Moral Panics & Folk Devils

Occasionally, when I’m conducting corporate training sessions and I mention that we’re living in the safest times ever, somebody will make a comment/question, asking me if I ever watch the news and that somehow, I must be misinformed about the state of the world. Whilst I acknowledge that there are locales (and regions), that have seen raising rates of certain crimes, “street crime” in general has been falling in the U.S. and despite having experienced some major terrorist incidents (9/11, the Oklahoma City Bombing, the Boston Marathon Bombings), it has not yet had to endure any long-lasting and coordinated terror “campaigns”, such as in Israel with Islamist Terrorists (from a number of different organizations) or the UK with the IRA. From a day-to-day perspective, public life in the U.S. for most middle-class people, is safe. That is not to say there aren’t rapists, muggers and burglars etc., or individuals planning acts of terror, or that we shouldn’t take our safety seriously. Violent crime does happen, and its impact can be both extensive and long-lasting; often affecting many more people than just the victim(s). However, there is a danger that we end up subscribing to the “Moral Panics” that both the mainstream and social media try to present to us e.g. despite the number of Facebook articles that say otherwise, there aren’t no-go areas for the police in the UK, due to the implementation of Sharia Law, and neither are there in the U.S., etc. The danger in succumbing to moral panic, is that it ends up distracting us from other real dangers, that are both more common, and more likely. In this article, I will take a look at the phenomenon of moral panics, and the creation of “folk devils”, and how these things can affect our personal safety.

The term “Moral Panic”, is largely attributed to a British Criminologist, Jock Young, however it was an associate of his, Stanley Cohen, who really examined, and expanded the work on this phenomenon. It is important to note that a moral panic, usually has a genuine and real foundation. In the UK, several years ago, we experienced a moral panic, concerning violent videos and video games (many countries have experienced this for a variety of different reasons), that were seen to play the part in the murder of a toddler – Jamie Bulger – by two pre-teen boys. Such killings are extremely rare, and it would be simplistic to argue that Robert Thompson and Jon Venables, killed a two-year old, because they had watched a violent movie. The danger of creating such causal links is that it can dissolve the individual of personal responsibility for their crimes. However, a UK public struggling to understand how children could be killers, were keen to be given a singular and straightforward reason that would explain why seemingly “innocent” children could and would engage in murder. The “moral panic” was started when the media picked up on a comment by one of the trial judges in the Bulger case, who stated that the killers exposure to a violent video, “Child’s Play 3”, gave an explanation as to why the two boys had killed the toddler; the only problem being that neither Thompson or Venables had seen this movie – it was a piece of uncorroborated evidence that had been introduced to the trial but later dismissed, when the truth emerged. What followed was a moral panic, with several Tabloid Newspapers and major Video Chains/Stores conducting public burnings of the video, and removing similar items from their shelves, etc. The media presented a simple solution to a complex and uncommon problem, and in doing so created a moral panic, concerning the effects of watching nasty videos; when in fact the argument that horror videos were to blame for the death of Jamie Bulger is patently untrue. There is a discussion to be had on the role that such movies and video games may play in instigating and/or influencing violence, but that is another debate entirely.

Most moral panics, look to create “folk devils”, of those that are responsible for certain criminal activities, and are responsible for the perceived evil in our society. Often the focus on these individuals distracts us from the real dangers that we face. A few years before I moved to the U.S., one of the tabloid papers in the UK ran a piece on pedophiles that had been released from prison, and were publishing the locations of the UK towns and cities where they were living. This prompted a wave of vigilante groups, who attempted to seek them out, and banish them from their communities. One group, in their search mistakenly targeted a Pediatrician. This is quite a common occurrence in moral panics: that those who have nothing to do with the panic, become targets of it. The McCarthy Witch hunts of the 1950’s in the US offer a good example of how moral panics, sweep up innocent individuals, in their need to feed themselves. In a moral panic, somebody has to be held responsible and to blame i.e. there has to be a folk devil to attack. If those involved can’t find those that are responsible, those that are available and look acceptable, or can be argued to be responsible, are attacked. Nobody wants to have a convicted pedophile living next door to them, however when innocent people are targeted because people think, and convince themselves, that they are a danger, there is a problem; and this is one of the results of moral panics. Also, if we look at the facts, surrounding child sexual abuse and child killings, most children are victimized by family members and friends, not by strangers. This is one of the primary dangers when we create “folk devils”: we stop trying to identify the real danger, because we have an easy and simple target to aim for.

We are susceptible to being caught up in a moral panic, if we hold beliefs that can be exploited e.g. if we believe that most criminals are both young and black, then we’re susceptible to believing that the greatest threat to our safety is young, black teenagers and men in hoodies – a moral panic that has been experienced in both the US and the UK. If our models of violence are founded on race, rather than actions and behaviors, we are likely to get caught up in those regular media and social media campaigns that look to create folk-devils out of black people per-se. When we look at pre-violence indicators, race and social demographics are irrelevant. If you’re scanning, you’re target-glancing, and you’re synchronizing your movement with mine, you’re a threat; nothing else matters to me, whatever the media would have me believe. In this regard, a drug addict targeting me for a crime behaves in the same way as a city banker. Predators are predators, and they can be identified by their actions and processes. Ted Bundy, when he finally confessed, said “I’m good looking and charming, none of my victims stood a chance.” For all Ted Bundy’s niceness (a behavior, not a character trait), whiteness and charm, his actions and processes, screamed predator – to those who knew what they were looking for – he didn’t fit the media profile of a serial-killer (even though almost all serial killers are white). There is a great danger, as well as an injustice, to treating those who aren’t a threat or danger as something else. If our eyes are always on that which doesn’t cause us harm, but we’ve been led to believe does, then they’re not on that which will.

My Facebook feed gets over-run with videos and stories that want me to believe that there are certain dangers I need to be aware of, and rarely is this the case –the “Knock-Out” game, for example, stories of  which created a panic that anyone walking down the street could be attacked without warning, turned out to be very limited in its scope, and only involved a handful of incidents. These stories need to be fed to be kept alive, and a quick share, or a comment, adds numbers and weight to their cause, feeding the panic. Yes, there are very real dangers in this world, and we should want to talk about them, however we should be careful not succumb to moral panics, or create folk devils, where there are none.