Police in Honolulu arrested a 21-year-old man relating to a “double shooting” over the weekend in a Kalihi game room. A Kapolei man has been accused of domestic violence and has pleaded not guilty. Those are just two of the several crime stories reported by local news organizations this week.

Stories about people shooting, stabbing and stealing from each other are constants in the news cycle. If all you knew about Hawaii came from the local television news, you might think we are inundated with violent crime and overwhelmed by thieves and miscreants.

These crime stories are often disconnected from the communities in which they take place. They are told with almost no context and do not address long-term crime trends, societal issues and the bigger picture.

That’s because the sources for these stories come almost exclusively from law enforcement.

In many cases, the story starts with an arrest. Police or prosecutors release to the public a mug shot — a far-from-flattering photograph taken almost immediately after the arrest — and a few lines about why the person was arrested. They may even throw in that the person had been arrested before. That’s it.

From there, the mug shot flashes across nightly news and law enforcement’s version of what happened becomes the official news report. It’s easy to forget that the arrest is only the start of a criminal prosecution. It’s even easier, thanks to the mug shot that strongly suggests the person is a criminal, to forget that the person arrested is not guilty.

Another variant of this is what I call the arraignment story. We see it all the time as a follow-up to the arrest. Prosecutors have acted on an arrest and have filed charges. They are brought to court for their arraignment.

The arrested person is now a defendant and the judge needs to know their response to the charge in open court: that they are not guilty and they demand a trial to see if the prosecution can actually prove the allegations against them. While it’s an important part of criminal procedure, it’s hardly newsworthy.

And yet, it’s a regular part of the news. Perhaps the logic is that if the media put stories of the arrest out there, it’s best to continue coverage and show that the prosecutors did something about it.

Maybe it’s good to follow up on the initial story about the arrest and show that the prosecutor’s office has taken action. But even then, the arraignment story presents other problems.

If defendants cannot afford to bail out after the arrest, they are stuck in jail. So now the news shows them pleading not guilty in handcuffs and wearing jumpsuits. Sure they’re not guilty, but they look like they have been convicted and sentenced. In some stories, the news will bring back the initial mug shot in the same story reinforcing that impression of guilt.

After the arraignment, the news crews come back for trial or sentencing — if the media comes back at all. Sentencing someone already in custody, after the mug shot, the arraignment while incarcerated, and the guilty verdict feels like a foregone conclusion. If there’s a different result like a not-guilty verdict or dismissal of the case, it comes as a surprise.

Crime stories like this have a cumulative effect. The steady diet of these stories can leave people feeling vulnerable and worried about their safety. And yet, nationwide trends show that violent crime is actually going down.

Without context, the story leaves out important information.

Let’s say the defense argues that the police in investigating a case violated the suspect’s constitutional rights by going into his house or her car without a search warrant. That requires prosecutors to defend what the police did and will usually bring the officers to court to testify at a hearing. These kinds of court hearings routinely happen in courts across the country.

What if the media reported the court hearing the same way it reports arrests and arraignments without context? It could leave people with the impression that the officer committed misconduct even if the prosecution later proves no constitutional violation. What if the news constantly reported these hearings, implying that the police are constantly searching homes, cars, and people without warrants violating the constitution left and right?

Is that actually the case? Who knows without context. A story about a single case and the hearings in one case cannot tell you that.

Why is low-level crime reported at all? Is it good and responsible journalism to report these stories without context?

This year the Poynter Institute, a longtime advocate and leader in principled reporting, partnered up with The Just Trust, another organization aimed at reforming the criminal legal system, to design and implement a re-education program for newsrooms.

The program urges media organizations to shift coverage away from sensationalizing individual criminal cases, avoid stereotyping in reporting, and reduce harm to the communities that are often depicted as dangerous and crime-infested.

The Poynter Institute’s efforts are part of a building consensus among news organizations to move away from the traditional crime story. For the last three years or so, news organizations in major cities have stopped using mug shots in their stories.

Some have even stopped identifying defendants by name and stopped reporting low-level criminal cases all together. The Biloxi Sun Herald explained that flooding the media with these stories creates a false impression that Mississippi is inundated with crime.

When the Houston Chronicle joined them in 2020, its managing editor put it best: “We’re better than that.”

A spokesman for the local sheriff’s office praised the decision and hoped “other media outlets and law enforcement agencies will follow your lead and rethink the practice of publicly shaming arrested people who haven’t been convicted of a crime.”

Hawaii sure isn’t Houston. The often quoted and cynical phrase, “if it bleeds, it leads” remains the guiding principle in the islands.