Ethical Considerations; use of press, media and other CJS agencies

The tenth stage in the instigation process is ethical Considerations; use of press, media and other CJS agencies. This stage can be extremely important depending on the type of case the police are dealing with, during this stage the police will decide whether or not they want to publicly announce the case which will result in news stations, newspapers and other forms of media taking about the case and sharing it with the public. This can be beneficial for certain cases such as if there was a number of robbery's in a certain area that all showed the same patterns and links as this would notify the people in this area who would take more caution such as alarms, another example would be if somebody was kidnapped, by alerting the media more people would know which could result in people calling up the police who may have seen the missing person. However, there is a chance that releasing the information to the media could be morally wrong or hinder the case, for example, if the police release the information about who they suspect committed the crime then the media would interpret this information as if they where the culprit and if it turns out they did not commit the crime then this could heavily affect their life as they would be seen as a criminal even though they did nothing wrong.

OJ Simpson:

OJ Simpson allegedly murdered Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman on the 12th June 1994. This was seen as a huge shock to America as OJ Simpson was seen as a role model to many people as he was getting rid of the stereotype in America that black people were inferior to white people and a lot of Americans respected him for this. Not only that but he was seen as one of the best American Football players of all times and has won many awards including being put in the hall of fame (which was removed when he was found guilty). Because of his status as a celebrity the whole story blew up and the media and they were reporting every inch of what was happening within the investigation. The media even streamed the car chase live on TV for the world to see, the only problem being the media also jumped to conclusion like the police and put out in the newspapers that OJ was the person who committed the crime which could have clouded some people's opinions on the case such as the jury in the court.


As the press arrived to the scene earlier than the police expected and there was no tape to stop them entering, the media walked into the crime scene and were able to photograph the bodies. As the officers on duty knew that this was unethical and disrespectful to the families they decided to cover up the bodies with towels. This later affected the case though as by putting the towels over the bodies it destroyed any evidence that might have been on them such as fingerprints.