Moral Panic - Criminology; crim PDF

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Criminology MORAL PANIC. The concept of moral panic has developed in tandem with labelling perspectives on crime and deviance. Particularly important is the insight that classifications of deviant behaviour, and societal responses to it, will be shaped by the meanings that are applied to actors and their conduct. From this starting point, analysts of moral panics explore the ways in which unjustified social anxieties are created about certain types of individuals, groups and events. Particular emphasis is placed upon the role of mass media in defining danger and deviance, and the ways in which media representations are shaped by wider social, political and economic issues. According to Stan Cohen (1972: 9) a moral panic occurs when A condition, episode, person or group of persons emerges to become defined as a threat to societal values and interests; its nature is presented in a stylised and stereotypical fashion by the mass media; the moral barricades are manned by editors, bishops, politicians, and other right-thinking people; socially accredited experts pronounce their diagnoses and solutions; ways of coping are evolved or ... resorted to; the condition then disappears, submerges or deteriorates and becomes more visible.

Thus the term ‘panic’ denotes the fact that the representation of a supposed social problem is out of all proportion to the actual level of threat it entails. Indeed, it has been pointed out that even non-existent threats can nevertheless become the object of a panic and result in extreme societal reactions (for example, the ‘witch hunts’ that swept across Europe in medieval times). Furthermore, whether or not any given behaviour will be construed as a serious danger will depend upon cultural and social context; the selfsame conduct may at one point in time be considered unremarkable and relatively benign, only to suddenly become the object of a widespread panic (one such instance would be the emergence of a moral panic about marijuana use in the USA during the 1940s). Central to the creation of a panic is the role played by those whom Cohen calls moral entrepreneurs, agents who take it upon themselves to bring the supposed problem to the attention of wider society and who press for the condemnation and legal suppression of the behaviour in question. Goode and Ben-Yehuda (1994) suggest that analyses of moral panic broadly fall into one of three kinds, each attributing their emergence to a different social location. First, they note those perspectives that view moral panics as engineered by interest groups, those who stand to benefit if a particular behaviour comes to be acknowledged as a serious social problem. Second, there are those accounts that view moral panics as elite-engineered, as ruling classes direct social concerns against those groups who might otherwise present a threat to elites’ continued hold upon power. Third, there are those accounts that see moral

panics as emerging from grassroots sentiments, such that wider public concerns drive an issue onto the political and law-enforcement agenda. The concept of moral panic has been fruitfully used to examine the emergence of a wide range of crime problems, including youth delinquency, recreational drug use, child sex abuse, pornography and internet crime. However, the validity of the concept has been subject to criticism from a number of angles. Especially important is the critique developed by Waddington (1986) and others, which focuses on the question of whether or not a societal reaction to a problem is disproportionate. In other words, the concept of moral panic is generally understood as involving a reaction that is out of proportion to the actual seriousness of the problem. However, moral panic theorists do not specify what a proportionate reaction would be (i.e. just how much social concern is the right amount for any given crime problem?). Consequently, it is suggested that whether or not a reaction becomes classified as a panic has less to do with any objective criteria of disproportionality, and more to do with the political and social sympathies of the analysts themselves. See also: deviance amplification; labelling perspectives Further reading: Cohen (1972); Goode and BenYehuda (1994); Waddington (1986). The debate about ‘net -widening’ needs to be set in the context of a long struggle in the 1960s and 1970s to introduce ‘diversionary’ strategies into the criminal justice systems of Britain and America – most often through forms of community service under probation supervision and, later, in programmes of ‘intermediate treatment’ that attempted to

provide young offenders with alternative goals and skills as well as enhance their selfesteem (see Thorpe et al., 1980). The ‘diversion’ movement was largely, but not exclusively, focused on young people and had supporters of remarkable renown (see Lemert, 1971). Amongst other things, the aim of the movement was to prevent the criminalisation of young people for minor offences by diverting them away from the ‘hard’ end of the criminal justice system towards a ‘soft’ end of treatment and support services. However, what in fact happened was that the diversionary programmes themselves acted as channels that funnelled young offenders into the criminal justice system in everincreasing numbers. Dismayed by the apparent failures of the more welfare-oriented approaches, Lemert (1981) penned a critique of the approach with which he had for long been associated and, whilst diversionary projects continued to be used, they were no longer seen as the great progressive means of decriminalising youth. In 1979 Stan Cohen published an essay called ‘The Punitive City’ (see also Cohen, 1985) in which he argued that the enormous increase in alternative treatments, punishments and rehabilitation regimes, far from reducing the reach of the criminal justice system, in fact acted to disperse social control even more widely throughout the social body. Drawing inspiration from Michel Foucault’s (1977) Dis cipline and Punish, Cohen argued that the dispersal could be pictured in terms of the criminal justice system capturing more and more people in its ‘nets’. In this argument the ‘diversionary’ programmes did not substitute for criminal justice interventions. Instead, they sup plemented them – adding an increased menu of options

for experts and decision makers to exert sanctions against (previously unsanctioned) activities. Thus, suggested Cohen, the attempt to divert young people had increased the size of the criminal justice system’s nets. More agencies – notably social workers and community workers – had been drawn into administering criminal justice sanctions and, as a corollary, more individuals were ensnared in those nets as ‘offenders’. At the same time, the kinds of behaviour that might lead a person to encounter criminal justice sanctions had altered – many more petty....