True-crime documentaries and podcasts are not 'pointless'. They are necessary

For those who think that consuming true crime is a “guilty pleasure”, “pointless”, makes them feel uneasy, or, as one critic put it of the Channel 4 series I co-present with actress Emilia Fox – In the Footsteps of Killers – “ick”, let me explain why.

Understanding where, why and when interpersonal violence is likely to occur is not just an individual survival strategy but, at a social level, also allows us to tackle and therefore reduce violent behaviour, which is all too often disproportionately targeted at women and several groups which – for whatever reason – are “othered” in our culture. Serial killers, for example, disproportionately target sex workers, older women and gay men. The different, but at times overlapping, vulnerabilities of these groups are created by choices made in our political and criminal justice processes, and by cultural attitudes and prejudices more generally, such as homophobia and misogyny.

We might consume true crime for all kinds of reasons but the best of true crime is beneficial, rather than tasteless. From podcasts that have exonerated those who have been wrongly convicted, to armchair detectives who have solved cold cases, true crime goes into territory that the conventional agents of law and order seem ill-equipped to follow, or lack the skills to do so successfully. On a recent case, I even suggested to the detectives that I was working with that they should listen to a This American Life podcast about Lissa Yellow Bird, who founded an organisation dedicated to searching for Native Americans who go missing in North Dakota. What could we learn from her, that we might harness ourselves?

More generally it has been true-crime which has all too often done the heavy-lifting to expose our deadly, cultural fault lines in the past and found a way to bring a whole range of prejudices and biases to wider attention – this in itself is why true crime should never be seen as “ick” but as necessary.

However, it’s here that we need to acknowledge that when the term “true crime” is now used it hides a variety of sub-genres and styles, and a dizzying array of platforms on which it might be delivered. True-crime podcasts, for example, are at the cutting edge of the zeitgeist and, depending on where they are made, seem to be governed by different legal constraints from TV documentaries, but are universally seen to be a mechanism to make cold cases hot again, and to right historic injustices. They also have the advantage over television series such as ours in that they can literally devote years to the making of the podcast and harness an army of armchair detectives (itself another sub-genre) to do their research, share intelligence and track down the most untraceable lead. What this type of podcast and In the Footsteps of Killers share is rarely acknowledged.

The cases that we feature are not just cold, but many are deep-frozen. If they generated attention at all, it was usually only a few lines in a local newspaper and the victim has long been forgotten except by their surviving family members and friends. These were cold cases which, by and large, did not make it onto the front pages of national newspapers and certainly not onto the broadcast news. For the families, exposure of their loved-one’s case within the series is like a last throw of the dice in the hope of getting justice.

My mention here of the families of the victims is deliberate. We have never made an episode of the series without the full knowledge of the family of the victim who is at the heart of the story, and sometimes with their on-screen participation. Indeed, more generally, it is often the families themselves who have reached out to me in my academic role as a criminology professor at Birmingham City University to ask if their loved-one’s case could be featured. And, since the new series began in January, 10 new families have already come forward to ask if we would consider making an episode about the murder of their son, father, uncle, mother, aunt, daughter or friend in any future series. No matter what the police say about “no case ever being cold”, that is not what these families experience, and nor do they seem to have been able to convince any of the more established “crime correspondents” of national newspapers to take up their case.

In the Footsteps of Killers has a style of its own – a way of presenting the story as an unfolding drama that we accept might not be to everyone’s taste. However, it has garnered over a million viewers and those who seem to be least impressed can’t help but reveal their own elitism and snobbery. The series is serious and authentic and, quite apart from harnessing my own criminological skills, years of experience of working with violent offenders, and my work on live police investigations, we also feature the considerable talents and applied work of Dr Graham Hill – a senior investigating officer and criminologist who has managed hundreds of murder investigations, is an expert about the offending behaviour of predatory paedophiles and helps to train FBI profilers.

Of course, the presence of Silent Witness star Emilia has brought to the series both an audience more used to crime fiction and a surprising amount of criticism. That criticism seems to be centred on the fact that she is an actor, rather than an investigator. However, she has never claimed to be an investigator but sticks to her role in the series which is to ask me and Graham the questions that the audience might have when we inevitably start to use acronyms and the language of our own criminological or policing shorthand. Actors should “keep to their lane” we were told.  Really?  Even so, and this is my observation rather than Emilia’s, no one seems to have criticised Volodymyr Zelensky – an actor who played the part of the President of Ukraine in a TV comedy series before becoming the President of Ukraine. He seems to be doing a good job.

So, please don’t think that watching, listening to or reading true crime is something to be ashamed of but is instead a very credible way of helping you to assess current vulnerabilities in our society that are more than likely going to be exploited by those who want to kill. By all means don’t watch In the Footsteps of Killers if it is not to your taste – that’s your right, but please don’t misrepresent what we are trying to do with the series and our sincerity about helping the families of the victims who are featured.

I know that I speak for Emilia, Graham and myself when I say that we are passionate about getting justice for the families of these murder victims – victims who had all too often been ignored or stigmatised in their lives and continued to be ignored even after they had been killed.

The final episode of In the Footsteps of Killers airs on Thursday 16 February on Channel 4 at 10pm