Selling Justice as a System: Marketing the Challenge of Crime in a Free Society

• In Event: Crime in the Media: Perceptions and Reality

Abstract

Unlike prior governmental commissions, The President's Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice (1965-67) published their influential reports in a number of formats: an eye-catching and accessible popular volume; a detachable summary of the commission’s recommendations; and elaborate technical reports for each of the nine task forces. The variety resulted from a compromise among members, who were especially concerned with the presentation of the commission's findings yet held competing ideas about formats, goals, and marketing strategies. The general report that emerged was intended to emulate popular media of the time (Reader's Digest, Life Magazine) and prior exemplary commissions, and was perceived be a form of public education: defining proper ways to analyze crime and criminal justice for general readers, and intended to shape a "system" perspective among specialists by allowing practitioners in one area of the justice process to forge connections with the others. Drawing from interviews and documentary evidence gathered through archival research, I explore how diverse commission members perceived their contexts, audiences, and presentation goals; how the commission's reports developed to meet those audiences and interests; how visual representation was imagined and realized within the reports; media strategies proposed and employed; and how the reports were received.

Author

• Bruce Hoffman, Ohio University