CHICAGO — Last summer, federal prosecutors announced an investigation into the New York Police Department’s special victims division and its handling of sex abuse cases. The allegations include a decadelong history of “failing to conduct basic investigative steps and instead shaming and abusing survivors and re-traumatizing them during investigations.”
That’s the opposite of what we see on the NBC police drama “Law & Order: SVU,” now in its 24th season. Abusing survivors and retraumatizing them? Olivia Benson would never. Just last week, the fictional police captain played by Mariska Hargitay told a smirking young man accused of assaulting his girlfriend: “Think this is funny? SVU takes these kinds of allegations” — dramatic pause — “very seriously.”
The TV series is often lauded because it does take stories of domestic and sexual crimes seriously. Seeing that dramatized in a fictional context is one way to help the wider public understand how these abuses occur and why survivors are never to blame for the violence they’ve experienced.
“But these are stories that make cops the savior,” said TaLisa J. Carter, who is an assistant professor in the Department of Justice, Law & Criminology at American University. “Whereas victims of many crimes, including sexual assault, do not see cops as saviors at all.”
Even so, the show has created a persuasive alternate reality.
“Because of what people see on ‘SVU,’ there’s an expectation that you’ll encounter a sympathetic environment in real life,” Carter said. In other words: That you’ll get someone like the deeply sympathetic Olivia Benson assigned to your case. But the concerns outlined in the aforementioned investigation put that assumption into question. “And in reality,” Carter added, “most of these cases don’t go to trial. The quickness with which DNA results come back, I hate that on all cop shows, it’s just not true. Rape kits will sit untested for years. But that’s not the way it’s portrayed on these shows.”
“SVU” also validates misconduct, Carter said. “Like when cops have emotional flair-ups.” Because they care. “While it makes for good TV and makes these characters relatable, how often do we see situations of misconduct where the main characters are penalized? They might have to go in front of a committee, but there are rarely any consequences.”
This is where “SVU” becomes so jumbled. It presents a fantasy version of how policing in New York’s special victims division should work, but that fantasy allegedly doesn’t extend to the cops themselves being held accountable.
Has the show indoctrinated viewers to the idea that police shouldn’t face consequences? Don’t come down on these heroes like Olivia Benson, because they’re just trying to do their jobs?
Viewers are capable of distinguishing how we feel about fictional stories and what’s happening in real life. But “Law & Order: SVU” has been on the air for a quarter of a century, reinforcing a specific message that may not match reality. Has it served as de facto PR for New York’s actual special victims division?
The term of art is “copaganda.” But “you can probably go further,” Carter said. “Media is how we learn about things and it can’t be decoupled from that.”
It’s fair to wonder if the people involved in making the show and profiting from it — from executive producer Dick Wolf on down — feel any kind of way about the allegations being leveled at the real life division, and whether the show’s idealized depictions have undermined efforts to get these concerns taken seriously.
“The intention of the show’s writers or the cast, those things are irrelevant,” said Carter. “Impact is what matters. And the show is sanitizing how victims interact with law enforcement. And what happens is, as a society, we become ill-equipped for the realities of that experience.”
Carter teaches intro to criminology and critical issues in justice. Each semester, she said, she encounters that bubble. “I’ll ask my students: What do you expect to get from this class? And ‘SVU’ comes up every time.
“It’s a recruitment tool. Whether or not that’s the way it was formed, that’s what it’s doing. People are coming to universities with these kinds of prototypes in mind, with Olivia Benson in mind.
“So what happens is that I have to burst their bubbles and give them more to chew on. And that can be a challenge, especially for people who walk into the classroom with firm assumptions based on what they’ve seen on TV.”
“Law & Order: SVU” has become a social phenomenon, Carter said, by virtue of being on the air for so long. As an educator, she has to understand that “this is the knowledge that people are walking in with.”
That’s also true of everyone else, who isn’t a student in Carter’s class.
“These are their stories,” the show’s tagline promises the start of each episode. Even when we know it’s just a television show, those words give “Law & Order: SVU” the imprimatur of legitimacy, subtly blurring the disconnect between fact and fiction.
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