ABSTRACT
The crimes that dominate the public consciousness and policy debates are not common crimes but the rarest ones. Whether in entertainment or news, the crimes that define criminality are the acts of predator criminals. Our desire to understand and control these seemingly incomprehensible and uncontrollable criminals is long-standing and is reflected in
much of our classic literature.! However, the modern mass media have raised the specter of the predator criminal from a minor character to a common, ever-present image. Predator criminals are modern icons of the mass media. As with other icons, they represent a largely unquestioned set of beliefs about the world, a constructed reality that, as the aphorism "perception is reality" suggests, has the ability to shape the actual world to fit the media image. In the world of crime and justice, the icon of predator crime pushes life to imitate art.
