The notion of moral panics, as described initially by Stanley Cohen (1972/2002), refers to how phenomena that threaten social norms are exaggerated and promoted as a problem that threatens the very nature of a society. According to Goode and Ben-Yehuda (1994), there are five key aspects to a moral panic. In this post, Craig Harper (PhD Researcher in Forensic Psychology) investigates whether all five of these aspects are satisfied in relation to sexual crime.
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