Visual criminology: cultural criminology-style: Keith Hayward makes the case for ‘visual criminology’

One of the defining features of the last decade has been the rise of the ‘Mediascape’ – that bundle of media which manufactures information and disseminates images via an ever expanding array of digital technologies. From criminals who record their crimes and post them on YouTube, to the grainy CCTV footage that drives the slurry of primetime ‘cops and robbers’ compilation shows. From unreal ‘reality TV’ moments that shape moral values and social norms, to stylised representations of crime and power in comic books and even on criminology textbook covers. Ours is a world ‘where the screen scripts the street and the street scripts the screen’, where there is no clearly linear sequence, but rather a shifting interplay between the real and the virtual, the factual and the fictional.