In this era where the media has taken center stage in every discussion, I think we are losing site of the silent conditioning of the minds of the numerous listeners to have a mental picture of a victim or perpetrator that already condemns without any recourse to the possibility of innocence.
Ghanaian journalists hardly focus attention on how their reportage of crime news affects the possibility of copy-cat crimes, the behaviour of offenders and would-be offenders, the criminal justice system and its processes, policing, investigations and crime itself.
Dramatization of evil as used by Frank Tannebaum (1983) and the attachment of a deviant identity to a suspect is a classic instance of presuming a person guilty until proven innocent. This becomes an automatic thinking which is technically alien to our adversarial criminal justice system. The media is fueling the Ghanaian attitude which attaches a deviant status to a young person or anyone who engages in delinquent conduct and separates him or her from ‘normal’ society as an “evil” being.
This has led to the shift from defining a specific act as evil to the definition and consideration of the individual actor as evil. From here forward, all aspects of the person’s life come to be viewed with suspicion – his personality, actions, speech, play, work, income, and even associates become subject to doubt, questions and scrutiny. Mention Woyome relative to Roland Agambili.
Though significantly reduced, this dramatization can be said to influence citizens acts of mob injustice which is casually referred to as mob action or mob justice instead of being described for what it is by media personalities who could do better. Why do you think Ghanaians resort to “mob justice” with such frequency? Is this because due process is difficult and slow?
The penchant for instant and mob justice derives from broad socio-cultural intolerance of ‘western’ standards and prescriptions of due process as well as our conviction that we can get away with murder, literally, as long as responsibility for the crime is diffused.
Can we do better than we are doing now? Let us think and have a healthy discussion about this drama.
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