The Reality Behind This Beloved Show's Fictionalized "Special Victims Unit"

photo still from SVU tv show
Zain Murdock
August 14, 2023

Law & Order SVU has been an iconic show since 1999. 

But the real-life Special Victims Division the show’s based on is actually undergoing a Justice Department investigation for “failing to conduct basic investigative steps” and “shaming and abusing survivors and re-traumatizing them during investigations.”

Survivors of sexual violence in New York organized to fight for this massive callout. But to the show’s millions of viewers, SVU detectives are still heroes. And that’s what copaganda does.

Creator Dick Wolf, inspired and counseled by Exonerated Five prosecutor Linda Fairstein, said he wanted to make prosecutors in his franchise lead characters because they’re “doing God’s work.”

When we watch shows like SVU, we’re meant to sympathize with cops and believe they just need more funding, training, and time. Statistically, that isn’t true. 

So it makes sense that many would refuse the idea of a future without police and prisons. Because, “What would we do about the rapists?”

We have to remember that in the reality of the criminal legal system, sexual violence continues to be pervasive without true justice and accountability. Survivors are silenced and re-traumatized. 

We deserve better than this reality. We even deserve better than Wolf’s fiction. We deserve a world where survivors’ needs are prioritized and sexual violence is no longer the norm.

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