerful against a world of corruption, crime, and sin but is also, like us, flawed and subject to failure’. Rachel Franks, ‘True Crime: The Regular Reinvention of a Genre’ (2016) 1 Journal of Asia-Pacific Pop Culture 239–54.54 Murley (n 6) 1.55 ibid 82.56 Drew Todd, ‘The History of Crime Films’ in Nicole Rafter (ed), Shots in the Mirror (2nd edn, Oxford University Press 2006).57 See Packer, ‘Two Models of the Criminal Process’ (n 10) 239. Though at the end of his life Packer thought that this due process revolution had failed. Roach (n 15).58 Truman Capote, In Cold Blood (Vintage International 1965).59 Hackett and Burke, 80 Years of Best Sellers: 1895-1975 (n 35).60 Voss (n 1).61 Capote (n 58) 11.62 By today’s standards. The courts ruled otherwise at the time in this case.63 Capote (n 58) 293.64 Andrew T Burt, ‘True Crime Does Pay: Narratives of Wrongdoing in Film and Literature’ (PhD dissertation. Northern Illinois University 2017).65 Todd, ‘The History of Crime Films’ (n 56) 47.66 Vincent Bugliosi and Curt Gentry, Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders (W.W. Norton & Company 1994).67 He offers his respect to the methods and procedures of the younger, more educated police investigating one of the murders.68 Bugliosi and Gentry (n 66) 167.69 Albert W Alschuler, ‘Plea Bargaining and its History’ (1979) 79 Colombia Law Review 1.70 Jed S Rakoff, ‘Why Innocent People Plead Guilty’ The New York Review of Books <www.nybooks.com/articles/2014/11/20/why-innocent-people-plead-guilty> accessed 7 December 2023.71 There are a few exceptions, but this is beyond the scope here.72 Bugliosi and Gentry (n 66) 281.73 ibid 376.74 Timothy O Lenz, Changing Images of Law in Film & Television Crime Stories (Peter Lang Inc. 2003).75 Todd, ‘The History of Crime Films’ (n 56) 49.76 ibid 20.77 See Lenz (n 74).78 Ann Rule, The Stranger Beside Me (Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster 1980).79 Ann Rule is a female crime writer explicitly addressing a largely female audience, while the vast majority of known serial killers are men. Brian Jarvis writes that ‘from a feminist perspective it could be argued that serial killing is not so much a radical departure from normal codes of civilized behavior as it is an intensification of hegemonic masculine ideals … The serial killer is driven by the desire to achieve mastery, virility and control: his objective is to dominate and possess the body and the mind of his victims’. If we know anything about violence against women, it is that it is prevalent and largely private. In this way, violence lurking under a normal facade is part of women’s everyday and collective lives. It is no surprise that true crime writing, and Ann Rule in particular, is read by more women than men. Indeed, it is in Ann Rule’s writing that we see Ted Bundy as not just a man but ‘men’ – women are both sexually attracted to Bundy and drawn to his pleas for help, which puts the women’s lives in danger. Laura Browder found that many women revealed that they read true crime to help them deal with violence in their past and manage current fears. Laura Browder, ‘Dystopian Romance: True Crime and the Female Reader’ (2006) 39 The Journal of Popular Culture 928; Jarvis, (n 51) 333.80 Rule, The Stranger Beside Me (n 78) xvii.81 Policing is generally reactive in nature. That is, police enter the scene after the crime has been committed.82 Ironically, Ted Bundy seems to be a big fan of law-and-order politics. Rule tells us about his participation in Republican politics, and his deep dislike of anarchy and the general mayhem of student protests on college campuses. Had he succeeded in his Republican political ambitions of the time he likely would have been a ‘law and order’, ‘tough on crime’, conservative candidate running on a crime control platform.83 Rule, The Stranger Beside Me (n 78) 130.84 He escapes during a law library visit and is aided by an area map he obtained during discovery while acting as his own attorney.85 Rule, The Stranger Beside Me (n 78) 245.86 See Thomas G Blomberg and Stanley Cohen, Punishment and Social Control (2nd edn, Aldine de Gruyter 2003).87 Blomberg and Cohen (n 86).88 Todd, ‘The History of Crime Films’ (n 56) 53.89 Rafter (n 30) 78.90 John Berendt, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (Vintage Books 1994).91 Voss (n 1) 49.92 If you consider being tried four times ‘getting away’ with something. The author seemingly sides with yes.93 2 guilty verdicts, 1 mistrial, 1 not guilty.94 Berendt (n 90) 237.95 The author is a New Yorker and there is a distinct tone here that racism and classism are Southern issues.96 David Dagan and Steven M Teles, ‘Locked in? Conservative Reform and the Future of Mass Incarceration’ (2014) 651 The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 266.97 Katherine Beckett, Anna Reosti and Emily Knaphus, ‘The End of an Era? Understanding the Contradictions of Criminal Justice Reform’ (2016) 664 The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 238.98 DPIC Death Penalty Information Center, ‘State by State’ (2019) <https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/state-and-federal-info/state-by-state> accessed 7 July 2019.99 Erik Larson, Devil in the White City (Vintage Books 2003).100 Michelle McNamara, I’ll Be Gone in the Dark (HarperCollins 2018).101 Larson (n 99) 395.102 ibid 85.103 John Gramlich, ‘What the Data Says About Gun Deaths in the U.S.’ (Pew Research Center, 2023) <www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/04/26/what-the-data-says-about-gun-deaths-in-the-u-s/> accessed 20 July 2023.104 NPD, ‘“Fifty Shades of Grey” Was the Best-Selling Book of the Decade in the U.S., The NPD Group Says’ 2019) <www.npd.com/news/press-releases/2019/fifty-shades-of-grey-was-the-best-selling-book-of-the-decade-in-the-u-s-the-npd-group-says/> accessed 20 July 2023.105 Yardley and others, ‘What’s the Deal with ‘Websleuthing’?’ (n 9).106 Rachel Monroe, Savage Appetites: True Stories of Women, Crime, and Obsession (Scribner 2020) 56.107 McNamara (n 100) 83.108 ibid 237.109 ibid 105.110 It is eventually submitted and used to capture the killer, but this is after publication and the author’s death.111 McNamara (n 100) 303.112 See ibid 102.113 ibid 271.114 Yardley and others, ‘Forever Trapped in the Imaginary of Late Capitalism?’ (n 48) 505.115 Rickard (n 7) 3.116 John Grisham, The Innocent Man: Murder and Injustice in a Small Town (Dell 2012).117 Brian Stevenson, Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (Random House Publishing Group 2014).118 See Lili Pâquet, ‘Literary Forensic Rhetoric: Maps, Emotional Assent, and Rhetorical Space in Serial and Making a Murderer’ (2018) 12 Law and Humanities 71.119 Karen Halttunen, Murder Most Foul: The Killer and the American Gothic Imagination (Harvard University Press 1998) 36.120 Halttunen (n 119) 78–79.121 Alexandra Thompson and Susannah N Tapp, Criminal Victimization, 2021 (U.S. Department of Justice- Office of Justice Programs 2023).122 Monroe (106) 1.123 Franks (n 53) 251.124 Murley (n 6) 3.125 Yardley, Kelly and Robinson-Edwards, ‘Forever Trapped in the Imaginary of Late Capitalism?’ (n 48) 504.126 Richard Berry, ‘A Golden Age of Podcasting – Evaluating Serial in the Context of Podcast Histories Symposium – Podcasting: A Decade in the Life of a New Audio Medium’ (2015) 22 Journal of Radio & Audio Media 170, 174.127 Elisa Shearer and others, ‘Podcast Use Among Different Age Groups’ (Pew Research Center, 2023) <www.pewresearch.org/journalism/2023/04/18/podcast-use-among-different-age-groups/> accessed 12 July 2023.128 Yolander G Hurst and James Frank, ‘How Kids View Cops: The Nature of Juvenile Attitudes Toward the Police’ (2000) 28 Journal of Criminal Justice 189.129 Spotify, ‘About Spotify’ <https://investors.spotify.com/about/> accessed 17 July 2023.130 Daniel Ruby, ‘Spotify Stats 2023 — Subscribers, Revenue & Other Insights’ (2023) <www.demandsage.com/spotify-stats/> accessed 17 July 2023.131 Scott Swan, ‘“Queen of True Crime” Expands Podcasting Business in Indianapolis’ WTHR 13 (2 November 2022) <www.wthr.com/article/news/local/crime-junkie-podcast-ashley-flowers-indianapolis-business/531-01c72a63-24f3-42d0-98e9-db8d72b88439>.132 See Monroe (n 106) 6–7.133 Yardley and others, ‘Forever Trapped in the Imaginary of Late Capitalism?’ (n 48) 509.134 Danielle C Slakoff, ‘The Representation of Women and Girls of Color in United States Crime News’ Sociology Compass 2.135 Vitis and Ryan (n 23) 16.136 See Rickard (n 7).