Media and Options for Action: The Media and Crime Prevention

This workshop on The Media and Crime Prevention is particularly aimed at those working in criminal justice, the media, psychology and sociology. It takes as its starting point the impression prevalent among the public that children and young people have a weak sense of social norms - something particularly evident in the increase in deviant behaviour among adolescents.

In considering the causes of this, there has been a general tendency to point to the negative effects of the media. Rarely has mention been made of the potentially positive or preventative influence of the media, and of television particularly. The workshop offers an opportunity to discuss this hitherto neglected aspect of the problem. In order to examine the topic in all its depth, the relationship between media violence and real violence will be explored. The workshop will also consider, through real examples, how youth delinquency is represented in television entertainment, and what might be the possible contribution to crime prevention of television entertainment.

Among the participants will be Dr. Axel Boetticher and Ulrich Hebenstreit, both judges at the German Supreme Court [1st Strafsenat] and Mario Giordano, scriptwriter and childrens' author [e.g »Krimi.de« broadcast on KI.KA in 2005, and »Das Experiment«, 2001].