Criminology and Criminal Justice: Documentaries and Other Media

On March 8, 1971, eight ordinary citizens broke into an FBI office in Media, Pennsylvania, a town just outside Philadelphia, took hundreds of secret files, and shared them with the public. In doing so, they uncovered the FBI's vast and illegal regime of spying and intimidation of Americans exercising their First Amendment rights. Despite conducting one of the most thorough investigations in its history, the FBI never solved the mystery of the break-in, and the citizens' identities remained a secret...until now. For the first time, they have decided to come forward and speak out about their actions.

Angela Macdougall is a wife, mother, and S.W.A.T. team sniper. This program explores what it is like to balance a career in a risky, high-visibility, male-dominated occupation with marriage and motherhood. Angie and her husband, Chris, talk about the demands of law enforcement—the need for objectivity, the fight against cynicism, the skepticism of fellow officers, the emphasis on physical fitness—and the sacrifices they have both made to accommodate her ten-and-a-half years on the police force. Despite the statistically high rate of divorce among police officers, Angie and Chris believe they have beaten the odds.

A riveting, jaw-dropping view of America's white supremacy movement. Rare archival footage, darkly humorous interviews, and their own promotional materials bring to light the inner workings of the Ku Klux Klan, the American Nazi Party, the Aryan Nation, The Order, and other radical right groups. With a folksy, matter-of-fact certainty, the men and women here speak of imminent race wars, Armageddon, the Holocaust hoax, interracial breeding, the Christian Identity faith, the hordes of foreign troops poised to attack America, and ZOG (The Zion Occupation Government). In the wake of the Oklahoma City attack and their continuing efforts to demonize immigrants and arm themselves to the teeth, it is clear the radical right are not the patriotic, bedrock Americans they claim to be, nor harmless in their lunacies either. Controversial and timely, Blood in the Face reveals a dark and dangerous side of America.

Why did Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold murder a dozen students and one teacher—and then kill themselves—at Columbine High School? In this A&E Special, the renowned Threat Assessment Group comes to Littleton, Colorado, to perform a psychiatric autopsy to better understand why Harris and Klebold killed. Armed with that information, TAG hopes to educate parents, teachers, and students on how to see the warning signs of impending violence and intervene appropriately to stop such tragedies before they take place somewhere else. Distributed by A&E Television Networks.

Why would four innocent men confess to a brutal crime they didn’t commit? FRONTLINE producer Ofra Bikel (Innocence Lost, An Ordinary Crime) investigates the conviction of four Navy sailors for the rape and murder of a Norfolk, Virginia, woman in 1997. In interviews with the sailors, Bikel learns of some of the high-pressure police interrogation techniques, including the threat of the death penalty, sleep deprivation, and intimidation, that led each of the “Norfolk Four” to confess, despite any evidence linking them to the crime. All four sailors are now out of prison—one served his sentence and the other three were granted conditional pardons last summer—but the men were not exonerated as felons or sex offenders. The case raises disturbing questions about the actions of the police and prosecutors, who relied on the sailors’ often contradictory confessions for their convictions and disregarded DNA evidence that pointed to a lone assailant who would later confess to the crime himself while serving prison time for another rape.

“They think we’re beasts.” So says a condemned murderer, succinctly expressing the view of many Americans. But this killer committed his crime when he was 17, and asks for compassion on those grounds. Filmed prior to the March 1, 2005, U.S. Supreme Court ruling barring execution for underage offenses, Death Row Kids tells the stories of confused and frightened young people awaiting the ultimate penalty. The program also alludes to medical findings that a 17-year-old’s brain lacks fully developed decision-making capabilities. The result is a provocative inquiry into complex issues of personal responsibility and the likelihood of criminal rehabilitation.

Every 12 seconds, a woman is beaten in the U.S.—beaten by her lover, her husband, her partner in life. Year after year, the cycle of violence spins faster, spiraling down through the generations, father to son and mother to daughter. Only when communities and families say "Enough!" can the cycle be broken. This program shows how people can and have said "Enough!": women, men, and children who offer proof that domestic violence can be stopped, that healing is possible if there is someone to help. The program also shows the social and legal services that make the difference.

lyin' Cut Sleeves, completed in 1993, portrays street gang presidents in the Bronx. The project grew out of the experiences of Rita Fecher, the film's co-producer. Fecher, who taught in a South Bronx school in the late 1960s and early 1970s, became intimately involved with the gangs, their leaders, and the leaders' families and began to document their lives. Their world was the streets, set against a backdrop of uprooted families, cultural alienation, drugs and violence. Neighborhood teenagers responded by organizing into street groups known to the members as "families," but labeled in the most alarming terms as violent gangs by the press. In fact, the "families" had a stabilizing effect, enabling the youths to cope with their troubled environment. The political climate at the time, movements of national liberation and such organizations as the Black Panthers and Young Lords Party influenced the young gang leaders to aspire to be more than warriors and to become, to some degree, a positive force in their communities. When Rita Fecher returned after 20 years to see what had become of her old friends, she found that they had stayed in the community of their youth, that they were deeply committed to improving conditions there and that they were engaged in helping their own children survive in the hazardous street environment.

Filmed over the course of a year, this documentary goes inside Glen Mills Schools in Pennsylvania, a “boarding school” alternative to prison for about 1,000 young members of street gangs convicted of crimes. Sam Ferrainola, the school’s director, has pioneered a system of rewards and privileges where the young men keep themselves under strict surveillance, reporting infractions of the rules to upperclassmen, or “Big Brothers.” Ferrainola stresses that Glen Mills is not a boot camp but an educational institution in which the goal is to bring about fundamental changes in behavior without incarceration. The system seems to work: of all institutions for juvenile offenders, Glen Mills’ 32 percent recidivism rate is the lowest in the country.

Every Wednesday another busload of new inmates arrives at the Western Youth Institution in Morganton, North Carolina, a maximum security prison for juvenile offenders. What trade-offs do the convicts have to make, just to stay alive in this hostile environment? And what will they be like if they eventually make it back into society? In this program, ABC News anchor Diane Sawyer reports on prison life through the experiences of four new teenage inmates—one only 13 years old. A follow-up two years later reveals the impact of their incarceration on their minds and bodies, best summed up by the words of one of the four: "This is not the place to be."

Using the shocking racist murder of James Byrd as a starting point, this disturbing program investigates America’s proliferating hate groups. The KKK’s Charles Lee; the founder of Aryan Nations and his successor, Pastor Neumann Britton; and William Pierce, head of the National Alliance and author of The Turner Diaries, calmly proclaim their chilling views on "racial patriotism" and "positive hate." Countering, Julian Bond, of the NAACP; Irv Rubin, national chairman of the Jewish Defense League; Robert Blitzer, bureau chief of the FBI’s domestic terrorism unit; and others explore the mentality of intolerance, abetted by the subversive Christian Identity movement.

This 76-minute film takes an unsparing look at the lives of several young people in their early 20s gripped by heroin addiction, living a seemingly endless existence of getting high while cycling through stages of rehab, recovery and relapse. The film also chronicles the impact of the crisis on the community of Cape Cod, a picturesque summer destination known for its quaint villages, lighthouses and beaches – but with an epidemic of young people addicted to cheap, easily-acquired heroin, whose addictions are often the result of being prescribed opiate pain medication after an accident or surgery.

oo young to drive, but old enough to kill. What happens to children convicted of felonies? How and where are they incarcerated? Can they be helped? And does their punishment really fit their crimes? In this program, judges, legal counsel, law enforcement officers, academic experts from Emory and Rutgers Universities, the Director of the Institute for Minority Health Research, and others examine the trend in the U.S. toward trying children as adults and discuss efforts being made to understand their violent behavior.

Stacey Dooley travels to Chicago—the murder capital of the U.S.—where almost half of those killed in 2013 were under 25. She meets the Hardmon family, struggling to come to terms with the murder of their 19-year-old daughter Ashley, killed in the crossfire of a gang shooting. In a prison boot camp for young offenders, Stacey gets to know David. He's been in prison four times already, and he's just 19. He got his first gun at 14. Can he really turn his back on the gang lifestyle?

With race relations stretched to breaking point in some American cities, the supremacist group the Ku Klux Klan says it’s seeing a surge in membership. They claim that white Americans—angry at what they perceive as attacks on their heritage—are joining in large numbers, convinced they must prepare for a race war. With access to the leaders of the Loyal White Knights chapter in North Carolina, this film follows their secretive rituals. The Klan travels to the South Carolina Statehouse in Charleston to protest against the removal of the confederate flag. But when Black Power groups turn out to demonstrate the two opposing visions of America violently come face to face.

Since President Obama took office, deportations and detentions have reached record levels. The get-tough policy has brought complaints of abuse and harsh treatment. FRONTLINE investigates Obama's enforcement strategies and journeys into the secretive world of immigrant detention, with a penetrating look at who is being detained and what is happening to them. Contains mature content, including graphic language and descriptions of sexual abuse.

Since the United Nations prohibited coca cultivation in 1961, a battle has raged around the simple, versatile plant. In the West, coca is synonymous with violence and terror. For the people of the Andes, however, coca represents a viable and ancient livelihood. This program follows their resistance to the sweeping illegalization and eradication measures instituted by Latin American governments, the United States, and other global powers. Viewers will learn how activist networks cross national borders with increasing momentum while risking reprisals by death squads and guerilla forces. The film also presents the perspective of police and drug enforcement agencies that patrol the Latin American “drug route.”

The Resolve to Stop the Violence Program places male convicts in highly structured encounter groups, helping them recognize the warped concepts of masculinity behind their violent behavior. This documentary follows nine inmates through the rigorous self-discovery process, recording their growing sense of accountability and willingness to change. With commentary from law enforcement officers, violence-prevention experts, victims’ relatives, and the inmates themselves, the video also follows up on RSVP participants after their release, highlighting the ultimate benefit of the program—a dramatic reduction in recidivism among its graduates.

n search of a better life, Natasha and Galia Gutu thought they had found fulfilling jobs in Turkey through their seemingly helpful neighbors. But when the Gutu sisters left their home in Moldova they were actually traveling into a nightmare—not the health aide employment that their “friends” had promised, but rather enslavement as prostitutes. This program follows their story by recording their own painful accounts, a different side of the narrative as told by the mother-daughter pair who led them into deception, and the real-life courtroom drama that unfolds when the sisters bring charges against their former neighbors. Will a guilty verdict start Natasha and Galia on the road to healing?

Things are not always as they appear, especially in the case of Dee Dee and Gypsy Rose Blanchard, and what starts out as a grisly tale of matricide morphs into a rabbit hole of deception and abuse. As we learn, Dee Dee and her wheelchair-bound daughter, Gypsy Rose, were beloved residents of Springfield, MO, but the tight-knit community was rocked when Dee Dee was found murdered in her home, with Gypsy reported missing. After investigators tracked a graphic Facebook status post stating “That Bitch is Dead” to Wisconsin, a disturbing sequence of events ensued in which Gypsy Rose was implicated in her mother’s murder – and it was discovered that Gypsy Rose had been the victim of her mother’s abuse via Munchausen by proxy syndrome since early childhood.

In 2005, approximately half a million mentally ill men and women were serving time in U.S. jails and prisons. As sheriffs and wardens became the unexpected and often ill-equipped caretakers of a burgeoning population, they raised a troubling new concern: have America’s jails and prisons become its new asylums? With exclusive and unprecedented access to prison therapy sessions, mental health treatment meetings, crisis wards, and disciplinary tribunals, this Emmy-nominated edition of Frontline goes inside Ohio’s penal system to explore the complex topic of mental health behind bars and to present a portrait of the individuals at the center of this issue.

It is the centerpiece of America's judicial process: the trial by jury system that places a defendant's fate in the hands of a jury of one's peers. But just how many citizens are aware that nearly 95 percent of all criminal cases never reach a jury, but instead are settled through plea bargains? FRONTLINE explores the moral, judicial, and constitutional implications of relying on plea bargains to expedite justice.

In 2014, a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, shot and killed Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager. This incident, along with similar ones in Cleveland, Chicago, and other cities in the months that followed, sparked a wave of protest nationwide targeting racial disparities in criminal justice and accusing the police of using excessive force against African Americans. Are these accusations valid? Is policing racially biased? Or is it focused on stopping crime wherever it poses a threat?

he new FRONTLINE documentary, Policing the Police, is a provocative journey inside one police force that's been ordered to reform by the Department of Justice: the Newark Police Department in New Jersey. Take a nuanced glimpse into how topics in the national discussion about race and policing are playing out every day on the streets of Newark, in community members' homes, and in the city's police precincts.

Raising complex and timely questions about the warehousing of America’s prison population, this program accompanies photographer Ron Levine on his mission to depict the physical, emotional, and psychological conditions of aging inmates—including those nearing death. Levine focuses his work on Alabama’s Hamilton Institute for the Aged and Infirm, the first prison created specifically for elderly convicts. Through Levine’s documentation and interviews, the humanity of those incarcerated emerges in poignant detail, leading viewers to assess their own beliefs about rehabilitation, victims’ rights, and how far society’s punishment should go.

Beset with the catchphrase "racial profiling," police in many American cities have responded with their own terminology: "selective disengagement," "tactical detachment," and the code NC/NC—"no contact, no complaints." In this program, ABC News anchor Ted Koppel reports on how police are moving from active to passive law enforcement in the wake of controversy, resulting in a spike of violent crimes.

Before detectives set foot on a crime scene, forensic scientists must first painstakingly glean every bit of evidence. In this program, Professor Margot of the Forensic Science Institute of Lausanne describes advances in criminal science. New technology has made it possible to capture footprints with Mylar and static electricity rather than plaster; to cause fingerprints on a shell casing to reappear after the bullet has been fired and ejected; to computerize Identikit composites; and to identify firearms and ammunition by discharging weapons into pseudo-flesh and examining the results. The contributions of Reiss and Locard to crime scene analysis, along with Godart’s role in the 1927 Sacco and Vanzetti investigation, provide some of the historical antecedents of modern criminology.

Once a case goes to trial, evidence is put to its greatest test as it undergoes the scrutiny of cross-examination. In this program, Professors Leriche and Cassiman, genetics experts, examine the ability of lucomalakite green to obtain DNA samples from minute quantities of bodily fluids and discuss the RFLP and PCR tests used to analyze them. In addition, the value of serology—forerunner of genetic testing—is explored in relation to the classic 1950s Jaccoud case, along with the impact of DNA polymorphisms as discovered by Dr. Jeffreys in 1984. Ballistics and soil and glass analysis are also discussed, as well as the 1985 Guy-Paul Morin rape investigation and the 1992 Arizona case in which the genetic profile of a tree helped to bring about a conviction.

For many criminologists, you can't explain crime just by looking at the characteristics offenders, you also have to consider the role social, cultural & environmental influences. This film brilliantly captures the essence of three of the major social theories of crime and looks at their continuing relevance to the study and control of crime in contemporary societies. Strain Theory and the American Dream looks at application of Merton's theory to consumer societies. Labelling Theory Today documents the switch from crime to social control and looks at the theory's continuing influence on criminology and criminal justice. Place, Space and Broken Windows begins with the question of why most recorded crime is concentrated in very specific areas and looks at research suggesting that it's possible to reduce crime by changing these spaces

Inside the walls of the supermax prisons, America's fortresses of punishment, a growing number of inmates are spending 23 hours a day, seven days a week, locked alone inside cells that measure a mere 80 square feet. This edition of Investigative Reports examines the use of solitary confinement in supermax prisons by going inside the grim walls of Arizona State Prison and Pelican Bay State Prison. The question that emerges is clear: does confinement in these circumstances constitute cruel and unusual punishment? Even with the help of psychologists, prison instructors, activists, and mental health experts, the answer remains elusive.

This American Justice program examines the Sicilian origins of the Mafia and follows the crime syndicate's rise in the United States, from its start through Prohibition. Distributed by A&E Television Networks.

In 2001, the last piece of a serial rape/murder case that had tantalized London police for nearly 20 years finally fell into place. In this program, retired FBI profiler Robert Ressler, LAPD psychologist Kris Mohandie, and British law enforcement professionals discuss the history and techniques of criminal profiling within the context of the Railway Rapist crimes that terrorized greater London during the 1980s. In addition, the sensational case of Rachel Nickell, murdered in broad daylight on Wimbledon Common in 1992, illustrates how profiling improperly applied can hijack an investigation. Forensic psychologist Gisli Gudjonsson, of King’s College London, provides commentary on that crime.

This program examines how TV has influenced our justice system. Experts and crime victims discuss how tabloid-style news coverage, cameras in the courtroom, and dramatized movie versions of scandalous crimes all conspire to corrupt justice. Host Bill Kurtis examines how the media affected several sensational cases, including those of Pamela Smart, the woman who convinced her 15-year-old lover to kill her husband, and New York’s subway vigilante Bernhard Goetz.

ABC presents a documentary on the deadly 1993 Waco, Texas siege that ignited national outrage. This video features interviews with FBI and ATF agents, survivors of the fire, and children of David Koresh's followers. The raid on the Branch Davidian compound led to a gunfight killing four ATF agents and six of David Koresh’s followers. After a 51-day standoff, the compound burned to the ground, leaving 74 more people dead. The crisis that ignited national outrage and a media firestorm has been described as the worst debacle in federal law enforcement history. The government’s misleading disclosure of key facts in the case following the event gave rise to conspiracy theories from far-right movements that cite this event as a rallying cry for their distrust of the government. The documentary on Waco is the fifth installment of the No. 1 rated Truth and Lies series.

Drug use was a fact of life in the African-American community of Tulia, Texas—but when it became common in white neighborhoods, too, civic leaders grew alarmed. In 1999 they brought in an undercover agent, later found to be a racist with a criminal record, to conduct a sting operation. Dozens of black citizens were rounded up, given perfunctory trials, and handed down unusually stiff sentences of up to 99 years behind bars. This program profiles the Texas sting operation that seemed to be more of a war on blacks than a war on drugs, examining the ties between race, poverty, and the criminal justice system that the incident implies.