Moral Panic

By P. Jenkins.. 2017

475 citations recorded by the source corpus.

It is commonly acknowledged that sexual abuse of children is a grave and pervasive problem and that child molesters are predators who compulsively repeat their crimes and have little hope of cure. Yet as recently as twenty years ago many experts viewed the problem as a far less serious one, declaring that molestation was very rare and that molesters were merely confused individuals unlikely to repeat their offenses. Over the past century, opinion has fluctuated between these radically different perspectives. This timely book traces shifting social responses to adult sexual contacts with children, whether this involves molestation by strangers or incestuous acts by family members. The book explores how and why concern about the sexual offender has fluctuated in North America since the late nineteenth century.

Subfields: Cultural Studies

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/fe0da8ba6361a17d25fe88f0e63add7b162e70d1

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In Cultural Studies

Citations in the corpus

Public Awareness and Action Resulting From Sex Offender Community Notification Laws (2008, background): “Although the Wetterling abduction drew attention to the repetitiveness of sex offenders’ behaviors, it was the homicide of Polly Klaas and Megan Kanka that brought this issue to the forefront of the policy agenda (Jenkins, 1998).”
Children And Animals: Exploring The Roots Of Kindness And Cruelty (2005, background): “For example, in the notorious 1994 case of the abduction, rape, and murder of 7-year-old Megan Kanka by Jesse K. Timmendequas (Jenkins 1998), it is likely that Timmendequas had sufficient perspective taking skills to understand a young girl’s desire to see a puppy, the ploy by which he enticed…”
Connected and concerned: Variation in parents' online safety concerns (2013, background): “Since the rise of the Internet, we have seen a wide variety of concerns regarding young people’s technological engagement, including privacy, pornography, hacking, cyberbullying, sexting, addiction, sexual victimization, identity theft, self-harm content, file sharing, and violent content (boyd, Rya”
Spin doctors and moral crusaders: the moral panic behind child safety legislation (2004, background): “Usage of the terminology then skyrocketed, increasing from 865 references during the year 1994 to 924 references in the year 1995 (Jenkins, 1998, p. 194).”
Sex Offender Laws (2008, background): “In his historical examination of the passage of contemporary sex offender laws, Jenkins (1998) found that the passage of Washington’s sexual predator legislation in 1990 was the direct result of “overwhelming public pressure [on the legislature] to do something about sex offenders” (p. 191).”
Child Sexual Abuse in the Catholic Church (2008, background): “Child sexual abuse has long been a concern in the United States, and by the late 1980s a moral panic regarding the issue ensued (Jenkins, 1998).”
Are Sex Offenders Different? An Examination of Rearrest Patterns (2006, background): “Although the Wetterling abduction drew attention to the repetitiveness of sex offenders’ behaviors, it was the homicides of Polly Klaas and Megan Kanka that brought this issue to the forefront of the policy agenda (Jenkins, 1998).”
Child Abduction, AMBER Alert, and Crime Control Theater (2008, background): “…and distorted counts of “missing children” and conflated them with lurid “typifying cases” such as the Adam Walsh murder that resulted in hysterical overestimation of the phenomenon and a socially constructed “epidemic” of child victims (Best, 1987; Fritz & Altheide, 1987; Jenkins, 1998).”