When Covering Crime, an Underreported Piece of the Puzzle

Carr's recent comments echo similar statements made by certain political and law enforcement figures who have recently stated their intent to focus on dismantling criminal street gangs, which are widely believed to be responsible for the majority of violent crime in many jurisdictions. All the while, however, in the view of one senior member of law enforcement who has investigated gang crimes for over two decades and spoke to me for this piece on the condition of anonymity, many statements to this effect by political figures are too infrequently backed up by concrete action or by full law enforcement buy-in.

Estimates vary, but one January 2009 Department of Justice report estimated that approximately 80% of all crime in many communities is gang-related. Another crystallizing statistic brought into focus by prosecutor and gang expert Mike Carlson is that there are more members of the Bloods alone than there were active members of ISIS during the terrorist group's peak. A 2011 FBI report suggested that there were 1.4 million active gang members in the United States; for context, that is roughly the entire population of the state of Hawaii. (Many in law enforcement, however, believe that the actual number is close to double the reported figure.) But from watching news reporting, including reports specifically on crime, one likely would not realize the extent to which gangs are present in American society.

As Carr himself noted to me, some political figures are hesitant to acknowledge the extent of the gang issue in their states and cities. Officeholders, at times, fear drawing attention to the degree of the problem, concerned that doing so might prevent would-be business owners from opening locations in their communities or prospective residents from moving to the area. As such, this presents an opportunity for good journalists, particularly investigative ones, to better explore this issue. Although in recent years some critics have often been correct to notice the striking similarity between the talking points of many journalists and those of "the officials" they are supposed to be covering and probing, one ought not forget that journalism -- when practiced well -- brings to light facts that certain government actors would prefer be kept quiet.

Furthermore, when one of the most persistent issues when it comes to understanding the gang problem is a lack of complete statistics (and a widespread belief that law enforcement habitually fails to fully document the gang component when investigating crimes), intrepid news outlets might begin the work of compiling and compellingly presenting such data. The Washington Post, for instance, has succeeded in curating a user-friendly database on police shootings that is widely cited by other media outlets. Admittedly, however, a similar project on gang-related incidents would be more difficult to successfully execute, given that the presence of the gang component in a given incident can require more detective work than the more cut-and-dried question as to whether a police officer was involved.

The paradox of sorts is that in recent years there has been a proliferation of criminal justice-related news projects, yet certain topics still continue to be neglected. The Marshall Project, which was founded in 2014 with former New York Timesexecutive editor Bill Keller as its first editor-in-chief, is arguably the most famous such undertaking. But many of these projects, both left-leaning and right-leaning, continue to trot out the same old arguments, while vital issues, from gangs on down, are overlooked. Has sufficient coverage been devoted to analyzing the results of the First Step Act now that two-and-half years have passed since it was signed into law? Similarly, have the potential financial motives that may have contributed to its passage been adequately explored? Is the press seeking to bring into focus the reality that in certain municipalities less than 50% of homicides are ever solved?

As some readers of this column may recall, the October 28, 2019 installment of News on the Record was a piece entitled "Media's Under-Coverage of Disease," in which I outlined how the press has tended to devote insufficient coverage to the types of ailments that cause the majority of deaths. Although the near-constant coverage of the pandemic and the growing popularization of certain projects like Stat News have arguably changed the calculus somewhat, certain medical news tends to be habitually under-covered. As such, it ought not be surprising that a similar phenomenon of systemic under-coverage would take place when it comes to the news media's presentation of crime.

Better media attention to the gang issue would help the public to understand how gangs of today differ from organized crime of decades past, such as the Italian mafia, in that modern street gangs more liberally use violence, are less concerned with pure money-making, and have fewer qualms about harming innocent bystanders. Further, commentators and reporters would be well-served to investigate the viability of a proposed federal anti-gang law, which proponents believe would have a similar effect on these gangs as RICO laws have had on the mafia. And more attention could be paid to academic findings which make clear that targeted arrests of known gang members can result in significant downticks in crime. Today, at a time when so much media attention is devoted to both crime and proposals to change the criminal justice system, it is as important as ever that the full story always be told.

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