Perp Walks as Contested Rituals: Documents, Affordances, and Performances

Abstract

Purpose: This project examines both the media practice of covering perp walks and the discourse of perp walks as performative rituals, with the goal of understanding how grounded practice shapes meaning.

Methodology/approach: This project combines ethnographic observation and interview research to explore the grounded experience of perp walk participants, including journalists, law enforcement, and defendants.

Findings: The analysis suggests that perp walks are constructions that serve the interests of the state and that their resulting images are not neutral documents. Visual journalists are managed by law enforcement through embodied gatekeeping in practice and experience pressure from newsrooms to capture a particular moment. Defendants report feeling violated because they are unable to control the discourse of their recontextualized image.

Research limitations: As a qualitative-research project using a non-representative sample, the study results cannot be generalized, but they instead offer a rich understanding of embodied practice.

Originality/value: Because this study offers the subjective perspectives of three sets of stakeholders, including journalists, law enforcement, and defendants, it offers a unique and in-depth analysis of perp walks as media ritual.

Citation

Bock, M.A. (2021), "Perp Walks as Contested Rituals: Documents, Affordances, and Performances", Wiest, J.B. (Ed.) Theorizing Criminality and Policing in the Digital Media Age (Studies in Media and Communications, Vol. 20), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 89-108. https://doi.org/10.1108/S2050-206020210000020011