Historical And Contemporary Examples Of Moral Panic Criminology Essay

Historical And Contemporary Examples Of Moral timidity Criminology EssayMods, rockers, teddy boys, Muslims, the Irish, Hoodys, ingroupster rap, hip hop, raves, enthusiasm, Victorian garrotters, muggers, video games, gang culture, the Miners, single mothers, children, benefit scroungers and an infinite more have been victims of clean timiditys. Fundamentally, the design of good disquietude is a tool that is utilised to maintain the kind order. Moral panics atomic number 18 an inaccurate or exagg timeted accounts of events that are utilize to issues that stand verbotenside of the dominant norms and values of fraternity, in an sweat to fake globe opinion ab step forward an issue, or a type of individual, or a certain group of people which in turn constructs cast out identities and behaviours as creation located distant of the deterrent example boundaries. This often results in behaviours being criminalised. It likewise leads to jurisprudences and justice being re defined in the light of a moral panic. The most obvious one in terms of redefining the law is the trial-by-media case of the James Bulger murder by two-ten-year-old boys who through moral panic, do opinion which justify and legitimised the age to be tried as an mature be reduced to ten. Drawing first on Stanley Cohens deviancy amplification genus Helix model I will contextualise moral panic in sundry(a) contexts to provide evidence that moral panics are nothing new and are still a powerful method for maintaining the sociable order by stigmatising identities and defining the moral boundaries.On Whitsun bank holiday in the sixties in Clacton, a journalist observed a minor fuss between the Mods in their Mo-hair suits and the leather-clad Rockers. However, this minor dispute was a very opposite event according to the reports the spare-time activity day that the severity hit alter the headlines of national papers The Daily Ex mechanical press Beat Up townspeople 97 Leather Jack et Arrests, The Daily Mirror Wild Ones occupy Seaside 97 Arrests, in Belgium West Side Story on the English Coast as the story took the mass media by tempest on a global scale (Cohen, 200218). Such deviancy was amplified as what was firm enough a youth subculture spiral lead out of control thus booster cable to this initial myth becoming a reality providing justification for the prejudicious label connected as these skirmishes turned to riots on the beaches thereby becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy in the media and incidentally saw the subcultural gangs increasing rivalry.Similarly, the mid-seventies produced moral panics ring race and ethnicity as the negative stigma attached to Irishmen began to be linked with terrorism and by and by treated disproportionately in the media. This occurs today towards Muslims who are the focus of intrigue, suspicion and fear following 9/11 attacks in the U.S.A. This is discursively rooted in the fear of the opposite from the early 1970 s which defined and constructed a new crime hold up and the falsified criminal identity of mugger which were young black men (Hall, Critcher, Jefferson and Clarke, 197874). The headline A Judge Cracks Down on Muggers In City of Fear led Hall et al. to argue that the only when actors privy to information are the police, the media and the ventriloquist of a Judge upholding the moral framework thus the primary definers are the first-hand and only eye-witness to the said crime (The Daily Mirror, 26 September, 1972 in Hall et al. 197875). In sentencing the three (innocent) black youths to three years the judge said it was in the public interest as a deterrent measure. The Daily Mirrors tower back up this claiming that Judge Hines is proper(ip) if mugging is not to get out of hand as it has in America, punishment must be nifty and certain. This moral panic justified new policies giving police the right to stop and search young black men without due reason. In protest, this spiralled into riots which justified the moral panic as a reality and legitimised the subsequent disproportionate black male over-representation in prison. Thompson claimed the central reason for this preposterous construction was to distract public attention away from Britains serious economic downturn which was said to be on the edge of bankruptcy (Thompson, 199746).Thus moral panics became attri furthered to a condition, episode, person or group of persons emerges to become defined as a threat to societal values and interests (Cohen, 19729, cited by Hall et al, 197816).The underpinning of moral panic as the articulation of the political, the judicial and the media was toward social control of anything that trim down out of alignment with the dominant norms. Britains exceptionally high rate of moral panic is therefore a political and moral programme created to re-regulate social change specific to social pluralism and fragmentation of identity. Furthermore, moral panics are created when a serious national, political or economic issue needs to be masked as in the stereotyping of black youths and more recently Muslims. tally by media notably increased in the 1980s and 1990s high spot the enormity of political implications in terms of the Othering of diverse identities, aided by global media moguls like Rupert Murdoch. However, the tensions between enterprise and heritage undermined the extent to which audiences watch representations of intelligence activity or entertainment. While many would be happy to disagree, Thompson argues from the right-wing stance the positives of The Sun newspaper, which represents white working class Britain, overtly supported the ideologies of the New Right thus manipulating its readers to re-elect the Conservative party until 1997 (Thompson, 199747).Parents who act theology like with their childrens life underpins parents moral panic of the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) when tear between the damage caused by measles, and the au tism said to be inseparable in the MMR vaccine. Similarly, moral panic surrounds the human papilloma virus (HPV) vaccination to celebrate a type of cervical cancer in women. Anxiety was exacerbated following the death of a cardinal-year-old who health experts say had a major underlying complication. Yet the alternative is allowing a miss to contract cancer.Whatever stands outside of the dominant norms that define natural, normal and moral is vulnerable to moral panic (Thompson, 199872). Homosexuality is no exception and the moral panic surrounding human immunodeficiency virus and Aids threw aside all taboos when mediating exaggerated tales that blamed a extremely promiscuous gay culture. Prostitutes and drug addicts sharing needles posed an equal threat as by 1995, 75 per cent were infected via heterosexual transmittance (World Health Organisation in Benson, 1997152). Benson argues that although stigma of HIV and AIDs is usual everywhere, in western societies it attaches to a particular stigmatised identity such as an addict, a prostitute or a gay man which is subsequently classified as symbolic by association and not unintended as in other locations such as Africa. Ultimately, it elevated anxieties as the risk of partners being secretly bisexual, unfaithful or gay. These anxieties were imbedded in media portrayals of the unhealthiness thereby creating an epidemic of signification (Treichler, 1987, in Benson, 1997153).This anxiety was well-founded as by the end of 2008, women represented 50% of the 33.1 million infected adults ecumenic (http//www.avert.org/worldstats.htm). Again, moral panic surrounding sexual deviance is not a new phenomenon as syphilis was rife in the Victorian era alongside the Victorian gin drinkers which can be likened to the binge drinkers of today.Drugs also form contemporary moral panics, this time Ecstasy which emanated from the death of Leah Betts, daughter of a police officer. As Daly (1997) reports the campaign that emerg ed took form in lusus naturae posters with a smiling Leah and the words Sorted as well as a picture of Leah on her deathbed. This circulated to all the national press to fix the harms of ecstasy, despite coroners reports claiming ecstasy was not a cause to her death. Soon after, role player Brian Harvey became the scapegoat when claiming he enjoyed Ecstasy which promptly saw to the demise of the melodious band East 17. This was despite research by BBCs Horizon aggroup proving that alcohol, tobacco and even aspirin are more dangerous than ecstasy and that if these were rated within the ABC classification, alcohol would become a Class A drug (Horizon, 2008, Ecstasy or Alcohol www.bbc.co.uk).Alcohol underpins moral panics surrounding the Street Rats, as defined by one teenagers description of the Bluewater shop centres stereotypical drinking, smoking, swearing Hoody (Barkham, The Guardian, 14th May 2005). Britains youth are cease littlely demonised and alienated by ongoing moral panics that have justified the installation of pigeon alarms in shopping centres which send out a low relative frequency noise that only the under-25s can hear thus driving youths out of the area, in which they once congregated (Barnett, 2006, in Mooney and Talbot, 201049). The demise of youth clubs, recreation centres and prohibition era from parks renders young people with nowhere to go. There is no analogy therefore that moral panic coupled with increasing policing and surveillance has justified the current incarceration of 60,000 children throughout Britain (Goldson and Coles, 20051).Alongside stern penalties for the parents of truanting children and antisocial behaviour orders (ASBOs) are the demonization of parents of teenage mothers. The Williams sisters all got pregnant during school, with the first being just twelve (The Evening Standard, 23rd May, 2005). The other two daughters were fourteen and sixteen respectively followed suit and all shared the three chamber house with their divorced mother who blamed school-based sex education. The moral panic focused on their collective annual receipt of thirty chiliad pounds in benefits and absence of financial support from the fathers. Currently in todays gild the mediating of moral panics have taken on new forms like TV chat shows such as Jeremy Kyle and Trisha.Ultimately, moral panics are deployed in an attempt to divert attention from the inequalities both structural and material that are inherent within neo-liberal societies such as the UK (Drake, Muncie Westmarland, 201027). Thus they target on the less privileged in society and seem to ignore the seemingly unattackable elite members of parliament who are proven to have transcended moral boundaries when steal tax payers hard-earned money when fiddling their expenses as revealed through much publicised unravelling throughout 2009.In conclusion, the evidence above reveals that moral panics are not a new phenomena as they have been a tool utilise d to negatively construct stigmatised identities in conjunction with media and political rhetoric that shapes public opinion, that justifies the subsequent policies that discursively marginalise such social groups to prevent the normalisation of such deviance that would drain society. Many think it is a peculiar world that prefers children and young people to be cold and no monthlong wrap up warm to avoid being demonised or arrested for loitering in charge of a Hoody an item of clothing. It is dangerous when making parents gamble on their childrens lives. Nevertheless, when analysing society in relation to moral panic, it just goes to show that the deregulated press are able to write anything about minority groups in society that demonises, targets, punishes and criminalises discursively according to class, race, gender, age, religion and sexuality. Overall it would appear that moral panic is not a new concept it has been around for centuries with people pass judgment it as soc ietys aberrant ways. Today we have given it a name, but it does not alter the fact that it is nothing new.Bibliography-Moral Panic is nothing new. plow this statement using historical and contemporary examples of moral panic. Word believe 1,843Barnett, L, 2006 We Are Not Pigeons in the Borehamwood Elstree Times, 9th March, 2006Benson, S, 1997, The Body, Health and Eating Disorders in Woodward, K. 1997 individuality and Difference, London, Routledge.Cohen, S, 2002, Folk Devils and Moral Panics, 2nd Edition 2002, London, Routledge.Drake, D., Muncie, J. Westmarland, L, 2009, Criminal Justice local and Global, Devon, Willan PublishingGoldson, B. Coles, D, 2005, In the Care of the State, London, Inquest.Hall, S., Critcher, C., Jefferson, T., Clarke, J. Roberts, B, 1978, Policing the Crisis Mugging, the State and Law and Order, London and Basingstoke, Macmillanhttp//www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-18811322-teenage-mothers-on-30000-of-benefits.dohttp//www.avert.org/worldstats.h tmhttp//www.independent.co.uk/news/ecstasy-and-leah-betts-the-bouncers-tale-1266192.htmlhttp//www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2005/may/14/ukcrime.immigrationpolicyMooney, G. Talbot, D, 2010 Global Cities, Segregation and Transgression, in Muncie, J., Talbot, D. Walters, R Crime Local and Global, Devon, Willan PublishingThompson, K, 1998, Moral Panics, London, Routledge.Treichler, P, 1987, AIDS, Homophobia and Biomedical Discourse An epiphytotic of Signification, Cultural Studies Vol.1, No.43, pp.31-70