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The concept of moral panic was first developed in the United Kingdom in the early 1960s, principally by Stan Cohen, initially for the purpose of analyzing the definition of and social reaction to youth subcultures as a social problem. Cohen provided a “processual” model of how any new social problem would develop: who would promote it and why, whose support they would need for their definition to take hold, and the often-crucial role played by the mass media and institutions of social control. In the early 1990s, Erich Goode and Nachman Ben-Yehuda produced an “attributional” model that placed more emphasis on strict definition than cultural processes. The two models have subsequently been applied to a range of putative social problems which now can be recognized as falling into five principal clusters: street crime, drug and alcohol consumption, immigration, child abuse (including pedophilia), and media technologies. Most studies have been conducted in Anglophone and European countries, but gradually, the concept is increasing its geographical reach. As a consequence, we now know a good deal about how and why social problems come to be constructed as moral panics in democratic societies. This approach has nevertheless been criticized for its casual use of language, denial of agency to those promoting and supporting moral panics, and an oversimplified and outdated view of mass media, among other things. As proponents and opponents of moral panic analysis continue to debate the essentials, the theoretical context has shifted dramatically. Moral panic has an uncertain relationship to many recent developments in sociological and criminological thought. It threatens to be overwhelmed or sidelined by new insights from theories of moral regulation or risk, conceptualizations of the culture of fear, or the social psychology of collective emotion. Yet as an interdisciplinary project, it continues, despite its many flaws, to demand sustained attention from analysts of social problem construction.

Juvenile risk assessment instruments have provided juvenile courts with the opportunity to make standardized decisions concerning sentences and intervention needs. Risk assessments have replaced the reliance on professional decision-making practices in which court officials relied on their hunches or previous experience to determine what to do with youth once they became involved in corrections. A primary goal of juvenile risk assessment is to improve case management and help courts focus resources on juveniles who exhibit the greatest intervention needs. Further, juvenile risk assessments play a critical role in estimating which juveniles will likely reoffend by identifying factors that increase the propensity of future offending. Although some researchers believe that the implementation of standardized juvenile risk assessments is a good strategy for reducing biased decision-making for racial/ethnic minorities, other researchers have called into question the extent to which risk assessments overestimate risk for certain juveniles, especially those in minority groups who have a history of being marginalized due to their race, culture, or ethnicity. This article provides an overview of how well juvenile risk assessment instruments predict future delinquency across race and ethnicity. The review suggests that in general, risk assessments do a good job in predicting recidivism across racial/ethnic groups for diverse populations inside and outside the United States. However, there is still some room for improvement concerning the assessment of risk and needs for ethnic minorities. In addition, while there are some studies that do not report the predictive validity of risk assessment scores across race/ethnicity, risk assessments overall seem to be a promising effort to correctly classify and/or identify juveniles who are at greatest risk for future recidivism.

The role and value of covert ethnography in the fields of criminal justice and criminology, a controversial and somewhat marginalized tradition due to its association with deception. It is a transgressive approach with ethical baggage that runs counter to the received wisdom on informed consent. Despite this, it is a creative and innovative approach which can yield rich types of insider data and lived experience leading to nuanced analyses and understanding of crime and deviance in society. There is a classic fear and fascination with covert research. It is a methodological pariah, which has been routinely demonized, particularly in the current climate of ethical regimentation. It is typically associated with harm and risk to both the researched and the researched. The covert researcher has been seen as a belligerent figure in the criminological landscape, which marginalizes its worth. My exploration and unpacking of this controversial tradition shall be undertaken in several ways: Firstly, by outlining the controversy surrounding deception, which covert ethnography is squarely associated with. This association is partly related to how the understanding of covert observation is deeply embedded in popular culture. Secondly, by exploring the rich diversity of covert ethnography in criminology and criminal justice, both classic and contemporary. Part of the logic here is to rehabilitate and celebrate the sociological aspects of criminology and criminal justice, partly by examining some heartland topics in the field as well as studying deviance across different settings and subcultures. Thirdly, by drawing on some of my own field experiences from a covert study of bouncers in the night-time economy of Manchester, which I compare to others in the field. Fourthly, by offering some brief reflections on the future directions of covert ethnography via a discussion of the revival in covert research. Lastly, by providing some concluding sentiments on covert ethnography.

Risk is a pervasive feature of contemporary life, and has become a key feature of penal policy, systems of punishment, and criminal justice services across a number of the Anglophone jurisdictions. Risk as an approach to calculating the probability of “danger” or “hazard” has its roots in the mercantile trade of the 16th century, growing in significance over the intervening centuries until it pervades both the social and economic spheres of everyday life. Actuarialism, that is the method of statistically calculating and aggregating risk data, has similar roots, steeped in the probability calculations of the insurance industry with 20th-century extension into the arenas of social welfare and penality. Within criminal justice one of the first risk assessment tools was the parole predictor designed by Burgess in 1928. Since then we have seen a burgeoning of risk assessment tools and actuarial risk practices across the penal realm, although the extent to which penality is totally risk based is disputed. Claims for a New Penology centered on risk have been much debated, and empirical evidence would tend toward more cautious claims for such a significant paradigm shift. Prevention and responsibilization are often seen as core themes within risk-focused penality. Risk assessment is used not only to assess and predict future offending of current criminals, but also to enable early identification of future criminals, “high crime” areas, and those in need of early interventions. The ethics, accuracy, and moral justification for such preventive strategies have been extensively debated, with concerns expressed about negative and discriminatory profiling; net-widening; over targeting of minority groups especially for selective incarceration; and more recently criticisms of risk-based pre-emption or “pre-crime” targeting, particularly of ethnic minorities. Responsibilization refers to the techniques of actuarial practices used to make persons responsible for their own risk management, and for their own risk decisions throughout the life course. In respect of offenders this is best expressed through corrective programs focused on “right thinking” and re-moralizing offenders toward more desirable social ends. Those offenders who are “ripe for re-moralization” and who present a level of risk that can be managed within the community can avoid custody or extended sentencing. Those who are not, and who present the highest levels of risk, are justifiably selected for risk-based custodial sentences. Such decision-making not only requires high levels of predictive accuracy, but is also fraught with severe ethical challenges and moral choices, not least about the desired balance between risks, rights, and freedoms.

As a discipline, criminology tends to treat terrorism as an objective phenomenon, to be mapped, explained, and managed. Scholars informed by more critical strains of the discipline, however, argue that orthodox criminology is reductive and uncritical. Relying on normative definitions of terrorism, orthodox analyses reproduce assumptions of powerful institutions, thus collaborating and furthering a system of social control marked by increased authoritarianism. Cultural, critical, and constitutive criminologies call for a more politically engaged criminology, which recognizes that power is inherent to knowledge production. How terrorism is socially constructed and framed is of primary significance, since terrorism is not a given, ontological fact, but rather a power inhered designation. The framing of terrorism through multiple, intersecting, discursive systems impacts radically how we make sense of the world. Cultural discourses (including media representations) intersect with and reinforce other institutional narratives, giving rise to a dominant script, which provides us with a framework for understanding terror. Examining the cultural and social discourses that constitute this script is not an end point; rather, it is a way into cultural power. It is a means to critically assess cultural myths and ideological frames that are crucial in shaping our perceptions of safety and security, victims and perpetrators, and more. Cultural meanings work their way into our consciousness, engendering a framework for interpreting events and identities, compelling us to understand the world in particular ways, obliging us to consent to real world policies. Much of the analysis in this vein examines the representation of terrorism and counter-terrorism through Edward Said’s lens of Orientalism. This approach highlights the ways in which terrorism has come to be conflated with Muslim identity, while it also highlights the binary structuring of this “Muslim as terrorist” script, which creates dualistic categories of us versus other, rational versus irrational, modernity versus anti-modernity, and so on. These binaries create essentialized visions of Islam and Muslims as chaotic, violent, and disorderly, who pose an apocalyptic threat to the West. Imagined as Islam’s binary opposite, the West is framed as being perilously at risk from an entire category of people who are discursively transformed into essentialized suspect communities. These framings come to be institutionalized in the form of anti-terror policies and practices. As an example, the War on Terrorism slogan and the accompanying Orientalist imagery of the Muslim terrorist, was integral to lending legitimacy to international military action, the detentions in Guantanamo Bay, the use of torture, and more, post-9/11. Prevailing framings—dehumanizing and devoid of real context—were the scaffolding on which such policies and practices could be built. Indeed, undergirding the ever-increasing nexus of authoritarian, repressive counter-terrorism measures, is a cultural repertoire of Orientalist meanings that provide the cultural conditions necessary for us to consent to increasing social control. The material and often-brutal consequences of these policies are felt most keenly by those who are caught in the expansive, amorphous category of “Other.” This suffering is largely out of the frame, and instead, we are invited to think of the state response as a logical and necessary step to ensure our safety. Understanding how abstract discourse comes to be embedded in institutional practice is crucial if criminologists are to take seriously the question of (in)justice. This necessitates resisting the troubling dominant discourses that frame terrorism, and it means that we must reflexively be aware of our own role in perpetuating “knowledge” and a cultural climate within which real people suffer.