The Csi Effect on the Criminal Justice System

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The CSI Effect on the Criminal Justice System “Popular media and anecdotal evidence have purported the existence of the “CSI Effect” on juror decision-making” (Mancini, 2011). Those people who are viewers of programs such as: CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, Criminal Minds, and Bones reported significantly greater dissatisfaction with pro-prosecution scientific evidence and required a greater percentage certainty in finding guilt. These highly popular programs affect the public’s perception of forensic science which affects the decision making in the criminal justice system. In these illusory programs, stimulating and captivating crime scene investigators recover concealed evidence from the crime scene and analyze the evidence with exceptionally sophisticated scientific testing procedures. After hearing these investigators use this entire vocabulary of perfect scientific lingo, they manage to make complete conclusions about the offenders’ identity and involvement in the crime, and often extract a confession from the perpetrator, all within an hour. Much of the forensic science procedure depicted in these fictional programs is unrealistic and idealized (Cole & Dioso-Villa, 2009). Shows like these often mislead a person to believe something that is not when dealing with a criminal case. In his 2011 article, Mancini discusses the outcomes of two separate surveys that were completed by criminal justice professionals pertaining to their thoughts of the “CSI Effect:” “Since CSI’s debut in 2000, numerous professionals within the criminal justice system have expressed a deep-seated belief in the existence of the Effect. For example, in a survey study of 36 police officers and 127 forensic investigators, Stinson, Patry, and Smith (2007) found that the vast majority believed that forensic science television programs have influenced the public’s perception of

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