Something needs to be done about bias. In our modern society, we are constantly being exposed to biased media, be it on the big screen in our living rooms or a tiny device in the palm of our hand. Most mass mediums all have their different biases about events that occur throughout the world, which is fine (who am I to tell you in what to believe?), but they typically portray these biases as facts. In addition to this, bias in the justice system has led to multiple errors, leading to multiple people being wrongfully convicted of crimes. Throughout this piece, I will identify why bias is such a prevalent problem, and how we can work towards eliminating this issue.

 

Biased Media

During a talk by Dr Christian Perrin, Criminal Psychologist, at UWCSEA East, he addresses a student’s inquiry on society’s impact on criminal rehabilitation. He speaks of how throughout history, biased media has played a negative role in the portrayal of ex-cons. These views aren’t unsubstantiated either. A 1992 report illustrates that up to 95% of the population rely on mass media (newspapers, television news) as their primary source of information on crime. The problem with this is that a lot of people are content with accepting any one source as fact, which removes any objectivity and perspective they might have gained from other sources. This is because many mass mediums claim that their opinionated views are facts, and should be taken as such, which leaves many consumers to believe so.

Use of warped graph in an attempt to misrepresent facts

For example, we can analyse how mass media in the US has shaped the average US citizen’s prejudice in relation to criminals. In an interview with Nazgol Ghandhoosh, a research analyst for the nonprofit group ‘the Sentencing Project’, she mentions the disparities in people’s perception and the facts: “ …people estimated that 40% of those who committed violent crimes who were African American when the actual rate was 29%… public overestimates black participation in crimes such as burglaries drug sales and juvenile crimes by somewhere between 20 to 30 percent… Americans have estimated that about 27% of violent crime is committed by Hispanics. And that figure actually exceeds the proportion of Hispanics in the prison population, that’s 17%...”

Note: notice the sly misrepresentation of numbers while she talks about the Hispanic numbers. She tries to convince us using facts but doesn’t use the right ones.

In the arsenal of mass media the average person holds in their everyday lives, a large proportion of it holds a bias which tends to portray crime and criminals in the wrong light. This inaccuracy in their representation is detrimental to criminals and their reintegration into society, due to society’s over-reliance on the biased mass media and their representation of the ‘facts’.

 

Confirmation Bias

Encyclopedia Britannica defines confirmation bias as “the tendency to process information by looking for, or interpreting, information that is consistent with one’s existing beliefs.” People also tend to downplay/downgrade other sources which may contradict their own personal beliefs. This tendency leads people to ignore sources that oppose their opinion and hold the source which supports their belief as sacred; it removes people’s ability to be objective. The best example of this in current events is the anti-vaxx surge in the US, which is the direct root of the recent measles outbreak (which at the time of writing this has already affected 50 people). Anti-vaxx parents wade through the hundreds of articles and reports which show that vaccinations and autism hold no correlation, to find the handful of questionably researched reports which support their belief. Some of them are creating and spreading these ‘reports’ themselves.

In relation to crime, there is a rather disturbing real-life example of confirmation bias as well. In 1982, an 18-year-old African-American man by the name of Marvin Lamont Anderson was convicted of robbery, abduction, and rape. According to Dr White, chair of the Department of Philosophy at the College of Staten Island, there was “very weak evidence supporting the prosecution’s case, questionable eyewitness identification, and four alibi witnesses that testified to seeing him in the same place [nowhere near the crime].” There was actually stronger evidence of the actual perpetrator, John Otis Lincoln (a man with similar features), committing the crime rather than Mr Anderson (some evidence led back to Mr Lincoln). Yet this line of inquiry was never pursued after Mr Anderson became the main suspect. Mr Anderson was found guilty on all charges by a predominantly Caucasian jury and was to spend the rest of his life in prison. The true exclamation mark to this case was when the true perpetrator, Mr Lincoln, came forward under oath and confessed his involvement at a state hearing in 1988. The judge who presided over the original trial “refused to credit Lincoln’s confession (finding it false), and Anderson served out his prison term and parole until DNA testing conclusively identified Lincoln as the attacker.” The judge’s confirmation bias let the

Confirmation bias has an actual negative impact throughout the criminal justice system, and people are properly getting wrongly convicted from it. So what can we do? How can we help prevent this?

 

What Can We Do?

Biased ‘facts’ and our tendency to treat them as proofs are prevalent problems in our society. They have the ability to affect our everyday lives, whether we are aware of it or not. So how can we help educate people on how to identify the biases we encounter every day, be it through media or our own? I propose having better and more modern curriculums which help teach youth how to effectively grow up in our modern society. If we are able to educate the youth on how to distinguish facts from fiction, on how to understand that their point of view may not be as substantiated as they may claim, we may be able to fix the issue. Mind you, I’m not saying that having a bias is a bad thing. It’s quite the opposite, actually; we should all have our own opinions, values, and beliefs. Be it the sandwich you order in the deli line, or your views on abortion. Bias is a part of human nature, and we should never attempt to completely exterminate it. But when bias (from the media or from ourselves) starts leading to detrimental consequences to the people in our community, should something be changed.

And I do believe that something should be changed.