This volume brings together key debates within cultural studies, media studies, criminology and sociology on the relationship between the media and crime in a postmodern society. The debate has been highlighted by controversies on the effects of media portrayals of violence and crime on the community at large. Real-life crime, crime reconstruction and crime as entertainment are categories that are now so interdependent that the media itself is in danger of confusing the genres as it seeks to profit from their undoubted appeal. This intertextuality is a key theme in this book. The contibutors highlight and theorize the symbiosis that exists between real crime and its representations, from media moral panics, policing the crisis and representing order, to the postmodern confusion of crime and spectacle, trial by media and trials on media. Debates have shown that the media's neutrality in this area is problematic, and this text-book serves as an introduction to thinking in a contemporary debate.