Thank you to the publisher for providing me access to this advanced review copy. Private note sent to publisher.

I would not classify this book as a primary research of true crime, but more of a media/pop culture study into how true crime is being absorbed and filtered through culture. We're no longer repeating the same stories of Bundy and BTK, but diving deeper into the whys and hows that expose the American justice system. The New True Crime is a wholistic look at a case versus just the perpetrator.

This book was written by a professor and I think that shows. It was very removed from the victims and harmfully so. It read like a textbook from a cultural studies course and I felt uncomfortable with the lack of empathy towards victims.

Diana Rickard's 'The New True Crime' is a timely exploration of the cultural phenomenon that has made serialized crime shows an American obsession. In an era when captivating narratives of real-life crimes have taken over our screens and airwaves, Rickard reveals the profound impact they've had on our understanding of crime, punishment, and the criminal justice system.

Serialized true crime shows have infiltrated the collective consciousness with unprecedented force. Hits like 'Making a Murderer,' 'Serial,' and 'Atlanta Monster' have mesmerized audiences and also played a pivotal role in exposing wrongful convictions, such as the case of Adnan Syed. This captivating type of long-form docuseries has contributed to greater scrutiny of societal issues, including inequality, power dynamics, social class, and structural racism. Rickard observes that these shows have ignited a broader discourse about who society deems deserving of punishment and who is protected by the law.

'The New True Crime' unveils a thought-provoking narrative that takes us through the labyrinth of the American criminal justice system. Rickard navigates the terrain of crime storytelling, questioning the once-unquestionable finality of verdicts and introducing a profound uncertainty about what is truly knowable in the realm of crime and punishment. A theme within the book is the blurring of lines between fact and fiction that these series often exhibit. They challenge our belief in the objective truth of a crime, raising essential questions about the malleability of justice and the subjectivity of perception.

Rickard's focus on some of the most prominent true crime podcasts and streaming series of the last decade provides a look at the way this new media has transformed crime into a public spectacle. She critically analyzes the impact of binge-listening or binge-watching these shows, emphasizing how they convey ideological messages about punishment to their audiences.

Throughout the book, Rickard investigates the historical entwinement of entertainment values with crime news reporting. She reminds us that newsworthy stories have traditionally been those involving sex, violence, famous individuals, and events that can be framed within the context of individualism and conservative ideologies about crime. While these long-standing images are still prevalent in contemporary docuseries, Rickard goes further by examining how the new true crime has been influenced by the innocence movement. This movement has brought a diverse range of activists and advocates -- journalists, lawyers, exonerees, and family members of the wrongfully convicted -- into mainstream consciousness as DNA evidence continues to exonerate those who were once unjustly incarcerated.

'The New True Crime' takes a bold step in questioning the very concept of truth and probing our anxieties about the authenticity of true crime media. It provides an in-depth examination of a genre that has permeated our culture and serves as a thought-provoking mirror to society's perception of justice and truth. Diana Rickard peels back the layers of a phenomenon that has left a distinguishable mark on our collective understanding of crime and punishment.

Thought-Provoking

Insightful analysis

Genre-Defying

Media and justice exploration

Eye-Opening

Societal commentary

In-Depth examination

Crime and punishment reflection

Investigative insight

Ideological exploration

This was a really informative look at the ways in which the true crime genre (film, docuseries, books and podcasts) has evolved. This was focused on the context of the American criminal justice system. While the genre started with the vilification of suspects of crime (particularly murder). The literature on wrongful convictions has spread into the mainstream. This has lead to the new true crime wave. The new true crime uses shows/ case studies like Serial and The Staircase, Making a Murderer etc to analyse whether those accused of murder are really guilty or whether they have been falsely convicted.
This book looks at police coercion, forced confessions, dodgy forensics and other reasons for wrongful convictions. It looks at punishment, true crime as entertainment, the legal system and many other aspects. The author also used a mixture of 5/6 most popular docuseries and podcasts around this topic to illustrate her points. This gave me a very deep analytical framework to consider and I found it very useful.

Many thanks to the author, the publisher and Netgalley for a review copy in exchange for an honest review.

This was a really interesting book about the true crime genre and how its changed over time and may continue to change. This was easy to understand and an overall enjoyable and interesting read. I would recommend this to those who enjoy the true crime genre. Special Thank You to Diana Rickard, NYU Press and NetGalley for allowing me to read a complimentary copy prior to publication in exchange for an honest review.

I received a free copy of this book in exchange for a fair review.

I would normally return a book rather than leave a one-star review. Due to the important issues raised, and the fact that it falls directly into my personal wheelhouse, I feel that I must fill in some of the blanks that this author has left in the text. I was trafficked by a babysitter in 1972. My friend Wendy Huggy was kidnapped in 1982 at 16. Her case is still open.

Let me be clear: I don’t want anyone falsely imprisoned for any reason. I’m not a fan of the state as a bad actor or the prison-industrial complex. I’m against the death penalty.

I believe book reviews exist to let readers know whether a book is for them. And I aim to do that. I kept asking myself, who is this book for?

I believe this book is for (white) people (men) who enjoy true crime, and have never personally experienced either violent crime or the criminal “justice” system. Unfortunately Professor Rickard raised and omitted some vitally important points. I must rebut/fill in the gaps.

TL/DR: I write “true crime for survivors.” My goal is overall harm reduction for all communities. While Professor Rickard does address some of the racial injustice of wrongful convictions and police/prosecutorial misconduct against African-Americans in particular, even that issue is only partially addressed. The way these mechanisms simultaneously abuse victims, and the true crime genre pits those two communities against each other as if justice were mutually exclusive, is not discussed. The phrase “mass incarceration” doesn’t occur until the midpoint, and I thought it might not appear at all. She does eventually discuss the prison-industrial complex. I’m glad if the genre is humanizing defendants. But there is zero/negative empathy for rape victims in this book. It is absolutely not recommended for survivors of sexual assault. Sexual violence is treated as an abstract concept herein. The male gaze is never alluded to, much less the violent male gaze – the reason for this entire genre’s existence IMO. Victims are dumped on and violence against women is discussed in callous – not necessarily clinical, but aloof – ways throughout. This book argues that true crime is progressive despite the obvious ethical flaws in the form (the details of your rape/murder are public domain) because theoretically it's addressing the flawed system, albeit one case at a time, for-profit, and in an amateur way, with no thought to collateral damage, victim impact, or ancillary toxic narratives. DIY infotainment has evolved to enlighten the bourgeoisie to the systemic injustices that sometimes affect one of their own, in a way that constantly retraumatizes survivors via trial by Reddit. This book argues that it’s a good thing. I don’t believe anyone has justice until everyone does. I felt simultaneously invisible, exploited, and scapegoated while reading this. I'm sorry I can't rate it higher, because it does a good job of explaining about punitive culture and systemic injustice against African-Americans.

***

Professor Rickard notes in passing that the true crime genre – melodramatizing and semi-fictionalizing white sexual violence – was invented to distract from lynching (and she doesn’t mention it, but also the pogroms against Native America). The truth was much more pernicious and divisive than simply that. White rape was often the pretense for lynching.

African-America was truly terrorized with false narratives about white rape for many years. These were frequently put forward by Confederate women who had not been raped themselves, like the first woman senator who called for 1,000 lynchings a week to prevent rape (of white women). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebecca_Latimer_Felton In reality most sexual violence is committed within the same race.

14-year-old Junius Stinney was like a human sacrifice to the state, being gruesomely executed for the murder of a white toddler that was almost certainly committed by an adult white man, at any rate not by him.

Over many years, a big media spectacle was made of punishing Black men for rape/murders that were either committed by white men (Junius Stinney) or didn’t happen at all (the pre-emptive lynchings of Rebecca Felton or the murder of Emmett Till). This also allowed actual white rapists to go largely unexamined by the media/unpunished by the law, along with lynching, the Trail of Tears, and all of the other bad things they did.

When Marjorie Taylor Greene (a Confederate, not a rape survivor) says that Fani Willis should focus on prosecuting “rapists” instead of Donald Trump, she’s dog-whistling “Black men” to her constituents. And she underscores my point by referencing the p-grabber.

Professor Rickard mentions, in passing, that because true crime focuses on crimes against (white) women, it gives the false impression that women are more often victims of violence than men.

It also gives the false impression that white women are grossly overserved at the trough of justice here in the incarceration nation. White rape victims become the locus of the public’s anger about the injustices toward African-America, because of the above-mentioned history, combined with the media’s obsessive focus on one or two cases to the exclusion of all others and our prison-industrial complex. It’s infuriating for people to be ignored and targeted simultaneously. Prison is the new slavery.

The professor doubles down on this pitting of white rape survivors against African-Americans throughout this book, as though justice is an either-or proposition for those communities. That, for me, is the worst and most harmful lie of the genre. I believe nobody has justice until everybody does. White women don’t get help or justice either, as I will demonstrate below. White men giveth and white men taketh away. They own both the prison-industrial complex and the media. https://www.forbes.com/sites/katevinton/2016/06/01/these-15-billionaires-own-americas-news-media-companies/?sh=24b37ea8660a And they do most of the raping of white women. Convenient.

In “true crime” the media created a simulacrum of a conversation about the sexual violence that was also going on in-house, in which none of the above could ever be properly addressed, for the benefit and amusement of the people perpetrating and unaffected by it all – the target audience of this book. True crime is America’s psychosocial Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

All of that is described in this book as necessary for the storytelling, as if telling stories that dehumanizing way was necessary at all. Why isn’t sexual violence reported like all other crime? Why is it “true crime” and not “crime reporting”?

Professor Rickard refers to “crime porn” on one occasion. But to my eyes the whole genre is usually low-key rape and murder porn. That’s very obvious to me. This whole genre caters to the violent (white) male gaze and always has. That concept is never remotely approached. It’s about the male gaze. The violent male gaze. Mystery solved.

I’d like to thank Kathryn Schulz for asking readers to consider “what it means when a private investigative project – bound by no rules of procedure, answerable to nothing but ratings, shaped only by the ethics and aptitude of its makers – comes to serve as our court of last resort.”

Professor Rickard mentioned 48 Hours as an exploitative show. While it is – the whole genre is, including this book – one of the detectives working on Wendy’s kidnapping used that show to try (unsuccessfully) to move her case forward. Wendy had so little social support that the only people they could find at the time were advocates of her abusive mother, who repeated her dishonest, self-exculpating narratives. The Playboy bunny coworker they interviewed had never met Wendy.

So as I see it the door swings both ways. As painful as that episode was for me, I appreciate that the detective took a shot on Wendy’s behalf. The sad reality is that without any media attention we often get no help at all. Wendy’s Scooby gang message board is pure agita for me.

So I understand the anger and frustration that people of color feel about this, how dreadful it is to never see their cases featured. FYI the detectives don’t always answer my calls or emails. There’s one cold-case detective working on every missing person in Pasco County since the beginning of time. We need the media. And they’re vampires.

Not only did the media choose not to report on lynchings, decriminalize them by apathy, but they assisted in weaponizing sexual violence and demonizing African-Americans with their own cohort’s (WASP men) misconduct in many different ways that this book doesn’t allude to. It was much more insidious and divisive than one would suspect from The New True.

The Daniel Holtzclaw prosecution felt like, for me, an unimaginably great victory for my cohort. https://youtu.be/vF-AfFqrIcI However the women from OKC Artists for Justice define it specifically as racial/police violence against Black people. I’ve heard them (and others) say explicitly that police rape can’t and doesn’t happen to white women.

See the many Holtzclaws of Louisville and their white survivors. One of them was on the Breonna Taylor raid. None of them got punished anywhere near as harshly as Holtzclaw. They all got wrist massages, and their survivors got treated like suspects. Holtzclaw got 450 years.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HERShPhJwPg&t=1702s

The OKCAfJ ladies also said that if Holtzclaw’s victims were white the bond would’ve been much higher because of how much more society values white women. They don’t cite a source for that. Even a high-quality news outlet like Democracy Now! dabbles in those pervasive myths, which I will fact-check below.

Professor Rickard cites the state as a bad actor in 77% of wrongful convictions. She explains how plea bargaining is often used to coerce people of few resources into going to prison for crimes they didn’t commit. This is the most-obvious case against it especially with respect to African-America and the prison-industrial complex. The professor explores that well in the book.

However plea bargaining also lets people whom the state favors off the hook for rapes they absolutely did commit. One obvious example of that would be Jeffrey Epstein’s extreme sweetheart deal with Alex Acosta. But plea bargaining is also how an on-duty cop can repeatedly rape a white teenage fast-food employee, get probation-only, and it’s disappeared by the local media.

The local media completely whitewashed Officer Timothy Barber’s sex crimes. He plea bargained (pled down) and got probation-only for an ongoing coercive sexual relationship with a 16-year-old (almost certainly white) fast-food worker. He was on camera CK’ing her at the drive-through in his patrol vehicle, hence the public nudity. See how the media made her public property via plea bargaining – it’s “an inappropriate relationship”:

https://www.abc57.com/news/timothy-barber-enters-plea-agreement

“ST. JOSEPH COUNTY, Ind. – Timothy Barber, the South Bend Police officer accused of having an inappropriate relationship with a 16-year-old, has entered a plea agreement.
Barber pleaded guilty to child seduction and official misconduct.…
In October 2021, Barber was charged with two counts of child seduction, one count of public indecency, two counts of official misconduct, and one count of public nudity.”
versus what’s in the probable cause affidavit here: https://www.wndu.com/2021/10/19/south-bend-police-officer-charged-after-being-accused-inappropriate-relationship-with-16-year-old/

“VICTIM 1 stated that she did not know what to do. VICTIM 1 disclosed that she felt like BARBER was obsessed with her by constantly coming into her workplace to see her while he was in full police uniform. VICTIM 1 disclosed that she felt like she had to have sexual intercourse with BARBER and felt intimidated by BARBER because he was a “cop.””

And see that he got probation-only here: https://www.southbendtribune.com/story/news/2022/09/09/south-bend-cop-sentenced-to-probation-sex-crime-minor-plea-deal/65461702007/

This woman felt like she had no choice but accept her attacker’s sweet plea deal. He was allowed to quit. The headline is her settlement, which was her only recourse. They talk a lot about the money.
https://www.wdrb.com/in-depth/city-of-louisville-pays-settlement-to-woman-groped-in-gas-station-by-on-duty-police/article_b8285c6a-6ccf-11ed-a2b9-bf3d98783a3b.html

Gas-station workers get rocked.
https://katv.com/news/local/victim-of-stalking-by-former-arkansas-state-police-trooper-tells-her-story

Check out serial rapist Officer Pablo Cano’s sweet plea bargain. https://www.wkms.org/criminal-justice/2023-06-19/women-who-accused-former-louisville-police-officer-of-sexual-abuse-settle-lawsuit-for-275k Note that post-conviction the women are still described as “accusers.” Cano joked about being a sex offender in staff meetings. After pleading down he didn’t have to serve the full sentence.

This affluenza bro raped four different white teenagers on four separate occasions and got probation only. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/18/nyregion/christopher-belter-rape-sentence.html

Maybe judges should earn less, so that we could appoint more of them to the bench and try more cases. Because if they’re so clogged and overburdened that they must rely on plea bargaining to everyone’s detriment but the elites, then we apparently need more judges.

The media and plea bargaining work together to whitewash rape in much the same way they did lynching and the pogroms against Native America, simultaneously. America has always had rape culture and nothing in this book challenges it.

Domestic violence is also much higher than average in police households. https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/09/police-officers-who-hit-their-wives-or-girlfriends/380329/

Despite how it sounds on your favorite podcast, the criminal “justice” system ignores us even in cases of serial attackers. America has for decades had a “rape kit backlog” of hundreds of thousands of rapes that were reported and not investigated. The #1 reason for the backlog is victim-blaming by the police – the magic eraser of police work. It’s estimated that up to 63% of sexual assaults aren’t reported for this reason.

https://nij.ojp.gov/topics/articles/untested-evidence-sexual-assault-cases

The press is still complicit and a constant bad actor against rape survivors. A great example of that, and demonstration of white America's deep rape culture and constant readiness to blame victims, was the Steubenville High School case. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steubenville_High_School_rape_case After the white CNN anchors lamented two of the boys being punished, the town was angry at the teenage survivor – who never had any intention of prosecuting – for ruining their football team.

So despite how it certainly does appear on Dr. Phil, America does not have our backs. The police DGAF when women get raped, even if they’re white. Unless there’s somebody they want to railroad, they often don’t even have a protocol for following up on it. Your rape kit goes in the circular file.

Professor Rickard states in passing that men experience more violence than women. That is true in most, not all, years.

https://bjs.ojp.gov/library/publications/criminal-victimization-2020-supplemental-statistical-tables

Statistically men also commit about 80 percent of reported violence. Much of the violence men experience is attributable to opt-in lifestyles like gang membership. She left that statistic about “men experiencing more violence than women” without any further qualification or discussion.

https://globalnews.ca/news/6536184/gender-based-violence-men-women/

That portion of the book where she goes on and on about how unfair trials are in terms of demonizing and marginalizing defendants leaves me cold as a survivor. I’ve spent my whole life having to hide, and being punished for, the crimes committed against me.

And welcome to America. Trials have always been a big wanky melodrama in service of a punishment fetish. Remember Salem? Anglo-Saxon Protestants love to “hang ‘em high.”

Going to trial is a dehumanizing and traumatic morality play, where BOTH SIDES are subjected to a blitz of ad hominem attacks and the petty personal biases of twelve random Americans. Ask yourself whether Officer Andrew Mitchell was twice acquitted of killing Donna Castleberry because America loves lethal force, rape culture, or both. https://www.dispatch.com/story/news/courts/2023/04/18/former-columbus-police-officer-found-not-guilty-of-murder/70126251007/

The victim gets demonized in court, too, after being assaulted. Don’t get me started. Then you or your family may have to live through trial by Reddit forever, if some podcaster with no qualifications whatsoever decides to monetize the violence against you. Because end-stage capitalism eats that mess up, as the professor finally acknowledges 85% into the book.

Then this professor will have the audacity to judge your grief process, expecting everyone to have the zero boundaries of Katie Kitchens or be tsk-tsked as a racist goon. That was truly the most-offensive part of this book, where the Scooby gang gets to sit munching popcorn, armchair-quarterbacking those of us who have been rendered public property on how we’re handling being trampled.

False reporters are rare, and not all of those even get prosecuted. As Professor Rickard notes, a whopping 77% of the time the state is a villain. The rest of that can be attributed to the fact that it’s all a big goofy battle of the experts where they’re emotionally yanking people around as well-described in the book, and the truth is in the eye of the beholder – which isn’t fair to anyone. But the public largely blames false (all) reporters for wrongful convictions.

“Research shows that rates of false reporting are frequently inflated, in part because of inconsistent definitions and protocols, or a weak understanding of sexual assault. Misconceptions about false reporting rates have direct, negative consequences and can contribute to why many victims don’t report sexual assaults (Lisak et al., 2010).” https://www.nsvrc.org/sites/default/files/Publications_NSVRC_Overview_False-Reporting.pdf

As Professor Rickard notes, there is now a strong connotation between advocating for especially white rape survivors, and conservative, racist policies in America. Unfortunately she also participated in demonizing us as right-wing thugs in large ways and small throughout this book.

So that was one of the best moves white guys ever did for themselves, scapegoating Black men for their own sex crimes, pitting their two favorite scapegoats against each other for fun and profit.

The Central Park Five and West Memphis 3 are the most-compelling arguments in this book, at least for me, because I remember those personally. I remember how horribly dishonest and shameful all of that was. Old-school NYPD had stop-and-frisk and Amadou Diallo. They were vile. The media and police were partners in crime. As an Italian-American I guffaw at Rudy Giuliani currently facing RICO charges.

While they’re throwing five teenagers in prison who had nothing to do with anything, meanwhile some maniac is running around doing who knows what. The survivor also got shafted, not only the boys, because they made no attempt to solve her case. Rape culture and the prison-industrial complex (both owned by the same guy) win every time. https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/fci-dublin-womens-prison-sexual-abuse-class-action-lawsuit-filed-bureau-of-prisons/

The woman who was attacked in Central Park was still in a coma for years after the boys were in prison. She had nothing to do with victimizing them. It was strictly the NYPD and prosecutors who lied on them and used the magic eraser of police work. The media was a co-conspirator in framing them.

That particular truth, where white men giveth and white men taketh away, is not addressed in this book. In The New True it seems like white women have justice parity, even when it’s clear throughout that we’re rendered “public property.”

Then a murdered child gets blamed for this abusive system by the mayor of Atlanta, and the author leaves the comment without analysis or further comment, doubling down on that victim-blaming.

Once men have robbed you of your agency with rape and/or murder, then everyone gets to use you in their agendas and project their schemata upon you however they want. That’s capitalism. Someone must be exploited for the benefit of someone else.

“We love her. We love her enough to kill her over and over and over again.” I’d rather have butthole cancer than true crime/white America’s “love.”

When Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms of Atlanta asks us to compare the murdered Atlanta children to JonBenet Ramsey, demanding to know why they didn’t get the same attention from the FBI as the Lindbergh baby, Professor Rickard doesn’t answer those questions.

What I imagine the mayor wants for those Atlanta victims is something I would also like for them. But it’s something JonBenet didn’t get, either.

The police completely bungled and phoned-in JonBenet’s investigation. They let the press run all over the place and trample evidence. Multiple pedophiles have falsely confessed to killing her for the attention. Everyone and their brother continues to make money on JonBenet. Her family has had to sue people for defamation. And people focus their hatred on her because of the attention she got for being raped and tortured to death on Christmas. And her case is still not solved. That’s what she wants for the Atlanta victims? Why? (I learned the word “cathexis” from this book, thanks.)

Meanwhile, every time they put up a memorial for Emmett Till, somebody blasts it full of bullets. Why can’t America really just quit with all of the above? Find some other way to express its feelings, and people manage their agendas, other than projecting them onto children who have already been murdered? Nothing in The New True even hints at wanting that kind of harm reduction. I wish people could cut back on the violence and exploitation altogether. I wish we weren’t green screens, public property because we got violated. I wish we were all full-time, permanent human beings.

Also, may I suggest that if Mayor Lance Bottoms wanted to restart the investigation, maybe she should’ve found out who’s in charge of the Atlanta Police Department and put some pressure on that person? Should JonBenet Ramsey have climbed out of her grave and made a task force with the FBI?

Flying ace Charles Lindbergh was the Anglo-Saxon Protestant son of a congressman. He also invented some cardiac device. He was wealthy and famous, which is why his son was kidnapped in the first place. He had a high degree of personal accomplishment and military connections from his work as a military pilot on top of the extreme privilege he was born with. That’s why the FBI jumped through hoops for him.

Very few Americans would get the kind of help Lindbergh got – including JonBenet Ramsey. She, despite also being a rich, beautiful, silver spoon WASP, got blown off by the police, exploited by the media, and treated like a clown by the public. The police focused on her family and ignored other evidence, as described over and over in The New True.

And Lindbergh didn’t get his son back alive. So I’m not sure why the mayor felt the need to punch down at that poor baby, either. If, God forbid, someone would attempt to kidnap a child from her home, I believe the FBI would put in the same resources as they did to successfully protect Governor Gretchen Whitmer. But they don’t do that for every white child, either. They didn’t for JonBenet. The mayor must watch too much Dr. Phil.

I’m also disappointed that more resources weren’t put into investigating the Atlanta murders, because clearly there were multiple people doing those crimes. I agree about the Saunders brothers as likely suspects with the fire/police/sanitation uniforms. My goal is harm reduction. I don’t like any scenario where the state uses a magic eraser of police work allowing violent perpetrators to go unchecked.

To leave this review on a happier note, this book does some things well. She does a good job explaining about the prison-industrial complex, but I truly thought she’d never get there and was getting annoyed thinking she wouldn’t. The phrase “mass incarceration” doesn’t appear until the halfway point, and “prison-industrial complex” not until 80%. I thought she’d never say “end-stage capitalism.”

I agree with the professor that coercive confessions are a real problem and she did a good job of showing that. The chapter where she goes over Brendan Dassey’s confession is the probably most-valuable aspect of the book, along with the explanation of what’s wrong with the Alford plea.

I’m glad that everything is videotaped now. If there’s a gap in your interrogation tape, your lawyer should be able to drive a truck through it. I can only imagine how bad it was back in the day. https://www.themarshallproject.org/records/551-jon-burge

For a refreshing counterpoint, I would recommend watching Alek Minassian’s interrogation, which happened in Canada. There’s a 180-degree difference in the approach. In Canada your rights are, “Everything you say will be reviewed by a judge,” rather than, “can be used against you in a court of law.” And we have six times the incarceration rate of Canada, go figure.

Side note: Daniel Holtzclaw’s interrogation by Detective Kim Davis was also brilliant. I was convinced of his guilt from the interrogation alone. I sometimes rewatch it when I feel blue. Check it out, good times.

I’m sorry I can’t rate this book higher, because she did a good job explaining how awful the state can be as a bad actor, and how pervasive and destructive that is for African-Americans. I’m not sure the target audience of this book is aware of that.

Thank you NetGalley for the arc!

I consume so much true crime it was super interesting to see how what I consume is reflected in the true crime community 🕵🏻‍♀️ very fitting as I have read, listened to and watched each media in this book

This book is an interesting and insightful examination of the role true crime plays in today's society. Definitely will spark self-reflection in any true crime "fan" and absolutely worth the read.

If you like deeply researched, academic views on elements of pop culture that help drive systemic change, The New True Crime is the book for you this fall. Using a handful of the most popular true crime series from a couple of different mediums (streaming TV and podcasts) as her focal points, Diana Rickard unpacks the ways that true crime entertainment has impacted public opinion on criminality and the effectiveness of the judicial system, the changes that have been spurred in the judicial system, and the long-lasting effects on our societal beliefs about innocence and wrongful conviction. This is a book I'll be thinking about for a long time to come. Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read an advance copy of this valuable, vital text.

This was good and very well researched and I liked it. It reads more like a text book but maybe that's the point. But I really enjoyed this.
I just reviewed The New True Crime by Diana Rickard. #TheNewTrueCrime #NetGalley

Interesting take on the current state of true crime in society and how it has evolved to where it is now and what they may mean about the genre as a whole. Really made me think about true crime as a whole and just why am I so interested in it.