Sex and Crime

Violence in the criminal justice system is defined as any unfair and unjustified application of force and power against rights and laws. The notion of violence should agree for non-criminal activity, for the threatened, as well as the use of complete physical force. It is essential to cogitate that violence is not always obvious; its application may be understated, but the consequences can still be confounding. Such consequences may include: psychological, physical, financial and emotional abuse, which can be as effective as subjugation, humiliation, and manipulation, which are considered as forms of violence. Furthermore, assault integrates a number of offences, where bodily injury, ranging from very minor to very serious injury is imposed illegally or deliberately, including threats and attempts to impose physical injury (Cole, 1998).

An explicit apprehension with the impression of masculinity has become essential to the concept of 'gender and crime', which have drawn on rather different political and intellectual traditions. The substantial mass of discourses and disputes around the concept of crime, are in fact about the action of men. This however, is not to declare that women and children do not commit crime or that offending of women is treated differently to that of men. Nor, is it to claim that women and children are not the victims/survival of men's crimes. It is to acknowledge that men establish the majority of offenders and the crimes committed are pervasive. The pervasiveness of crimes committed by men is established through newspaper headlines, television and radio reporting, films, novels and television scheduling. Sex differences explain more variance in crimes across nations and cultures. There is a certainty that there is something evident about men and the experience of being a man, which might dispose men to criminality in a way that distinguishes the differences between genders (Collier, 1998).

Gender is always considered in dualistic terms of man and woman, masculine and feminine. Expectations of women and men are restricted to these binaries, and are interconnected through gender role stereotypes. These stereotypes limit gender appropriate behaviour to a range of rigid roles which are assigned to women and men based on their gender. Women are known to be nurturers and carers, emotional and pure. On the other hand, men are known to be aggressors and tough. These gender role expectations are deeply ignored in the society, which suggests that there are differences and inequalities in the roles that women and men play, and also the power differences in their relations. These differences determine the differential exposure to risk, subjective of violence and assault (Calasanti and Slevin, 2001).

In the contemporary society, the media is an important medium for circulating the stereotyped images of gender. Certain programs such as reality crime presentations imitate gender stereotypes and imply that hegemonic masculinity today is a matter of downgrading women, through power, authority and aggression. Reality crime presentations corresponds the stereotypic representations of crime, criminals and victims in crime news: crimes are violent, criminals are men, and victims are often white, middle-class women (Wilcox, 2005).

Media representations of an act of criminal violence create an impression of events rather than a precise, impartial, realistic record of what took place. Journalists work within the norms and convictions of the industry, constructing stories within the traditional frames and templates. News is also produced according to trial and tested formulae of what sells best. The content is displayed within the administrative, conservative professional norms of the industry. Journalists study and use previous examples to guide their work in the present instance. Therefore, the content represented in the media is designed and formed by the commercial obligations. The newsworthiness of an act of crime is comprehended by the uncommonness of such behaviour and the contest is to direct perceptions and stereotypes. Definitions and images of violence associate stereotypically to male violence in terms of physicality, toughness and aggression (Berrington & Honkatukia, 2002).

This essay will focus on the influence of traditional ideas of masculinity, gender and race, based on the attacks of the Indian students in Melbourne and Sydney, and its representation in the Australian and Indian media. The crime representation in the media includes the language used to describe the crime, offender and victim, the use of pictures to describe certain people of different gender and race related to the act of crime, worthiness of the crime to be presented in the media and also the representation of innocent and gendered/raced bodies.

Men are motivated to uphold an image of self-reliance and toughness. Furthermore, men are expected to hold attitudes of daring, aggressive, competitive, and ready for violence at any given time. The masculine stereotype may have, consciously and unconsciously enforce certain thoughts, feelings and impulses what were in antagonism to what was called for social standards (Barron, 2009).

In media representations of crime the distinction between fiction and reality become blurred. Dramatic stories and conspicuous headlines and layouts are used to upsurge marketing newspapers. The media incline to dichotomise people who engage in a criminal act, accentuating traits of facets, perceived and assumed, that distinguish them from other people. Physical appearance becomes a key cause of the tone and style of coverage (Berrington and Honkatukia, 2002).

Gender and sexuality are culturally shaped and represented though ideological configurations and they happen to be perceived as common sense and natural. Through different experiences and performance of people, relating primarily to class, gender, age and racial or ethnic background, patriarchy, norms, convention, myths and stereotypes are established within the issues of violence. Media representations of crime emphasise interpersonal violence in public space, focusing on the victims rather than perpetrators (Berrington and Honkatukia, 2002).

Throughout May 2009, there was a series of physical attacks on Indian students in Melbourne and Sydney, some containing robbery, at least two involving perpetrators and one having fifteen attackers (Dunn et al. 2011). Indian students are the second largest group of international students studying in Australia. Some students come from rural areas in Indian, and the cost of living in Australian cities has made it necessary, where there is increased risk of confronting violent crime. The murder of Nitin Garg followed a series of attacks against Indians in Melbourne and Sydney in June 2010. The Australian officials have restrained any racial facets to the attacks, outlining that jobs

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