Thursday, December 23, 2010

CSI Effect?

Recently I managed to watch a re-run of a local chat show 'Fenomena Seni' which discusses issues in the local entertainment industry. The theme for that particular episode was Gangsterism in Movies and you guess it, it's about that age-old issue whether life imitates art, in this case violence and acts of gangterisme. However, I took particular notice when one of the guests, Ahmad Ibrahim, popularly known as Mat London said that certain television programmes DO contribute towards the real world's crime rate. He particularly said that the popular Crime Scene Investigation series 'teaches' criminals on how to conceal or destroy evidence and urges the Government to ban the series in Malaysia!

Okay, I may be biased here since I am a fan of the series (and its spin-offs; CSI:NY and CSI: Miami). To a certain extent I do agree with him and that studies in United States showed that between 2000 (the year CSI debuted) and 2005, successful resolution of rape cases had declined from 46.9% to 41.3%. This was alleged to be the result of the so-called CSI Effect where the shows explain in detail how do they manage to uncover the forensic evidence, which in turn can be used as a 'guideline' by the criminals to hide or destroy evidence. This sentiment was also voiced much earlier by a senior police official (I can't remember who was it; it's either the IGP or the head of CID)

Perhaps that is true, especially when we take into account the Morib murders where the bodies of the victims were cremated in order to destroy the evidence...but then the mastermind is a lawyer who knows that the first rule before slapping a murder accusation is the victim's body....
Anyway, even though the show is seen to be showing ways to avoid indictment, to me it's always about 'Crime Doesn't Pay'. No matter how the perpetrators try to hide the evidence of their crime, the CSI team always (Ok, sometimes they can't...just like real life) get their cases solved. Furthermore in real life, most crimes committed are actually impulse crimes - crimes that were commited in the heat of the moment, rather than thoroughly planned in advance. Furthermore, an investigator in the United States stated that the most of the killings that she investigated are committed by "mostly stupid people"!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

aik.. bro, with out noticing it, you've answer your own question on the Morib murders laaa.. (if there is a question on the first place lah)

as you stateted.. most crimes committed are actually impulse crimes - crimes that were commited in the heat of the moment, rather than thoroughly planned in advance

so.. the Morib one was well plan in advance lah.. premeditated

ekekekeee..

mz@mymil

Alpha said...

Memang pun kes Morib tu premeditated. Nampak sangat....cuma kalau nak blame TV show atas segala mak nenek jenayah tu kira merapu la.....