Ray Surette Reading

Ray describes in his reading that crime isn't seen as a social issue but more as an individual issue. And when media is representing theses predators, it ignores the bigger person and is obsessed with individualism. In our media and culture, social problems are generated  and solved at the individual level and because of this we lack the cultural resources to deal with these problems. We perceive predators as a separate breed in society, encouraging the perception of social and economic factors as irrelevant. We as a person never want to get involved in crime and we leave it to the government, unless it effects us personally or someone we know. As long as it is founded on individualism, crime and justice policy is mostly a government concern. We see the justice system as a natural solution to crime problems in though it has been proven that it isn't working and predators most likely have a repeating cycle. The basic effects of the predator icon are to generate fear, degrade social networks, increase reliance on the media and foster social problems. We see actually more predator icons on TV, than we do in reality which misleads people perceptions on certain criminals.  Also, the media can make the icon more credible if they seem themselves on TV and it just shows us that we are the most violent country overall.