The True Crime Genre: A Positive Influence for Criminal Justice?

Abstract The relationship between media portrayals of the criminal justice system, including the various individuals, and the viewing public has often been an area of controversy. This has generally been couched in terms of ‘media effects’. In 2015, Netflix launched the first season of its docuseries “ Making a Murdere r”, which proved both popular and controversial and covered a ‘real-life’ potential miscarriage of justice. Whilst not unique in terms of the subject matter, “ Making a Murderer ” generated widespread debate and audience engagement via social media. A critical review of a true crime case is one example of a programme that utilises the criminal justice system as the subject matter. This article sets out several key issues. First the obvious expansion of true crime and proposing a system of classification. Second, the underpinning psychology that explains the audience attraction. Finally, it covers some of the issues that have been raised by the portrayal and interaction of new technology with criminal justice, the so-called CSI effect . It concludes that the primary issue for the criminal justice system is no longer rooted in technology but rather how programmes may be constructed and presented to the audience.