Ballistics, Bertillonage, and Ballyhoo

Abstract

This chapter considers some key intersections between cinema and criminal science, centering on a little-known case study: so-called suspect films—observational shorts produced initially by the New Jersey State Police and an assortment of municipal counterparts and later by private companies like RCA, Universal, and General Electric. As this case study reveals, cinema’s utility as a tool of policing was far from simple or self-evident. It had to be carefully constructed, aggressively promoted, and rendered profitable in a political economy in which the line between public service and private profit was rarely very distinct.