Jay Livingston

The popular entertainment media has created and/or contributed to numerous myths about crime, according to Jay Livingston, author of several books on crime and chair of the sociology department at Montclair State University in New Jersey. In the following selection Livingston compares real—life crime statistics with popular culture representations of crime, and he argues that real—life crime and crime fighting bear little resemblance to their fictional counterparts. Although it is uncertain what effect such fictional misrepresentations have on the public's perception, Livingston contends that the distortions of reality in crime portrayals do encourage potential misunderstanding, which may pose a real danger to the public.