January 30, 1998
Contact: Ann Marie Deer Owens
Phone: (615) 322-2706
Email: [email protected]
Vanderbilt study finds female prisoners portrayed as "moral keepers"
NASHVILLE, Tenn. - The mass media's depiction of female prisoners as family-centered and easily reformed is driving the national concern over the Karla Faye Tucker case, according to John Sloop, an expert in television criticism and mass media theory at Vanderbilt University. Tucker is scheduled to die by lethal injection Feb. 3 for the pickax murder of a Houston man. Tucker and Daniel Garrett received death sentences for killing Jerry Lynn Dean in 1983. Deborah Thornton also was slain in the attack. In a Vanderbilt study, Sloop analyzed 462 popular articles on prisoners in the Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature from 1950 to 1993. How prisoners are portrayed in the popular press influences public opinion and policy, Sloop said. "The public's understanding of prisoners is developed from reading People magazine in the waiting room of the dentist's office, viewing CNN before supper or from conversing with friends," Sloop said. He found that female prisoners consistently were shown as "moral keepers" in need of rehabilitation and release so that they might carry out their duties as protectors of family values and of the species as a whole. Sloop noted that it was almost impossible to find an article about a female inmate that did not mention her family. "A key reason that only one woman has been executed nationwide since the death penalty resumed in 1976 is that we view female inmates through the `filters' of the popular press," Sloop said. "Women are perceived as having a moral force and in need of rehabilitation and release." Sloop, who is the author of "The Cultural Prison: Discourse, Prisoners and Punishment," is an assistant professor of communications studies at Vanderbilt University.
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