What Is Moral Panics?

Criminal Justice is the system of practices and institutions of governments pointed at upholding social control, deterring and reduce crime, or sanctioning those who violate laws. Crime occurs all over the world, every minute of each day, whether someone rapes someone, or robs a bank. The suspect is brought in from eyewitnesses, and evidence. An abundance of cases, however, go unreported, or are misreported. The Uniform Crime Report (UCR) is a report that is filed by the FBI. Local police departments from all over the US gather the data pertaining to the cases. The Uniform Crime Report is a voluntary process, meaning that the local police departments do not have to send their reports to the FBI. The strengths of the UCR, include having accurate
Moral panics are an intense fear or feelings amongst a population that an issue is threatening the accepted social order. Moral panics are characterized by concern, based on how the idea that the issue has a negative effect on society. Hostility, such as “them vs. us”, consensus, which is when the concern is shared widely throughout a social group, and volatility, and disproportionality, Moral panics occur when people essentially panic over something that appears as a threat to society. The aspects that caused moral panics to cause misinformation to flourish, include people speculating and overreacting to issues that can be seen as a threat. For example, the Salem Witch Trials in the 1690’s accused over 200 people of being witches. Another example would be from the Satanic ritual Abuse Scandals in the 1980’s, and the McMartin Preschool Trial in 1984. Moral panics also can cause situations to be blown out of proportion, and not at all what the real situation is. Moral panics can inform how we think about crime today, by looking at how the media portrays events, or crimes that are newsworthy. Moral panics also inform us how people tend to overreact especially to religious, and political panics, such as war, and same sex marriage, Atheism, and
The case that helped this come into effect still to this day, was the Brown V. Mississippi case from 1936. In 1934 Raymond Stuart, a white planter was found murdered in Kemper County, MS. He had three black tenant farmers, and the police thought they murdered Stuart. The police hanged, and beat the tenants to get a confession out of them. They finally confessed, so the police would stop torturing them. The three tenants were tried in court and were found guilty, and were sentenced to be hanged. The three black farmers were in front of an all-white jury. The tenant farmers appealed to the US Supreme Court, which is the highest court in the land. The Supreme Court overturned their conviction, and stated that no one can obtain a confession by torturing someone. They plead Nolo Contendere (no contest). However they were sentenced to prison with sentences ranging from 6 months to seven years. After this case, the 5th Amendment was incorporated to the states, stating that no one can torture people to confess a crime. This Amendment is also still relevant today because it is used when suspects are being interrogated, they can have the option against self-incrimination. The suspect has to verbally say “I remain silent” in order for it to be legal for the criminal not to talk to the police. The right to remain silent, came from the case Miranda V. Arizona in 1966. In 1963, in