Criminology Emergency Remote Learning Media Literacy, Sociology, True Crime & Fame #5 - Colton Harris Moore

 In this post, you'll look at Colton Harris-Moore the "Barefoot Bandit" who was raised on Camano Island just north of Everett Washington in the Puget Sound. 

Harris-Moore was sentenced in December 2011 to seven years in state prison for dozens of crimes, including burglary and identity theft, stemming from his two-year run from the law in stolen boats, cars and airplanes. A self-taught pilot, he was finally apprehended in a hail of bullets in the Bahamas in 2010, after he crash-landed a plane stolen from an Indiana airport. He had a fan club and many many articles have been written on him including Time, and Outside Magazine...Twice (by Bob Friel) He also has agreed to sell his life story to 20th Century Fox movie studio for $1.3 million... So, take a watch of the True Crime Story below and if you can then the  "Chasing the Barefoot Bandit" 48 Hours Mystery on him.







Consider strain and social reaction theory (labeling)...do you think Colton Harris Moore will ever be just that? Or will he always be known as Colton Harris Moore, The Barefoot Bandit?

• From 2017 Colton Harris-Moore: Barefoot Bandit is ‘not who I am’
• From 2019 ‘Barefoot Bandit’ fails in bid to end probation early to become a motivational speaker

Now, every society creates its own heroes and villains and has the option to frame them in a way that says something about it. So what does the "outlaw folk-hero" status that Colt Harris-Moore has gained say about who we hold up as heroes or villains in our modern crime-media saturated society? In an article by Paul Ibbetson he states:

Juan McCartney and Mike Melia of the Associated Press say that Harris-Moore has built his reputation as a 21st-century folk hero. Of course thieves don’t “build” as they have no time for such labors. They are too busy stealing what others have built. Even with the factual terminology in place, one cannot say that Harris-Moore even managed steal a reputation as a 21st-century folk hero. No, to be factual it must be said that this young man’s celebrity status was a gift from the media, paid for by modern society.

After watching the True Crime Story on Colton Harris Moore, take a read of this NPR article on Harris-Moore and take a read of this interview with Colton Harris-Moore then answer the following

Is Colton Harris-Moore an outlaw folk-hero or were his actions simply those of an amateur kid criminal? You will need to justify your position but when you do, seriously consider why it is that you think the way you do.

• Ask yourself "Did Colton create an outlaw folk hero status/image on his own or did the media fabricate his new found identity"?
• Ask yourself "Am I attracted to the Barefoot Bandit because he's rebellious and you as teenagers can identify with rebellion against parents, me, police, or authority in general"?
• Ask yourself "What would it be like to be one of the victims of Colton Harris-Moore? Was he some mythical 'Robin Hood' who only took from wealthy families or was that the story he or the media presented to you"?
• Ask yourself "did people become aware of Colton Harris-Moore because of the Internet?  The internet sensationalized and glorified Moore through blogs, Facebook, a fan site and because the general public seemed either unaware or uninterested in Moore, the Internet became the means of his fame. So if there was no Internet would Colton Harris-Moore have been the Barefoot Bandit"?
• Consider from the documentary: plot structure; themes (realistic, fantastical, farcical, superficial, complex, sensitive); technique (camera work, lighting, special effects); editing (pacing, long or short sequences); sound (effects, silence, music); values (what values were embedded within the documentary); mass appeal (choice of characters, choice of content, choice of issues addressed)

Remember, Colton Harris-Moore: Barefoot Bandit is ‘not who I am'

Remember what Paul Ciolino said in the 48 Hours Chasing the Barefoot Bandit,

Colton's journey does read like a movie plot, sprinkled with rich details - like the backpack he carried during his two years on the lam. Inside were keepsakes from a lost childhood: Sketches of airplanes, two photos from the fifth grade and a Boy Scouts of America certificate.
"This is an incredibly sad story," Ciolino said. "I mean, he's been failed at every step of the way. Where does this kid go to reclaim his childhood? We created this criminal and he survived the only way he knew how."

I'll be interested to hear your take on both the documentary and on Colton. Consider the role that socioeconomic structures within a society affect criminality. Specifically the Social Structure view of criminology that examines the impact of poverty on an individual’s chance of committing crimes. There are three major branches of social structure theories that include social disorganization theory, strain theory, and cultural deviance theory and if you look at the document from the Microsoft Teams site you can look at the connection between social disorganization, strain and deviance. It looks like this

A great TV show to look at that would help in order to understand this is the Wire that ran on HBO from 2002-2008. In the show institutional dysfunction and the decay of social structures cause urban Baltimore to become "gritty" and crime is one result.
From IMDb...

Set in Baltimore, this show centers around the city's inner-city drug scene. It starts as mid-level drug dealer, D'Angelo Barksdale beats a murder rap. After a conversation with a judge, Det. James McNulty has been assigned to lead a joint homicide and narcotics team, in order to bring down drug kingpin Avon Barksdale. Avon Barksdale, accompanied by his right-hand man Stringer Bell, enforcer Wee-Bey and many lieutenants (including his own nephew, D'Angelo Barksdale), has to deal with law enforcement, informants in his own camp, and competition with a local rival, Omar, who's been robbing Barksdale's dealers and reselling the drugs. The supervisor of the investigation, Lt. Cedric Daniels, has to deal with his own problems, such as a corrupt bureaucracy, some of his detectives beating suspects, hard-headed but determined Det. McNulty, and a blackmailing deputy. The show depicts the lives of every part of the drug "food chain", from junkies to dealers, and from cops to politicians

Alas district rules preclude me from showing you this (you really should watch it) but it is a great example of strain and anomie.

For this entry I also want you to think about celebrity/fame (or infamy) and how the television and social media channels contributed to "the barefoot Bandit" mythos. From Crime and the media in America

In the 1960s a term was popularized to describe our society’s fascination with violence and crime as a public spectacle called “wound culture.” It is this odd pull towards the abject that has been at the heart of American media. As the future of media looks to integrate social media and news information more and more, there are serious questions to consider. Will algorithms designed to feed us content we “like” lead to even more consumption of crime news? How will that skew our perception of crime in America? Will an illusion of a crime infested America affect our politics?

And from ShoutoutUK  How the media controls our perceptions of crime

Despite the fact that most crime is fairly routine, trivial and non-dramatic, TV programmes such as Crimewatch often pick up on the more serious and violent offences like sexual assault, murder or armed robbery – with reconstructions giving quite a frightening insight into the crime. This focus on the dramatic side of crime is a routine feature on TV programmes or film as well as news reports, and gives a false and misleading impression of the real extent of such crimes.

You could read an interesting scholarly article Consuming Television Crime Drama: A Uses
and Gratifications Approach

There is also a really good Canadian on line piece titled Understanding how the media reports crime

peaking of anomie and strain, we'll look at the "Bling Ring". From Nancy Jo Sales article The Suspects Wore Louboutins

The most audacious burglary gang in recent Hollywood history–accused of stealing more than $3 million in clothing and jewelry from Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, and other stars–appears to be a bunch of club-hopping Valley kids, motivated by vanity and celebrity-worship

and from the article  "Before You See the Bling Ring, Watch the Crazy Reality Show That Helped Inspire It" by Lindsey Weber  and Kyle Buchanan

Pretty Wild, which aired in 2010 (and was produced, oddly enough, by Chelsea Handler), was intended to follow 19-year-old Alexis Neiers as she lived a glamorous party-girl life on the fringe of the Hollywood club circuit. But then real life intervened: In the very first episode, Neiers is arrested for crimes connected to the Bling Ring, the gang of larcenous teens who stole from celebrities like Paris Hilton and Orlando Bloom...Suddenly, the manufactured reality of these Kardashian-emulating lifestyle shows begins to rub up against the very definite reality of a teenager's descent into criminality

and James Franco wrote on Vice

These kids were raised in a culture in which attention equals power, regardless of the value of that attention and the actions that captured it. We have long showered the likes of Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan with such power. The Bling Ringers are only flowing in line with what they’ve been taught, or learned through osmosis depending on your point of view. It’s not what magazines and websites say about the celebrities that the Bling Ringers listen to; it’s the fact that they’re saying stuff about them at all.

Of course Dateline had an episode titled "Secrets of the Bling Ring"

The on line reaction was less than favourable

ABC got in on the act and did a bit on "Inside Hollywood's Bling Ring"

And of course TMZ and E! News were all over the story

By the way...2013 saw the release of Sofia Coppola's movie version of this story called "The Bling Ring"

Then in 2014 Vice profiled Alexis Neiers about he "struggles with addiction, her criminal involvement in the real-life Bling Ring (the inspiration for Sophia Coppola's 2013 film of the same name), and her former Playboy Bunny mother, as well as her new role as a sober mother, attempting to help her ex-boyfriend find a way out of his own crippling heroin and crack addiction".

So, please make sure you think about about celebrity, fame, and how they fit into the social order and structure theories when you're looking at Colton Harris Moore.