‘. . .When you’ve walked the streets donned the uniform or lived with the consequences at home then you have the right to speak and be heard’: Short-form true crime podcasts and the police image

Since true crime podcasts emerged in the 2010s, short-form podcasts that post single episodes on discrete topics have become a popular style of true crime podcast. These episodes draw upon publicly available information or interviews with police, victims and criminalised people. As police appear routinely as guests, this article explores the role of contemporary short-form true crime podcasts in shaping the police image. Drawing from five Australian short-form true crime podcast episodes with police guests, this article examines how the podcasts’ aesthetic and technical qualities can shape and circulate police narratives. It outlines how the host’s role as facilitator, first-person perspectives and selective reflection can play a role in maintaining the position of police as primary definers of crime in the symbolic economy of policing and intervene in the conditions of new visibility. This article argues that these conventions indicate that short-form TCPs should become an important site for examining contemporary police image work.