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British Journal of Criminology Advance Access published online on June 12, 2008
British Journal of Criminology, doi:10.1093/bjc/azn040
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The British Journal of Criminology 0:azn040 (2008)
© The Author 2008. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies (ISTD). All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

WIDENING THE FOCUS

Moral Panics as Moral Regulation

Chas Critcher*

* Visiting Professor in Media and Communications, Swansea University, Singleton Park, Swansea SA2 8PP, UK. Contact details: 15 Meadowhead, Sheffield S8 7UA, UK; charles{at}critcher.f9.co.uk.


  Abstract

Moral panic analysis needs reconnecting to mainstream sociological theory. A potential connection is via moral regulation. The origins and development of moral regulation, and its application to moral panics, are traced through the work of Corrigan and Sayer, Hunt and Hier. While it appears highly beneficial to locate moral panics as an extreme form of more routine processes of moral regulation, better specification is required of the scope of moral regulation and its boundary with moral panics. Three dimensions of discursive construction are identified for differentiating between issues of moral regulation: as threats to the moral order, as being amenable to social control measures, and as involving ethical self-regulation. Clarity is also needed about the political project of moral regulation analysis.


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