Police procedural

The police procedural, or police crime drama, is a subgenre of detective fiction which attempts to convincingly depict the activities of a police force as they investigate crimes. While traditional detective novels usually concentrate on a single crime, police procedurals frequently depict investigations into several unrelated crimes in a single story. While traditional mysteries usually adhere to the convention of having the criminal's identity concealed until the climax (the so-called whodunit), in police procedurals, the perpetrator's identity is often known to the audience from the outset (the inverted detective story). Police procedurals depict a number of police-related topics such as forensics, autopsies, the gathering of evidence, the use of search warrants, and interrogation.

Early history

The roots of the police procedural have been traced to at least the mid-1880s. Wilkie Collins's novel The Moonstone (1868), a tale of a Scotland Yard detective investigating the theft of a valuable diamond, has been described as perhaps the earliest clear example of the genre.

Procedural

Procedural may refer to:

Procedural (genre)

A Procedural is a cross-genre type of literature, film, or television program involving a sequence of technical detail. A documentary film may be written in a procedural style to heighten narrative interest.

Types of media

Television

Fiction

In television, "procedural" specifically refers to a genre of programs in which a problem is introduced, investigated and solved all within the same episode. These shows tend to be hour-long dramas, and are often (though not always) police or crime related.

The general formula for a police procedural involves the commission or discovery of a crime at the beginning of the episode, the ensuing investigation, and the arrest or conviction of a perpetrator at the end of the episode.

The best known examples of this genre are the Law & Order, CSI & NCIS franchises. House is an example of a non-crime-related procedural.

Procedural programming

Procedural programming is a programming paradigm, derived from structured programming, based upon the concept of the procedure call. Procedures, also known as routines, subroutines, or functions (not to be confused with mathematical functions, but similar to those used in functional programming), simply contain a series of computational steps to be carried out. Any given procedure might be called at any point during a program's execution, including by other procedures or itself. Procedural programming languages include C, Go, Fortran, Pascal, and BASIC.

Computer processors provide hardware support for procedural programming through a stack register and instructions for calling procedures and returning from them. Hardware support for other types of programming is possible, but no attempt was commercially successful (for example Lisp machines or Java processors).

Procedures and modularity

Modularity is generally desirable, especially in large, complicated programs. Inputs are usually specified syntactically in the form of arguments and the outputs delivered as return values.

Crime

In ordinary language, the term crime denotes an unlawful act punishable by a state. The term "crime" does not, in modern criminal law, have any simple and universally accepted definition, though statutory definitions have been provided for certain purposes. The most popular view is that crime is a category created by law; in other words, something is a crime if declared as such by the relevant and applicable law. One proposed definition is that a crime or offence (or criminal offence) is an act harmful not only to some individual or individuals but also to a community, society or the state ("a public wrong"). Such acts are forbidden and punishable by law.

The notion that acts such as murder, rape and theft are to be prohibited exists worldwide. What precisely is a criminal offence is defined by criminal law of each country. While many have a catalogue of crimes called the criminal code, in some common law countries no such comprehensive statute exists.

The state (government) has the power to severely restrict one's liberty for committing a crime. In modern societies, there are procedures to which investigations and trials must adhere. If found guilty, an offender may be sentenced to a form of reparation such as a community sentence, or, depending on the nature of their offence, to undergo imprisonment, life imprisonment or, in some jurisdictions, execution.

Crime & Investigation Network (Australia)

Crime & Investigation Network (also known as CI) is an Australian digital cable and satellite television channel which focuses on crime, investigation and mystery programming. It is run by Foxtel Management Pty Ltd and programming and name are licensed to them by A&E Television Networks.

The channel shows a variety of shows dealing with criminal investigations. The content is mostly sourced from overseas except for limited original content such as the popular Crime Investigation Australia hosted by Steve Liebmann focusing on infamous Australian crimes.

In 2007, the channel became available in New Zealand on SKY TV, Channel 071

Programming

See also

Crime (novel)

Crime is a 2008 novel by Scottish writer Irvine Welsh. It is the sequel to his earlier novel, Filth.

Plot summary

The main protagonist is Ray Lennox; a Detective Inspector with the Lothian and Borders Police who attempts to recover from a mental breakdown induced by stress, cocaine and alcohol abuse and a child murder case in Edinburgh in which he was the lead investigating officer by taking a holiday in Florida with his fiancée, Trudi. The pair meet up with Eddie 'Ginger' Rodgers, one of Lennox's retired former colleagues, and his wife Delores, and they all drink into the early hours of the morning. The next morning Lennox finds himself craving more alcohol and goes to a bar with Trudi where they have an argument which causes Trudi to angrily leave the bar. Lennox continues drinking heavily. Soon afterwards he meets two women, Starry and Robyn, in a different bar and they all go back Robyn's apartment where they drink more alcohol and take cocaine. They are soon joined by two men, Lance Dearing and Johnnie, and a fight breaks out a short time later when Lennox sees Johnnie is sexually assaulting Tianna, Robyn's ten-year-old daughter. Lennox incapacitates Johnnie and struggles with Dearing who ultimately leaves the apartment with everyone except Lennox and Tianna, who have locked themselves in a bathroom. After a fight Lennox is left in the apartment with Tianna, the 10-year-old daughter of one of the women.