Visualizing the Future of the Public Safety Beat

The images found in stories about crime and the criminal legal system tend to fit into one of the following categories:

• Images of police and policing equipment
  • Examples: police officers, police tape, police lights, police cars, handcuffs
• Images of confinement and control
  • Examples: barbed wire, prison gates, guard towers, bars, restraints
• Images of people accused or convicted of crimes
  • Examples: mugshots, people in handcuffs, people in a courtroom

While these images may appear to be straightforward, they contain numerous but subtle biases, including that they: 

• Emphasize people who respond to crime over people impacted by crime;
• Imply that policing and other forms of punishment are inherently linked to public safety;
• Perpetuate harmful racial stereotypes;
• Dehumanize people accused or convicted of crimes; and
• Sensationalize crime. 

Photographs of police are perhaps the most pervasive image in public safety reporting. Of course, there are some instances in which this makes sense: a profile of a new police chief, a story about a new policing tactic, an investigation of police violence. But images of police are also used in stories that are not directly related to policing at all. They show up in stories about crime rates, shoplifting, criminal legal reform, homelessness, overdose deaths, and on and on.

These images pose two problems. First, they emphasize people who respond to crime over people impacted by crime. Stories about gun homicide and other acts of violence often feature images of police and other first responders rather than the people harmed or their loved ones. These choices draw attention away from the heart of the story. Second, they imply that policing is inherently linked to public safety, serving as a subtle, if unintentional, endorsement of policing. In fact, there are myriad ways to respond to crime and other types of harm, and communities across the country are trying out new approaches: unarmed crisis intervention workers, violence interrupters, expanded drug treatment, supportive housing, etc… But images of those people and programs rarely show up in public safety reporting. By continuing to default to images of police, journalists circumscribe the policy responses to crime that people can imagine.

The images of people (other than police) that appear in public safety reporting pose an additional set of problems. First, they often perpetuate racial stereotypes. Because Black people are disproportionately arrested and those arrests are disproportionately covered by the news media, many of the mugshots that appear in the news are of Black people. These images, like the stories they appear in, prime negative racial stereotypes. Fortunately, newsrooms across the country have begun to recognize this problem. Many have restricted their use of mugshots, often citing the presumption of innocence and the harm done to communities of color.

A great deal has been written about the use of mugshots and the steps that many newsrooms have taken to end or limit their use, so we will not go into further detail in this report. For those interested in learning more about recent trends in the use of mugshots, see these pieces from Poynter, The Marshall Project, and NiemanLab. For those interested in hearing directly from newsrooms who have limited the use of mugshots, see these pieces from Cleveland.com, the (Biloxi) Sun Herald, and the Orlando Sentinel. 

It’s not just mugshots that dehumanize people accused or convicted of crimes. Stories about crime and the criminal legal system often feature images of people in handcuffs, wearing jumpsuits, or behind bars. Those images reduce people to what is likely one of the worst experiences of their lives. While images of people in court, jail, or prison may make sense for some stories, the composition of these images often presents people in a menacing light, compounding their dehumanizing effect. Images that were perhaps intended as a more humane alternative to mugshots, like stock photos of anonymous individuals, are often no better. A disembodied image of a pair of hands in cuffs literally reduces a person to their experience with the criminal legal system. 

These editorial choices are united by one central theme: they sensationalize crime with lurid or alarming images. Of course, tragic and frightening things happen that warrant media coverage, but the role of journalists is not to stoke fear or to make a spectacle of any given crime. According to their own mission statements, the job of media outlets is to help people understand the world. Sensationalized images do little to help people understand what drives crime and what works to reduce it. Even more troublingly, these images don’t just show up in stories about serious harm; they also appear in stories that aren’t about threats to public safety at all. For example, the lead image in this story about declining crime rates is of people allegedly stealing from a mall. A story that is meant to inform people about a reduction in crime leads with an image that contradicts its message. 

In a rapidly changing media landscape that is increasingly focused on visuals, photojournalists and editors have the opportunity to rethink the images they use to tell stories about public safety. The following sections offer recommendations for selecting images and examples of pathbreaking photojournalism from news outlets across the country.  

Lessons from Selin Thomas, Art Director at The Trace

In addition to the general recommendations and guidance provided in this report, reporters, editors, photojournalists, and others can learn from art directors at outlets that are changing public safety reporting one image at a time. One such publication is The Trace, a nonprofit newsroom with a team of journalists exclusively dedicated to reporting on the United States’ gun violence crisis. Below are some of the guidelines they use in their work and examples of how they use imagery “to improve public understanding, increase accountability, and identify solutions that can lead to safer homes and communities for all Americans.”

This guidance was written by Selin Thomas, who is a senior editor at The Trace, where she leads the newsroom's production processes, serves as photo editor for stories, and manages ongoing coverage areas. She is also a contributing feature writer.

At The Trace, we are exclusively dedicated to covering gun violence, so we deal with issues of how to accurately and ethically represent crime and justice — and the people at their center —  everyday. As The Trace’s art director, I’ve taken lessons from other outlets, colleagues, photographers, and perhaps most importantly from the daily execution of the work itself. It’s not always possible to commission or access the perfect image; missteps are part of the process. But I’ve found certain guidelines helpful in keeping the quality and appearance of our work consistent and compelling. 

Brainstorming the ideal image

In trying to bridge the gap between the text of a given story and the impression made and left by the story’s visuals, my work first involves pulling out the most basic information, or understanding the who, what, why, where, and when. Then, I read a bit more deeply into (or directly ask about) its more abstract themes, arguments, and context. This may include gleaning the motivations of the reporter and editor in covering the story for our newsroom; placing it in the wider context of existing coverage; looking for indications of when and why the reporting took the turns it did; and paying close attention to the sources chosen to represent the story. All of this information helps me understand the visual needs — to what extent can an image grab someone’s attention, prompt them to click, and reflect the core of the story? 

Finding the best image

As a newsroom, we are rarely chasing breaking news, which allows us to be sensitive to the timing of a shooting and its depiction in our written and visual work. We consider victims and survivors first. We practice skepticism of the powers that be, the criminal justice system, and the official line, and therefore do not rely upon imagery of gun violence itself, its grisly aftermath, or of officials carrying out the duties of law enforcement unless it serves the story. Instead, we depend on our photo commissions and wire image subscriptions to scour for more realistic photos of daily life that give the reader a sense of place and people. If the story is tied to mass violence, we focus on images that show the feelings of those close to it, or that illustrate (sometimes abstractly) the response. When policy or law is involved, we commission illustrations that simplify complexities and show potential effects on daily life. Unless necessary, we avoid imagery that shows guns in use, and we never use imagery (photos or illustrations) that shows a gun pointing at another person. We also consider alleged perpetrators, and don’t use mug shots or perp-walk photos; instead, we try to direct the readers’ attention to another aspect of the proceedings, such as the victims, public response, a neighborhood, or a community leader. 

Ethically navigating the transaction

Journalism, and especially photography, is transactional. In this work, we are often asking people to speak on the most difficult events of their lives — and allow us to photograph them as they do it, sometimes in places that are emotionally fraught. That work is important; it takes the reader closer to the ground, provides a platform, and hopefully holds leaders accountable to those with the least power. But as an industry, we’ve come a long way in realizing that work is not more important than that person’s survival, or even their comfort. In commissioning photography of those affected by gun violence, we prefer to work with photographers who are familiar with sensitive topics, or The Trace’s work specifically, and who live where the story takes place. 

We make sure to open dialogue with them about our newsroom’s specifications, as well as what specific aspects of the subjects’ experience they should be aware of, in order to make the subject(s) as comfortable as possible. We advocate for an empowering photo-taking process that often involves the photographer talking with the reporter directly before reaching out to the photo subject. Rather than instructing them, we include the subject in the process and let them know that they are free to take breaks or end the session. We make it as convenient as we can for their location and schedule. While we don’t preview any part of our editorial work to sources, we do try to get a sense of what the person's comfortable with and their preferences for representing their story and take those into account. 

We also keep evergreen images (for example, general city, neighborhood, and hospital photos) for future use.

Selecting the final image(s)

By the end of an art direction process in collaboration with a photographer, I have a solid read on the final story and how the visual process went overall. I select a first batch mostly on impulse — “What’s grabbing me? What are the best composed and most focused images? Which photos have tension?” A lot of good stuff (that doesn’t serve this particular story) will be left on the cutting room floor. Of the narrow selects, I’ll look for one representative image for the lead, waiting for the final headline and dek before making a firm decision, and select other in-line photos based on the flow of the text, particularly looking to make connections with quotes, section breaks, and key findings of the story. More still will be left behind, and sometimes they can be used later. But in the end, the last person on my mind is the reader — how did I get their attention and how can I keep it?  

When it comes to selecting a wire image, I’m looking for key people in the story, different representations of the story than have been published before, or more place-oriented (sometimes older) images that better reflect the story’s core. 

Below, I've explained the decision-making process behind the lead images in a handful of stories that ran in The Trace.