Spectacular Justice

A York Festival of Ideas event

The spectacle of justice is all around us. O.J. Simpson’s trial was watched by nearly 100 million viewers at home in 1995. Nearly 2.3 million people watched the judge’s verdict for Lindsay Lohan’s 2010 trial. In 2014 Olympic athlete Oscar Pistorius dominated international media headlines when charged with murdering his girlfriend, South African model Reeva Steenkamp. The case was deemed the ‘trial of the century’ (The Guardian, 2014), and came to a close in 2016 after being televised live, minute by minute, across the world. This is spectacular justice.

Join Ruth Penfold-Mounce and Rosie Smith of the University of York, as they examine high profile criminal cases including Oscar Pistorius, Charles Lindbergh Jr and Jodi Arias, and investigate the effects of media coverage. The talk is based on Rosie’s research which won the top prize in the PhD Research Spotlight competition at York Talks 2017 held at the University of York in January.

Ruth and Rosie will explain how spectacular justice describes how the mass media and popular culture makes justice visible by reporting on criminal cases and making them public. They’ll explore historical and contemporary cases to ask, what is the public’s role in criminal justice? Should trials be televised? And has the media and television replaced the wooden gallows as the framework through which the public watch the spectacle of punishment and justice?

Dr Ruth Penfold-Mounce is a Lecturer in Criminology at the University of York. Her background in Sociology is united with an interest in crime and deviance, death and corpses and popular culture and celebrity. She has worked with the BBC’s Hairy Bikers and Radio 4 as well as writing for award nominated blogs such Death and the Maiden as well as Women are Boring and CelebYouth. She also writes for The Conversation and Discover Society.

Rosie Smith is a Sociology PhD student at the University of York. Her award-winning doctoral research looks at the new concept of spectacular justice, and examines the relationship between the public, the mass media and the criminal justice system. Rosie’s research has been presented internationally and contributes to work in criminology, media studies, and sociological theory.   

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