Moral panics about racialized criminals resolve economic crises via law-and-order solutions

Evidence

Stuart Hall et al., in their pioneering book Policing the Crisis: Mugging, the State, and Law and Order, analyzed the fear generated towards racialized subjects. Methodologically, this book employs a similar approach. Using a historical materialist mode of analysis, Hall and his collaborators examined the legal arena, the police, and the media in the construction of a moral panic around the black “mugger” in early 1970s in the UK. They argued that the economic crisis of the time was solved by “law and order” solutions that were based on generating fear towards black criminals. The new project of racial formation involved a focus on the “mugger” coded as a security threat. Even though the crime known as mugging did not increase, a moral panic was generated to justify policing measures. — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 93

Categorization

• XREF: Directly parallels the reader’s other curated sources on manufactured crime threats and media-driven panics — this is the shared methodological anchor (Hall’s Policing the Crisis). — connects to: Political and economic crises are resolved through manufactured fear of racialized criminals — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 81; Moral panics substitute law-and-order fear for addressing economic crises; Racialized images of criminality reconstitute and escalate through moral panics (+8 more)
• DEFINE: Gives the operational definition of moral panic as state manufacture that outruns actual crime data.

Broader Connections

• Moral panics substitute law-and-order fear for addressing economic crises #corroborates (0.95)
• Racial moral panics produce self-confirming cycles of incarceration and white fear. #expands (0.90) — Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Democracy in Black, 215
• Racialized images of criminality reconstitute and escalate through moral panics #expands (0.85)
• Law-and-order ideology legitimizes state intervention in crises #expands (0.85)
• Economic crisis birthed twin racial projects criminalizing blacks and Arabs #exemplifies (0.85) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 237
• Postwar racial moral panics centered on the fear of black criminality #exemplifies (0.80) — Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Democracy in Black, 208
• Racial panic narratives shape immigration illegality and state targeting #expands (0.75) — Junaid Rana, Terrifying Muslims, 78
• The race-as-emergency-explanation framework licensed mass colonial massacres #exemplifies (0.75)
• Race operates as sacred violence purchasing order through scapegoats #complicates (0.70) — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 1349