Central Park Five Documentary Analysis

The 2012 Ken Burns documentary entitled The Central Park Five offers disturbing insight into institutionalized racism and the criminal justice system. Co-produced by Sarah Burns and David McMahon, The Central Park Five is about five children of color—teenagers—who were wrongfully convicted of multiple charges including sexual assault. In addition to illuminating the way the media can feed into racial stereotypes about criminality, the documentary also shows how law enforcement uses unethical tactics of interrogation to secure a conviction at all costs. Pressures to arrest and convict are shared among all members of the law enforcement team, even though individual officers will claim that they were following orders. Therefore, The Central Park Five is also instructive for the way it shows how police organizational culture needs to change. The practices and tactics used by New York police undermine the constitutional rights of citizens to due process.
Essentially, the five teenagers referred to in the film’s title were treated as if they were guilty and were manipulated and coerced into a false confession. As Drizin & Leo (2004) point out, false confessions elicited in cases like the Central Park Five are a matter of procedural injustice. Thankfully, DNA evidence now exists to exonerate the five young men and scores of innocent people like them. Yet the police interrogation techniques used on the Central Park Five planted suggestions into the minds of the suspects, causing them to “internalize guilt” and “confabulate details in memory consistent with that belief,” (Kassin & Kiechel, 1996, p. 125). Using actual audio from the confession, Burns shows how incrdibly detailed false confessions can be. The film shows how the police badgered the boys to such a degree that they came to believe that they had in fact committed the crime, which is what led to the false confession.
The fact that the boys were still teenagers is also important because juveniles are far more susceptible to police pressure and are, as the film shows, vulnerable to false confessions (Drake, Gonzalez, Sigurdsson, et al., 2017). Were it not for the DNA evidence and the actual perpetrator miraculously having leaked his confession to the crime to a fellow inmate, the five boys would still be in prison. Wrongful convictions are a miscarriage of justice. To reduce instances of wrongful convictions, it is critical that police improve their interrogation techniques even if it means slowing down an investigation.
In addition to the issues surrounding police interrogations, adolescent vulnerability, and false confessions, The Central Park Five also directly addresses the issue of racial bias and media coverage. As Duru (2004) points out, the Central Park Five is one of a litany of cases that was based around the “myth of the bestial black man,” (p. 1315). The filmmakers show how the five boys were portrayed in the media as “wildling” and “wolf pack,” essentially providing the American public with propaganda that played right into the prosecution’s hands. Even if jurors could be truly neutral, which they can never be, their prior exposure to similar cases involving young men of color would have created biases about what criminals look like. Media coverage can make or break a case, influencing public opinion, placing political pressure on the police to make arrests and convictions hastily, and influencing members of the jury.
Likewise, the perception that young black men are criminals biases the police, preventing them from making logical decisions based on evidence instead of prejudice. The film focuses on the five boys, but should have also pointed out the victim characteristics and why that mattered a lot in this case. Audience members are only tacitly aware that the jogger—the victim of the crime—is a wealthy white woman. In cases like these, the victim characteristics mean almost as much as the racial profile of the perpetrators: the Central Park Five. An assault on a black woman does not gain as much media attention because from the media’s perspective, as well as that of law enforcement, black lives matter less.
It is interesting that the New York police opted not to tell their side of the story for the purposes of the documentary: which is itself another major issue the film elucidates. Law enforcement needs to build bridges with the community if it wants to regain credibility and traction and gain the support of the public in solving crimes and keeping neighborhoods safe. Trust is eroded when the police defend their own against corruption and unwarranted use of force, or unethical interrogation techniques. The police should admit to their fault in this case, willing to acknowledge that their methods were unjust so that future officers will feel empowered to do the right thing. Although the five young men did eventually get released from prison, they cannot regain those ten years of their lives. The Burns documentary The Central Park Five is a powerful reminder of the uphill battle still being fought to improve the criminal justice system.
The Central Park Five is therefore important on many levels: showing how the media impacts criminal justice procedures, decisions on how and whether to prosecute, and pressuring police to use unethical tactics. The film directly discusses racial bias in the society and within law enforcement in particular. Likewise, the film showcases prevailing interrogation tactics, which include planting of information that can mislead a witness or a suspect. The interrogation techniques “work” in the sense that they get results; the results may occasionally lead to actual confessions but far too often cause an innocent person to self-incriminate. Not all cases can be resolved using DNA evidence, and it is critical that law enforcement reconsider its priorities and focus more on the principles of ethics and justice when prosecuting.









References

Drake, K.E., Gonzalez, R.A., Sigurdsson, J.F., et al. (2017). A national study into temperament as a critical susceptibility factor for reported false confessions amongst adolescents. Personality and Individual Differences 111(2017): 220-226.
Drizin, S.A. & Leo, R.A. (2004). The problem of false confessions in the post-DNA world. 82 N.C. L. Rev. 891 (2003-2004).
Duru, N.J. (2004). The Central Park Five, the Scottsboro Boys, and the myth of the bestial black man. 25 Cardozo L. Rev. 1315 (2003-2004).
Kassin, S.M. & Kiechel, K.L. (1996). The social psychology of false confessions. Psychological Science 7(3): 125-128.