Beyond Guilt or Innocence: Larger Issues That Making a Murderer Invites Us to Consider
I invite you to consider with me some of the more pervasive, broad issues that Making a Murderer' and other recent, thoughtful treatments of true crime pose. Neither Making a Murderer nor any other film, book, or podcast poses all of these issues directly. But thoughtful viewers, readers, and listeners will discern them in almost any honest exploration of a criminal case.
Most fundamentally, consider the breadth of impoverishment of the human raw material of our justice system. These people include the accused, the victims, and the citizen-witnesses. While we ought not overlook the ways in which they may perceive themselves as having enriched lives, they also disproportionately are impoverished in much broader ways than we usually acknowledge.
Rightly understood, impoverishment does not just refer to the pennies in your pocket. Impoverishment, especially of those drawn into the criminal justice system, takes many forms. It includes impoverishment of education, a fund of general knowledge, family support, literacy, cultural competency, language skills, emotional resources, moral guidance, mental health, spiritual life, and even love. Perhaps most commonly, people enmeshed in the criminal justice system often are mired in a poverty of hope. They have no hope that the criminal justice system will work in their favor or that they ever will free themselves of it permanently, whether as victims or the accused. Indeed, not infrequently, the same people find themselves alternating between both roles.