Every day we watch, read, and hear stories about crime and justice. This book reveals how policy-makers, criminal justice professionals, pressure groups, and the police compete in self-promoting struggles to shape their own images and the policy agenda. In a series of case studies, the authors pose a number of important questions. Does coverage of crime statistics promote fear of crime, or is the debate about the figures really about something else? By focusing on fear of crime hhave we therefore underplayed public fear of authority? Does the coverage of sexual crime encourage voyeurism? And finally, is television's growing obsession with showing us stories of real crime more about entertaining the audience than about helping the police with their enquiries?