"Crime film and television has proliferated such influential variations as the Depression-era gangster film; the post-World War studies in corruption known as film noir; the pro-police procedural of that time; and then the violent rogue-cop stories that eventually became cop action in the 1980s ... Recent developments include the neo- noir erotic thriller; the rise of the corrupt cop anti-hero, paralleled by the forensic procedural, often focused on baroque serial killers; and the near disappearance of black crime movies from cinema screens. ... Hollywood studios have chased headlines in search of marketable stories, mainly those bearing on social problems of the day: incarceration, immigrant crime, prostitution, insurrection, corruption in government."

--Neal King, Rayanne Streeter, and Talitha Rose,
   Cultural Studies Approaches to the Study of Crime

in Film and on Television