Hall

• What is Halls study?

  Policing the crisis
• What is Policing the Crisis?

  Hall argues that the 1970s moral panic over black muggers served the interests of capitalism in dealing with a crisis
• What did hall argue about the ruling class and give an example with how it becomes difficult in times of crisis?

  that they can rule society through consent and for example, in the 1970s, British capitalism faced a crisis with high inflation rates, unemployment and widespread strikes
• What was the media led moral panic?

  There was a supposed rise in the new crime of ‘mugging’, supposedly committed by black youths. However Hall points out that there is no evidence to support this
• What was used as a scape goat and why?

  The myth of the young black mugger to distract people from the real cause of peoples problems such as unemployment which was the capitalist crisis
• Why did showing black youths as a threat to society benefit capitalism?

  As the moral panic helped to divide the WC on racial grounds and weaken any opposition to capitalism. It also won support for the government to use more authoritarian forms of rule (SUS) that could be used to suppress opposition
• What does Hall argue about Black crime?

  That it is just a product of media labelling. The crisis of capitalism was increasingly marginalising to black youths through unemployment, and this drove some to petty crime to survive
• What is an evaluation of Halls study?

  • It is inconsistent as he claims that black street crime was not rising but also that it was rising due to unemployment.
  • He doesn’t show how the crisis led to a moral panic, or that the public were actually blaming crime on blacks