Stuart Hall et al. – Policing the Crisis: Mugging, the State and Law and Order (1978)

About the Author: Stuart Hall
Stuart Hall (1932–2014) was one of the most influential cultural theorists of the 20th century—and one of the few prominent Black intellectuals in British sociology and criminology. Born in Jamaica and active in the UK since the 1950s, Hall played a pivotal role in shaping Cultural StudiesAn interdisciplinary field examining how culture shapes and reflects power, identity, and social structures. at the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) in Birmingham. His perspective as a Black scholar in a society marked by racism and social inequality deeply influenced both his choice of topics and his analysis of power and representation. In Policing the Crisis, Hall and his team analyse how Black youth became projection screens for societal fears—an experience he knew firsthand in many ways.The combination of scholarly reflection and lived experience makes Hall one of the most important voices in critical social research in the 20th century.

Background: Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS)

The Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS), founded in 1964 at the University of Birmingham, evolved under the leadership of Richard Hoggart and later Stuart Hall into a highly influential hub of British Cultural Studies. CCCS combined Marxist theory, subcultural research, media theory, and critical criminology.

Its research was highly interdisciplinary, merging empirical social research with ideology critique. Particular attention was paid to the symbolic representation of social conflict—in youth cultures, media, or crime discourses. Major publications include ResistanceActs or strategies aimed at challenging, undermining, or opposing power, authority, or oppression. through Rituals (1976) and Policing the Crisis (1978). While the former analysed the cultural practices of youth subcultures, the latter focused more on their political criminalisation.

CCCS shaped a whole generation of left-wing social scientists and is regarded as the birthplace of Cultural Studies.

Concept Explained: Hegemony

Inspired by Antonio Gramsci, Hall defines hegemony as the culturally mediated consent to the dominance of a social group. Hegemony arises not only through coercion but through the embedding of dominant values, norms, and narratives in everyday consciousness. In Policing the Crisis, Hall shows how crime discourses contribute to legitimising hegemonic orders—through racialised stereotypes or calls for law-and-order policies.

Further Reflections: Comparing Moral Panic in Cohen and Hall

Both Stanley Cohen and Stuart Hall analyse the concept of moral panic—albeit with different emphases:

Aspect	Stanley Cohen (1972)	Stuart Hall et al. (1978)
Example	Mods and Rockers (youth subcultures)	Mugging (street robbery in the UK)
Focus	Media logic, escalation, stereotyping	State apparatuses, ideology, class and race discourse
Theoretical background	Symbolic interactionism	Marxism, Gramsci, Cultural Studies
Analytical goal	Revealing the media construction of deviance	Exposing hegemonic strategies of power through crime discourses

Both approaches show: Moral panics are socially constructed crisis narratives that serve to control, distract, and discipline specific population groups.

Further Reflections: Foucault’s Disciplinary Power and Hall et al.

The analysis in Policing the Crisis aligns closely with Michel Foucault’s Discipline and Punish (1975). Both challenge the idea that criminal law and policing primarily respond to deviant behaviour. Instead, they show that criminal policy and punishment are techniques of power aimed at shaping social order.

While Foucault examines the historical shift from physical punishment to subtle disciplinary power (e.g., in schools, factories, or prisons), Hall et al. reveal how symbolic power is exercised through media, discourse, and racialised narratives. In both cases, control is not only repressive but also productive: it creates norms, moral boundaries, and social categories like “criminal,” “threat,” or “deviant.”

Both works share a critical perspective on statehood: police, judiciary, and media do not appear as neutral institutions, but as actors in a political game of hegemony, order, and legitimacy.

Further Reflections: Cultural Criminology and Policing the Crisis

Policing the Crisis can be seen as a theoretical precursor of Cultural CriminologyThe scientific study of crime, criminal behavior, prevention, and societal reactions to deviance within and beyond the criminal justice system.. Many of the insights developed here—on the symbolic construction of crime, the role of media in producing threat narratives, and the importance of cultural hegemony—also inform later cultural criminological perspectives.

In particular, Cultural Criminology draws on Hall’s understanding of crime as a socially produced, media-staged, and culturally charged phenomenon. Crime is not seen as objective wrongdoing but as an expression of social conflict and identity struggles—a perspective that carries Hall’s legacy into the present.

Contemporary Relevance: “Mugging” and Modern Debates

The term “mugging” served in the 1970s as a racialised label, portraying Black youth as a “criminal threat.” Hall et al. analyse this discourse as a distraction from economic issues. Similar mechanisms—scandalisation, stereotyping, and political instrumentalisation—are evident in current debates.

Examples from Germany:

• “Clan crime” (from ~2009): Media and political focus on so-called Arab-origin extended families intensified following police raids and high-profile cases like the Berlin Remmo clan and the 2017 gold coin theft. These narratives construct an ethnicised criminal counter-image and deflect attention from structural inequality.
• “No-go areas” (since ~2015): The trope of lawless urban zones gained traction in the context of refugee migration and security debates. It featured in a controversial 2019 AfD campaign ad and in tabloid headlines about Berlin, Duisburg, or Essen. These narratives reinforce law-and-order rhetoric and justify policing and urban control.
• “Youth violence” (recurrent: 2007, 2018, 2023): Cyclical campaigns about “violent youth” often involve racialised assumptions—e.g., after the 2007 subway shoving case in Munich or 2023 debates about “TikTok violence videos.” These support calls for harsher punishment, authoritarian parenting, and police expansion.
• “Knife crime” (since ~2018): The term gained traction after high-profile homicides (e.g., Kandel 2017, Chemnitz 2018). Though crime stats don’t show clear increases (and knife use isn’t systematically tracked), “knife crime” is often associated with young men of migrant background. The discourse intensifies racialised security narratives despite ambiguous data.

Examples from other countries:

• United States – “Superpredator” panic (1990s): The term “superpredator” was used to describe allegedly remorseless, violent youth—typically young Black or Latino males. Though empirically baseless, the concept triggered harsh juvenile sentencing policies and bolstered tough-on-crime laws like “Three StrikesLaws imposing life sentences after a third serious criminal conviction..” It projected social fears onto racialised youth and obscured economic root causes of violence.
• United Kingdom – “Grooming gangs” (2010s): Media and political focus on child sexual exploitation cases involving British Pakistani men (e.g., Rotherham) created a racialised panic that conflated ethnicity, religion, and criminality. Complex problems were reduced to a cultural narrative that fuelled Islamophobic sentiment and legitimised punitive migration policy.
• Australia – “African gang crisis” (2018): In Melbourne, media coverage of crimes involving South Sudanese youth sparked a national debate on “African gangs,” despite a lack of statistical evidence. The panic reinforced stereotypes, justified intensified policing, and served as political fodder in election campaigns.
• Canada – Selective focus on “gang violence” in Indigenous communities: While the systemic issue of missing and murdered Indigenous women received little state attention for decades, media discourse disproportionately highlighted Indigenous gang activity. This shift diverted focus from structural violence and state neglect, reinforcing colonial narratives of danger and deviance.

These examples demonstrate that moral panics are not historical anomalies, but a recurrent instrument of power used to enforce hegemonic interests—just as theorised by Cohen and Hall. Across different countries and contexts, the symbolic construction of crime continues to serve political ends by legitimising surveillance, punishment, and exclusion.