The Rise of Partisan Pedagogy: How Stakeholders Outside of the Academy are answering the Call to Public Criminology

What is it about?

In recent years, a number of criminologists have suggested that our discipline needs to 'go public' and begin disseminating our research through mass media. This focus on 'public' criminology is driven in part by a belief that mass media often present inaccurate and misleading information about criminal justice issues. However, the results of this analysis of recent news media coverage did not support this conclusion. Far from promulgating myths and misconceptions about criminal justice issues, many of the news sources examined in this study resented legal knowledge that was both intricate and extensive. While some of this legal knowledge was being presented by scholars who are answering the calls to 'go public', in the vast majority of cases it was being presented by journalists, politicians, criminal justice professionals, and interested third parties who appeared to be using criminological 'facts' and 'evidence' for the furtherance of their own agendas.

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