Crime communication has always had a place in the media landscape: specialised magazines, TV shows, podcasts and live events dedicated to true crime are nothing new. Criminology itself has studied the public's fascination with crime for decades, recognising its strong narrative potential. The internet and social media have simply increased the speed at which a story is told, commented on and reshared. Some scholars call this “folk criminology” (Verde, 2010): a bottom-up form of interpretation that shifts attention away from analysing phenomena and toward the people involved, who become characters in a story.
«This is criminological gossip: a tendency to pass judgment that we should stay away from, especially in cases still under investigation, as opposed to criminal cases that are already closed and documented by public rulings», says Guido Travaini, associate professor of Forensic Medicine and director of the Master’s programme in Criminology and Forensic Psychopathology at Vita-Salute San Raffaele University. We spoke with him about the most common mistakes and distortions in how crime is portrayed in the media today.
When a violent crime makes front-page news, the media often explain it through psychopathology, attributing the act to an underlying mental illness. Establishing whether that’s the case requires a forensic evaluation and clinical expertise; where no clinical explanation applies, criminological expertise is needed instead.
«The most common misconception we find among students on the first day of the Master’s programme in Criminology and Forensic Psychopathology is that criminologists carry out investigations or intervene at crime scenes. That is the role of the forensic medical examiner» Travaini recalls.
Criminologists often have a non-clinical background. They assess offenders when no psychiatric condition is involved, examining crimes across many areas, from financial offences to gender-based and domestic violence. The forensic psychopathologist follows a different path: a medical degree, ideally with a specialisation in psychiatry and training in forensic medicine, or a degree in psychology with specific training in psychopathology. This professional steps in when a psychiatric disorder drives the offence.
There is no scientific evidence that mental illness, in all its complexity, makes people more likely to commit a crime than the general population does. Forensic psychiatric literature points in the same direction: acquittals based on lack of criminal responsibility are rare. These are cases where an expert assessment finds a direct causal link between mental illness and the offence. Some specific diagnoses are an exception: people with borderline, personality or antisocial disorders are more likely to commit offences for which they are then tried.
Yet crime reporting often reaches for psychopathology to explain the most violent offences. Mental illness reassures people, in a way: it offers a more “acceptable” motive for cases that would otherwise seem incomprehensible. One figure shows how deep-rooted this dynamic is. In the United States, the share of people who consider someone diagnosed with schizophrenia dangerous rose above 60% in 2018. That’s a steady increase over twenty-two years, despite epidemiological evidence that doesn’t support the association (Pescosolido, Manago & Monahan, 2019). «The idea that an ordinary person could kill out of jealousy or over a trivial argument frightens us more than a psychiatric explanation does. Rigorous crime reporting, by contrast, keeps the psychopathological dimension, where present, separate from the criminological one», Travaini explains.
In criminology, a single cause is rare. Crimes are multi-causal and multi-factorial, often a combination of personality traits and, in many cases, alcohol or drug abuse.
The most recent systematic review on the topic looked at data from more than 200,000 people diagnosed with psychotic disorders. It confirms the same pattern: when the risk of violence is high, it always stems from a combination of factors, never from the psychiatric diagnosis alone (Lagerberg, Lambe, Paulino, Yu & Fazel, 2025).
Assuming that psychiatric illness makes someone more likely to offend is a mistake. Some studies even suggest that people with psychiatric disorders are more often victims of crime than offenders, though these findings date back some years. A study by Teplin and colleagues, published in Archives of General Psychiatry, found that the annual incidence of violent crime among people with severe mental illness is more than four times higher than among the wider population: 168.2 incidents per 1,000 people, compared with 39.9 per 1,000. A 2014 study by Desmarais and colleagues, published in the American Journal of Public Health, compiled a database of responses from 4,480 adults with mental illness, who were asked about violence they had committed or experienced in the previous six months. Among them, 23.9% reported committing a violent act, while 30.9% reported experiencing at least one.
Some offences, such as fraud against a person deemed legally incapable, specifically target this population as victims, yet the number of reports filed remains very low. «In the field, we call this a high 'dark figure': a wide gap between crimes actually committed and those reported. This is partly because many people with mental illness don’t know they can file a report, and partly because of the stereotype that they wouldn’t be credible witnesses», the professor explains.
Some crimes affect us more than others because of a well-known mechanism: identifying with the victim. This often happens with femicide cases or random victims. It’s different when the victim seems more distant from our own experience: a celebrity, a politician, a judge or, conversely, someone from the criminal world. The stronger that identification, the greater the social alarm a crime story triggers.
«That’s what has been happening in recent years: overall homicide rates have fallen, but cases where the victims are women or vulnerable people have increased» Travaini observes.
Once the phase of identifying with the victim has passed, the public develops what we might call an “interpretive hunger”: why did this happen, and who was responsible? At this second stage, the crime turns into a story to be told, and the victim and their family fade into the background, overshadowed by the public’s curiosity and its demand for quick, reassuring answers.
But without having examined the case files or met the person involved, no expert can offer exhaustive, conclusive answers.
«That’s why, when discussing a crime story, it’s important to first distinguish between cases already ruled on by the courts and those still under investigation. The latter should be reported with the greatest possible caution, carefully avoiding definitive interpretation» Travaini says.
This caution applies to professional crime reporters and to anyone commenting on a violent incident on social media or in everyday conversation alike. When facts are still being verified, the first step is separating fact from interpretation. Flag it clearly when you’re offering your own reading of events, rather than presenting it as established. And resist jumping to conclusions: the people involved may be at a stage where their responsibility hasn’t yet been determined.
«Just as science communication shouldn’t present a preliminary discovery as definitive», the professor observes, «crime reporting, too, requires particular attention to the limits of the information available and the degree of uncertainty attached to it.»
It’s a distinction that applies to writers and readers alike: responsible crime reporting balances the speed of the story against how certain the available facts actually are.
Teplin, L. A., McClelland, G. M., Abram, K. M., & Weiner, D. A. (2005). Crime victimization in adults with severe mental illness: comparison with the National Crime Victimization Survey. Archives of General Psychiatry, 62(8), 911–921.
Desmarais, S. L., Van Dorn, R. A., Johnson, K. L., Grimm, K. J., Douglas, K. S., & Swartz, M. S. (2014). Community violence perpetration and victimization among adults with mental illnesses. American Journal of Public Health, 104(12), 2342–2349.
Verde, A. (2010). Il reale del delitto e i tre livelli della criminologia: criminologia folk, criminologia istituzionale, criminologia scientifica. In A. Verde & C. Barbieri (Eds.), Narrative del male. Dalla fiction alla vita, dalla vita alla fiction. Milan: FrancoAngeli.
Pescosolido, B. A., Manago, B., & Monahan, J. (2019). Evolving public views on the likelihood of violence from people with mental illness: Stigma and its consequences. Health Affairs, 38(10), 1735–1743.
Lagerberg, T., Lambe, S., Paulino, A., Yu, R., & Fazel, S. (2025). Systematic review of risk factors for violence in psychosis: a 10-year update. British Journal of Psychiatry, 226(2), 100–107.