What You Missed This Week

A recap of The Art of Explaining Crime Season 2, Episode 4

This is The Art of Explaining Crime, an independent newsletter that helps you think and write about crime.

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Hello from the Canadian city of Guelph, which is built on land in the Between the Lakes Purchase, a treaty and territory of the Mississaguas of the Credit¹.

In case you missed any of this week’s posts, which I refer to collectively as “Episode 4”, I’ve collected links below.

Photo by Museums of History New South Wales on Unsplash

What I Do

The popular What I Do series used to be weekly, but will now appear on Wednesdays when I have someone to feature. Can you think of someone in the crime content space who you’d like me to feature? They could be a journalist, academic, advocate, author, or anyone else who routinely participates in creating content about crime. Let me know in a comment or direct message.

Five Studies About

This week’s free Five Studies About tip sheets included:

• How different kinds of information about wrongful convictions influence public opinion of compensating exonerees (Five Studies About: Wrongful Convictions)

• How Australian news media outlets (don’t) report on “domestic and family violence” as “terrorism”, and a case for why they maybe should (Five Studies About: News Media)

Crime Research Update

This week’s paid Crime Research Update tip sheets included the following posts. Remember that each post’s headline highlights a carefully selected study, the link to which appears before the paywall.

• How drought relates to violent crime in California

• When it comes to rape myths, Democratic women disagree with them more than Republican women, but there seems to be no difference between Democratic and Republican men.

• How managerialism challenges the implementation of Irish DNA databases

• How psychopathy research could benefit from more qualitative research

• How female ridesharing drivers respond to sexual violence from passengers

Short-form posts

Here’s a Bluesky post that’s relevant to this newsletter, though it isn’t mine:

I think it’s really interesting that not only did the researchers find that news media’s use of this obfuscating language happen more often for police killings than non-police killings, but that these language characteristics seem to originate with the police themselves. Here’s the research paper itself.

This research underlines for me the importance of research in informing and improving journalistic practices.

Not incidentally, I came across that Bluesky post because it was reposted in this one:

(It’s worth clicking to “View on Bluesky.”)

Also, here’s a Substack note from this week where I tried to get Substack writers who write about crime to chime in and follow each other:

Some great writers participated, but I was hoping for more.

The season so far

Did you miss any earlier episodes? I’ve got you covered:

• Season 2, Episode 1

• Season 2, Episode 2

• Season 2, Episode 3

And that about sums up Season 2, Episode 4. Thank you for reading! See you next week.

1. I’m working on text to acknowledge the history of the land I have the privilege to live on and do the work of this newsletter from; it’s a work in progress. As I do that work, I’m also reflecting on what I can do to contribute to reconciliation in my country, particularly Call to Action #86 (PDF). I do this as a white, cishet man who has benefited immeasurably from the historical and current state of affairs. While I consider this work important for all of us to do, I think it’s particularly relevant to a newsletter about crime. I’ll come back to why I think that in future newsletters.