The New True Crime
The New True Crime
Original Publication Date:
Transcript URL: https://share.descript.com/view/QWoFx383Nq0
Description: In this episode of Organized Crime and Punishment, we had the pleasure of interviewing Diana Rickard, the brilliant author behind the groundbreaking book, "The New True Crime: How the Rise of Serialized Storytelling Is Transforming Innocence." Diana took us on a captivating journey through the world of true crime narratives and how they have evolved with the advent of serialized storytelling. Diana shared her deep insights into the impact of these gripping narratives on our perception of innocence, drawing from her extensive research and expertise. We delved into the ethical considerations surrounding the portrayal of real-life criminal cases in serial formats, exploring the blurred lines between entertainment and journalism.
#TrueCrimeEvolution #SerializedStorytelling #InnocenceInFocus #CrimeNarratives #AuthorInterview
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Begin Transcript:
[00:00:00] Welcome to Organized Crime and Punishment, the best spot in town to hang out and talk about history and crime with your hosts, Steve and Mustache Chris.
I want to welcome everyone back to Organized Crime and Punishment. This time it is just me, Steve, uh, here. Uh, we don't have Mustache Chris, but I am very excited to be joined by Professor Diana Ricard, who is an associate Professor in the Department of Social Sciences, Human Services, and Criminal Justice at the Borough of Manhattan Community College, which is a [00:01:00] part of CUNY.
And she is the author of another book, Sex Offenders, Stigma, and Social Control. But in particular today, we are going to talk about her latest book. The New True Crime, How the Rise of Serialized Storytelling is Transforming Innocence. It's a fascinating book, and I think maybe the, uh, how we can start this out is maybe you can tell us a little bit about yourself and maybe where the genesis of this book came from.
Oh, I'm... Very actually excited to talk about that because, um, it came from my interest in wrongful conviction, which actually came from a personal connection of a family member of a friend of mine and an interest in where wrongful conviction fits into different. Concerns in criminal justice or criminal justice reform or criminal justice issues, and I kind of had [00:02:00] trouble as a researcher finding where my place was in the conversation, in part, because there's so much good journalism, like, as an academic and a scholar, it was hard for me to find what I could contribute when there's, you know, the innocence project has so Um, offered so many important case studies and analysis, and there's so much really good stuff out there if you, if you look and in that search, um, I just became aware of these amazing documentaries and I, and more and more people were mentioning them to me, um, in my introduction to the book, I, I talk about how people kept telling me I should listen to cereal.
I should listen to cereal. And when I saw Making a Murderer in December of 2015, so quickly, there was a huge outcry in response to that. I knew I had something [00:03:00] here about the synergies between entertainment, wrongful conviction, true crime, journalism, news. You know, popular culture and, um, that's how I got started in this podcast.
We're really trying to not follow the standard true crime genre that we're trying to inject it with looking at it historically and maybe trying to be a little bit more objective. And I wonder. Uh, is it possible, this is one of the things that you brought up and it's, it's always been in the back of my mind is it, can you be entertaining and objective at the same time?
Do you have to create a narrative, which by its whole definition has to have good guys and bad guys, protagonists, antagonists? So I don't think I, I don't think being objective and being entertaining are necessarily in [00:04:00] conflict, but what the reason I chose the specific series I focus on is because they open up the problem of perspective of point of view.
And I'm really fascinated, fascinated by how they destabilize what is truth. And they make us question who has the authority over truth. So I chose only cases. I did not choose documentaries that covered cases where the person had been exonerated. So the, I chose to look at documentaries where the journalists or entertainers, because it is, these are absolutely.
Acting as entertainment, um, question the official outcomes and unpack those in a way that raises so many questions. And a lot of people come away from these convinced that the person is guilty, convinced that the person is [00:05:00] innocent, but what these. Series have done is explode our sense of faith in in the certainty of these verdicts.
So I think even, you know, a lot of these are criticized for, for not being objective or definitely for, you know, excluding this response that the prosecutor had, or not talking to this person or sensationalizing. This person. Um, but the other thing they do is they also make us aware of those things. You know, so I don't think any of the filmmakers or that Sarah Koenig of Serial would say, Oh, yes, I have the final word.
And this is, you know, the complete, objective, definitive truth or version of the truth. What do you think with, um, in our society, you discuss it and it's something that I've definitely seen. I've seen it in very stark terms, the schizophrenia. [00:06:00] That we have with crime. And I, uh, I'm a teacher by trade and my first job out of teaching school was teaching at a maximum security prison and we would have a movie day and we were watching, uh, you know, a standard, uh, Crime film, and they were all on the side of the police, and I think that that's something that in as probably America.
I don't know outside of America, but we can just focus on America. We're both want to be tough on crime, but we also don't want innocent people to get railroaded. How do we put those 2 ideas together? So the, the word you use schizophrenia, I would call more ambivalence and conflict and, you know, are kind of warring sentiments and, um, and also how we can be led to sympathize with the different.
Characters, you know, again, getting back to whose [00:07:00] perspective we're looking at. Um, I, I teach this issue. I was just in my class the other day discussing what we call the crime control model versus the due process model, which is get the bad guys at whatever cost. Or worry about the civil liberties of the defendants, even if that that means, you know, tying the hands of prosecutors and, you know, I think.
I think we have to look at these things, both, you know, an individual case by case basis, but also what I encourage my readers to do, or I hope they take away is look at the broader cultural context because, you know, right now our. Um, political, you know, right now we see these conflicts between politicians that are running on law and order and politicians that are running on, on racial justice.
And, um, the way we understand the individual issues are also being [00:08:00] framed in this broader issue. Yeah, I think so. Yeah, I think you're really getting to something there that. It's those two ideas, at least to me, don't have to be completely separate. You can be tough on crime, but also we have a system that's designed to be fair.
Why did you pick these in particular? In my, um, second chapter called the new true, I go over the criteria that I chose. Um, and I'm calling these a sub genre of the true crime genre. So one reason I chose them, most of them are highly popular, you know, so they're culturally relevant because a lot of people have listened to them or watched them, you know, I mean, particularly making a murderer where, you know, Barack Obama was asked to weigh in and pardon him.
And, you know, the response to serials unprecedented. I, like I said, I chose [00:09:00] cases where the outcome is left, um, questioned, you know, but I, I chose cases specifically where there was not an exoneration, you know, or a confession of, you know, the real killer. So you, so people have to decide from for themselves.
Um, I also chose. Uh, stories that were told over multiple episodes, um, for a few reasons. I think this is part of a new way that we watch stories and consume stories. For some reason, a lot of us have a lot of time to watch TV. I mean, making a murder is a total of 20 episodes, but people are really interested in all of the details.
And these, um, These documentaries and, you know, serialized podcasts are much more complex than like the two hour feature documentary of 20 years ago on the same subject, you know, which would be the thin blue line. We're [00:10:00] capturing the Friedman. Do you think that, uh. People as a generalist, the audience, did people look at these particular shows like Serial?
Do you think that, yeah, Serial or the other ones that you covered, do you think that they maybe focused more on that particular case? And did, do you feel that people took that, what you could learn from that and apply it more broadly to other cases where it, because those were very high profile cases, but I mean, it happens every day where people Can't afford a very particularly good lawyer or they have lawyer, it's public defenders who have a gazillion cases and, you know, have no particular time or sometimes even the skill to really crack a case or they have the, uh, When I, I was for a short time, I worked for the city of Philadelphia and for people who were just slightly not poor enough to qualify for a [00:11:00] public defender, we would give them a list of at that time, 500 lawyers and Uh, Again, they maybe weren't Clarence Darrow to put it, uh, kindly.
Do you think that, to, to make a long question short, that these pe that, um, the audience is focusing in on just this particular case, or are they able to analyze it to broader, more broad problems in the system? Well, um, unfortunately what, you know, I didn't do like a systematic empirical study, but I did spend a lot of time reviewing social media posts about these in great detail.
I have an entire chapter on, um, basically Redditor's response to these and unfortunately, I did find that most people champion. You know, or champion Stephen Avery and not as much discussion of the [00:12:00] more systemic problems in the criminal justice system, as I would have liked to have seen, because all of these do bring up the issue that you bring up of, you know, underfunded.
Defense attorneys and all of these, these cases benefit, like you said, they're high profile. So they benefited from the exposure that allowed them to have more resources put into their defense. But all of these series show problems with forensic forensic work. All of them show a lot of problems with policing and coerced confession.
There, there's abuses of prosecutorial problems and Brady violations and when you look at Redditor's response in some ways, they're very and I think most American viewers at this point are very sophisticated about their understanding of different aspects of criminal justice between all the crime news [00:13:00] and, you know, all the trials we've seen on TV and all the shows that we've watched.
You know, I think viewers are pretty well informed and they're on Reddit. There were, you know, very important discussions about these things like Brady violations or bad forensic work, but for the most part, I did not see them applied in a bigger way. You know, other than, you know, this must be this must mean, you know, Michael Peterson is guilty or this.
Oh, 1 thing I did. I going back to this idea of problematizing truth. 1 thing I did find is that a lot of people. Would say something to the effect of, you know, this person might be guilty. I'm not sure, but definitely the state did not prove their case. And to go back to what you were saying about due process or crime control, I think it's very interesting that a lot of people felt if the [00:14:00] state didn't prove their case in a murder conviction, that would.
You know, mean someone going away for life that, um, that takes precedence over. There's a good possibility they did it. It hasn't been proved by the government. Steve here. We are a member of the Parthenon Podcast Network featuring great podcasts like Mark Vinette's History of North America podcast. Go over to ParthenonPodcast.
com to learn more. And now a quick word from our sponsors. Maybe we can take a quick discussion first because I think maybe a lot of people aren't aware with what is a Brady violation. Okay, uh, thank you for asking. A Brady violation is when the prosecutor fails to turn over evidence that could possibly help the defense.
So, in our system, and, and again, to go back to what you were saying about underfunded defense attorneys, the, the government [00:15:00] has a lot more resources to put into its case. And at the point in the trial, that's called discovery, like, after the prosecution gets an indictment, which the defense is not there for that.
That is just the prosecution going to a grand jury and showing the grand jury what they have. And getting an indictment. Um, at that point, there's what's called discovery and the state is supposed to show their hand. They're supposed to say, you know, this is what we have and they're also supposed to turn over things they uncovered that could legitimately help the defense.
And that's called a Brady violation, and that has happened in most of the cases in the series that I watched. And, um, and that points to, you know, sort of corrupt or dirty playing prosecutors and that it also points to the, um, you know, the. [00:16:00] The, the, the big power differential between the prosecutor's office and the defense.
Now, Arthur, generally speaking, I mean, this is hard to say, and like you said, it's, uh, it's more of a, uh, qualitative, uh, investigation than a quantitative one, would you say? I mean, to take it from, uh, to try and be a, a. Maybe a 10, 000 foot view. Do you think these Brady violations are purposeful in the most part, or are they just incompetence?
Are they overlooking, um, have, have you seen, and maybe if you take these case studies you looked at, did you get the sense that they were just blatantly, we're going to try and get it, get away with this? So, um, there's very, there's a lot of really good, good research that, um, this, this book is, is not just me watching these documentaries and, and saying what I think there's, there's a lot of research on, [00:17:00] on.
A lot of this, and there's a lot of, um, understanding of what happens in prosecutor's offices and the culture of the prosecutor's office. And most of what I've read. It does not appear. That overall, this is happening because a prosecutor wants to lock up someone they know didn't do it. Um, it, I feel comfortable saying for the most part, the, the law enforcement and the prosecutor's office has some good faith that the person they are prosecuting did it.
And again, to go back to the crime control model. We have to catch the bad guys regardless, but what happens is when we have, um, the larger culture and the political court culture. Organized around fear of crime, it gives the prosecutors and it gives law enforcement this excess of power to do that. Um, and [00:18:00] a feeling of righteousness.
Of doing that, and then they're in these series that I watched, um, and some of them do show like conscious malfeasance of, you know, real bad faith actors. Framing someone and I was thinking about this for your podcast because I know your listeners are interested in organized crime and in these series, the, the lens is pointed.
At the government, and if you haven't read it or seen it, the innocent man is very interesting is the only nonfiction work by John Grisham. Uh, about, you know, uh, some wrongful conviction cases in Ada, Oklahoma, and in telling this story, they paint a picture of organized crime involving the prosecutor's office and the sheriff's office, you know, [00:19:00] kind of being involved with the, the, the drug scene.
You know, and drug dealing in this small town. And again, this is what I think is really interesting about these series is they force us to reconsider who are the good guys and who are the bad guys. Do you think that in a way that the, the true crime, especially true crime done well can be a check on prosecutors and the, the government?
So I think it, it could be in theory. But what you see, so these series, so the other, another reason I showed them is they, I chose these is they have different follow up episodes where you kind of see the consequences of the series on the case. So, you do get, um, prosecutors and law enforcement responding in some ways to what the documentarians did.
And in these cases, they're very defensive. And angry, they do not say, oh, yeah, you gave me something [00:20:00] to think about there. Um, what and and so I don't know how, you know, I don't I can't quite answer that question. I, I think it could have that effect. Oh, also. Um, I, I think the culture is changing towards criminal justice reform and towards a really critical look at all of these things.
And I was saying to someone, you know, Adnan Syed was released last year to great fanfare, and people attributed serial to that and Sarah Koenig's work, and she has not wanted to take credit for it. Um, 1 thing that happened in the time from when she made cereal in 2014 is the legal culture in Maryland change and they have conviction integrity units and they had, they changed their laws about juveniles convicted of life sentences or 20 getting 20 years or more sentences.
And so [00:21:00] that is part of. People in the system starting to take, starting to look critically at themselves and starting to be responsive to constituents who want, who want to be, who want them. To play more fair and look more critically at their power. So I think these series are part of that, but I also think these cultures of law enforcement and prosecute tort prosecutors offices are really entrenched.
You know, maybe it feeds into that, but we can take a step back or we can take a step back and discuss some of the problems with forensics because forensics and things like DNA were promised to be. This is science. This is incontrovertible. What are some of the problems that have come up with forensics?
So DNA is considered from what I know, it's considered still considered somewhat of the gold standard of. Scientific evaluation [00:22:00] of evidence and the, the DNA revolution in 19, in the late 80s, early 90s, when these tests became available in to the criminal justice system is, is the start of the, the modern innocence movement, because they were used to exonerate people who were on death row and that, you know, that's where the innocence movement, uh, the innocence project steps in.
And, you know, got a lot of publicity for saying, Hey, this DNA proves that person a could not have been the rapist. And this proves that this other person could have, um, and very few things have that degree of certainty. But what we see with the forensics in these shows is. Much more questionable and problematic, uh, scientific analysis.
There's a lot about the inaccuracy of hair analysis. [00:23:00] Um, you know, and if you watch, you know, shows like CSI, if you watch, you know, sort of television dramas, they put a lot of stake in things like hair analysis and blood spatter patterns. Um, and, you know, bite mark analysis has famously been disproven and has, you know, led to, you know.
Real miscarriages of justice, quite tragic ones. So in these series, we, we see those I less do we see any criticism of DNA does seem to be, you know, um, like I said, that gold standard. It, it does seem though that, uh, the, it's almost, the prosecutor has to get a conviction, you can't have a, a high profile murder and then just say, well, you know, we don't really know who did this and, you know, we don't want to just convict somebody to, you know, You know, or we want to convict somebody, and sometimes, like you said, for the most part, they genuinely think that it's that person, but do you think that within prosecution offices, [00:24:00] that there becomes a group think that, yeah, most of the evidence does point towards this person, and then it just, it takes on a life of its own?
Absolutely, this is called tunnel vision. What happens, what often happens, this is a generalization, but what often happens is early in the investigation, when, when they, you know, at the police stage at the detective stage, they start focusing on 1 suspect as the likely person and what that does is just psychologically, you know, this confirmation bias comes in and they don't, so Take seriously other possible leads and they, you know, just, you know, unconsciously, maybe discredit these other things and they have this real focus on what they've decided is the right thing.
And so things that point in that direction become over emphasized and other leads aren't followed. And in the, [00:25:00] and this is this is something we see play out in some of the series I talk about, you know, and then the same thing happens in the prosecutor's office. The prosecutor gets a case from the, you know, from the arrest and from the detectives who, you know, and they, and it expands from there.
You know, the confirmation bias and the tunnel vision and and then also the defensiveness around that. And then also what you said about convictions, like, you know, prosecutors careers are based on their record of convictions, not their record of, you know, due process respect of due process. It seems like such a big.
Issued a reform now because you have big city police departments have a lot of crime and a lot of, you know, investigations that come in. So they have a resource issue and then smaller departments. I mean, all the way down have issues of resources and them. And skill [00:26:00] level, the big cities have a lot more skill, in a way, because they're getting a lot more, they have more, uh, practice, you might say, where the smaller departments have less practice with, uh, with investigations of big crimes.
Is there a way to fix any of this, or to reform it in any way? I believe there is, and not to point attention away from my book, but a few years ago, Uh, the journalist, Emily Basil on wrote a kind of important book called charged that that looks at conviction, integrity units and prosecute prosecutor's offices and all of these issues, like, like I said, conviction, integrity units, um.
were responsible, at least in part, for Adnan Syed's release. There definitely are ways of reforming it part, but, but I think that one of the biggest obstacles is this sort of the, the culture of conviction, um, both convicting someone in the [00:27:00] criminal justice sense, but also being sure in your convictions of who, who is and isn't guilty.
What you said about these, um, outside of big cities, the skill level is actually something I, now that you're saying this, I think I didn't explore it enough other than a lot of these take place in rural areas with, um, with poor defendants, but also the, the law enforcement, you know, the law enforcement in a small town in Wisconsin is not the elite.
You know, it in the bigger landscape of the U. S. And that that is that is really interesting. The sort of, um, lower class dynamics. It's almost actually, I think I, I didn't explore it that much, but I think I talk about conspiracy low, because there is a way that some of these documentaries. The, um, the story of [00:28:00] malfeasance is related to these conspiracy movies that we also love, you know, the corporate conspiracy, political conspiracy parallax view kind of thing.
But the. The bad government actors are not those powerful elites. They're just like regular Joes.
Steve here again with a quick word from our sponsors. I saw an interesting, uh, discussion that in a way it's A lot of small towns, their police departments are dissolving because the small towns don't have the resources anymore to support a police department of even a couple of officers. And a lot of that power is, uh, evolving or devolving, I guess, going up to County sheriff departments that have a little bit more, uh, resources and a little bit more [00:29:00] institutional knowledge of these things.
And in some cases to state police departments. And I guess it always has that push and the pull of localism is in a lot of ways good. And then having a bigger picture is good. Do you see that that might help in these situations? Especially, you've talked about some of those, uh, like in that one in, um, I, I'm totally blanking on the name.
The one John Grisham did, uh, that it was a small town that was kind of corrupt. Yeah. So, um, one, I don't know if this directly answers your question, but. In terms of the smaller budgets of local law enforcement, um, something of important aspect of this issue is when people are exonerated. The state or the law enforcement officers are sued and Oh, restitution and the more this, the more DNA exonerations, the more critical focus [00:30:00] on convictions is leading to more of these exonerations that are becoming very expensive.
And I don't know if you saw making a murderer, but where it starts is that Steven Avery was. Um, exonerated in 2003 for a rape conviction earlier, um, and that, that sort of corrupt local Wisconsin police force. And there was a very expensive lawsuit where these officers were named and the argument is, is that then for the neck that the murder he was charged with, he was kind of framed by them.
And he had to, um, he had to plea a settlement rather than keep his case going so that he would have money to defend himself, um, against these new charges. So the cost of these exonerations is, is a heavy, heavy burden. And there's also, um, a series that came out, I believe last year [00:31:00] on max called mind over murder.
That really, um, I see you're nodding your head. It really looks at both the emotional and the financial costs on a very small community. Of, you know, having to pay for an exoneration. Well, that is really interesting that in a lot of ways that civil litigation can help move these things. But then so often, I mean, it's very difficult to sue a police officer civilly.
There's a huge bar to get overqualified immunity. And I. Think it's virtually impossible to sue a prosecutor for prosecutorial misconduct. I mean, that's an even higher bar. Is there a way that, because in a way they, you police and they need to be protected because they are kind of going out on a limb with these things, but also that's a lot of protection as well.
Right. So, um, uh, agreed that [00:32:00] prosecutorial immunity is a high bar. Police immunity is also a high bar. And there's also a real reason that you do want some kind of immunity so that we don't have, um, our police officers and our prosecutors being sued left, right and center to, to the point that they, they can't do anything, but, um, a lot of these cases can go forward and the government has, you know, a duty to To the community to to not do these abuses.
So, um, in terms of how some civil litigation has more teeth than others. I'm, you know, I'm not sure, but the, the Stephen Avery case in 2003 had had a lot of teeth. He had a very, very good case and. Yeah. Oh, also because part of what it is, it goes back to the, um, the tunnel vision in the Stephen Avery case, they turned away information about who turned out to [00:33:00] be the actual perpetrator and a similar thing happened in the case in the innocent man.
What do you think for some people for, um, if they wanted to ask your advice on how to make things this new true genre, what are some things that producers should really look for when they're doing cases like this? How should they design a program so that, you know, they can stay Be objective and do something that isn't sensational because a lot of true crime is very sensational.
Doing this study, what are some big picture ideas you came up with? Well, um, you know, these are all media products. You know, making Netflix. You know, the, these series have to be bought by, you know, these big entertainment. Companies that are not going to buy things that they don't think people will watch.
So that [00:34:00] is built into the batter. Um, I think what I already see happening and what I would suggest. Is find new ways of. Changing up the formula, you know, so there's a podcast called murder in alliance where the journalist Maggie Freeling kind of, you know, starts with this, you know, wrongful conviction innocence formula that we've seen, like, she, she and her investigators are going to go out and, you know.
Look at this case of this person who was convicted, you know, with the idea of wrong stuff happened here and we're going to exonerate them and it kind of ends with her and her investigator thinking they were played, you know, and this person might have done it. And I thought that was very interesting.
You know, like, this is another version of the story. There are 2 series. So 1 of the things. That is [00:35:00] happening here that we see is in all of these. It seems like the filmmakers and the podcasters have a better investigative tools and capacities than law enforcement did. So, this is an era of the citizen sleuth.
This is the era of an average person who is not a trained criminal justice professional going out and figuring things out, you know, taking it into their own hands. Um, and related to that are these recent series I've seen both on max, the burden of proof and, um, murder at Middle Beach, which are both, um, young filmmakers who there was a murder in their past, a murder in their family when they were children.
Sort of taking the camera, you know, along these lines and trying to solve the case, which involves trying to get their dads to commit, you know, confess to a crime on camera. Um, but so [00:36:00] these are, you know, these are new iterations of the true crime genre, you know. Um, solving a case or, um, criticizing the criminal justice system.
There's also something that has not gotten a lot of attention that I refer to in my book is I highly recommend people watch free meek on Amazon prime, which looks at a case. It plays with what we mean by innocent because it looks at a case of someone who did commit crime, but who gets so caught up in these oppressive practices that have to do with with probation that get this fellow this, you know, sort of successful rap artist more and more entrenched in the system.
So, how do we, what is our system doing to people that are guilty? That is that is beyond fairness, you know, that that victimizes the guilty people in a way that we don't want our criminal justice system doing, what do you think about the democratization [00:37:00] of media where people can have an independent podcast?
There's YouTube and the other services that are full of basically. Just a, a guy with a camera, and in a lot of ways they're exposing a lot of things that are happening with the, the government and with the police. Do you, what are some of the pros of that, but what do you see as some of the cons of the, that they're not on YouTube and places like that?
They're not, they don't have the big budget and they're not on the big. Streaming services, so they have more freedom to make some different choices, but then again, they have less checks on them as well, right? And I think the less the less checks and not being bedded. Is what the potential problem is there because they can make claims that a journalist can't they can make claims that [00:38:00] a prosecutor can't that, you know, they can say whatever they they want.
If I went out and took a camera and started. Trying to unearth, you know, the big mystery of the stolen bagel, you know, at my deli, I have, I can do a lot of things that an investigator can't I'm not bound by 4th amendment protections. You know, I can go through someone's garbage. You know, I can go into someone's house without them without a warrant.
Um, so there, there are problems inherent in that. I do think it's also exciting. Um, and I, I think that's what the draw is like with with cereal. After I don't remember a couple of episodes of cereal, someone from high school. Called up and I was like, I saw him that day. I was the girl he talked to a witness came forward, you know, other people came up with evidence.
The appeals attorney. This case was covered in the HBO film. [00:39:00] The case against admin by Amy Berg, the appeals attorney said this was the 1st crowd source investigation. I had, you know, he had the benefit of 1000 thousands of people going out and trying to solve this case. And so I, I think that stuff is exciting personally, but, you know, we definitely have to be.
Careful of it. And we also have to be careful of using that things to criticize law enforcement or, you know, criticize journalists because because they do have rules and regulations that are important for them to follow. It's made me think a lot too about, um. Like citizen journalism where something happens and the person, yeah, it's great if they can get a thousand people to call the police department to, to complain.
But that to me, you get, you get all sorts who will call and they, you know, they might not always be the most professional in manner. It [00:40:00] almost seems like you can, you're almost encouraging law enforcement to build a bunker mentality that, you know, anything we do, we're going to get a thousand people calling our office when we normally get two people calling in a day.
I think it's good. It's bad. Are we just kind of back? You know, we always wind up in the same place with these new technologies and we're always just trying to figure out how to move forward with them. I, I don't know. I see I see the ways that it is that it is bad and dangerous. And certainly, you know, we don't want police departments glutted with so many false leads and people thinking they've solved the crime that they that they can't do their job.
Um, but I also think people, I think it's exciting that people feel they can go out there and they can contribute and they can find something, find something out and. But yeah, it [00:41:00] does bring up those problems a lot, and it does make, um, law enforcement and people trying to do their jobs very defensive, it does create that bunker mentality, it might be exacerbating the us versus them blue wall that is part of the problem.
I think that people if people are really interested in true crime and innocence and how how our system can be. Uh, reformed and look just even if you're not interested in those things, you should be because they're that they really are the topic of the day. I definitely highly suggest people go read your book, The New True Crime by Professor Diana Ricard.
I thoroughly enjoyed the book. I wonder if, um. Is there a series you're watching right now that you didn't mention in the book? And you've mentioned a few, but is there one that you would suggest that people, as soon as they're done listening to this, go and watch [00:42:00] right now or listen to right now? Well, um, this is, this is not a series.
This is a book that just came out that is getting a lot of press and interest. I have not read it yet, but A Threat of Violence by Mark O'Connell. Revisits a case in Ireland, that, that sounds very interesting. Um, I'm not watching a series now other than the, the two that I mentioned, but I will say I saw a very funny movie called Vengeance with B.
- Novak, which kind of mocks the idea of an elite. Urban, you know, latte drinking podcaster going to a poor rural community and solving a crime and, you know, it kind of takes the things that we're talking about to the next level and popular culture where it's, it's become actually a cliche. Um, but I look forward to the next true crime, wrongful [00:43:00] conviction, documentary, and fortunately, people are always recommending things to me now because of this book.
So, um. I'll get back to you with the list. Yeah, you'll have a lot of watching to do, I'm sure. Well, I want to thank you so much for coming on and discussing your book and discussing these really important issues of crime and law enforcement. It's a fascinating topic. Thank you so much for the opportunity.
I really enjoyed this discussion.
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