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Criticism of indeterminate sentencing was initially advanced as part of a larger radical program to transform American society. Yet recent sentencing reform legislation legitimated by this criticism has taken on a con servative character. This development is documented here, and explained in terms of political and social change over the past decade.

This exploratory study of the coverage of serious crime by the New York Post is based on routine crime stories (n = 126) taken from newspapers published in 1951 and 1968. There was an increase in stories about lethal violence. In both years reporters frequently described offenders in terms of age, gender, racial membership, and employment status, and used these descriptions to situate individuals within the social world. Often, the mode of explanation used implied that male youths, nonwhites, and under- or unemployed persons were members of illegitimate social categories. These descriptions, however, included no information that would place violence and serious offenders in the structural or historical context of the postwar period. The article concludes with a discussion of the implications of these findings for an understanding of the ideological con tent of crime news.

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