Images of criminal law infuse our everyday lives. From newspapers and television news programmes reporting incidents or trials, to detective novels, films and television series such as The Bill, Law and Order, Silent Witness and The Wire, crime and the control of crime pour into our individual and collective consciousness. The images produced are complex and contradictory: heroic detectives compete for our attention with ‘bent’ police; wily criminals and informers jostle with the inadequate, the psychopath, the wife-batterer and even, on occasion, the offender with whom we are invited to sympathise; the dramatic appeal of racial injustice vies with the cultural resonance of racist stereotypes
