In the end, the Lawrence case lacked three of the elements needed for the construction of a successful moral panic.

Most putative problems lie between these two extremes – exactly where and why calls for a comparative sociology of moral panic that makes comparisons within one society and also between societies.

The notion of a ‘permanent moral panic’ is less an exaggeration than a oxymoron.

Such reactions form exactly the discourse of denial: literal denial (nothing happened); interpretative denial (something happened, but it’s not what you think) and implicatory denial (what happened was not really bad and can be justified).

This is why moral panics are condensed political struggles to control the means of cultural reproduction.

The major type of distortion in the inventory lay in exaggerating grossly the seriousness of the events, in terms of criteria such as the number taking part, the number involved in violence and the amount and effects of any damage or violence. … The regular use of phrases such as ‘riot’, ‘orgy of destruction’, ‘battle’, ‘attack’, ‘siege’, ‘beat up the town’ and ‘screaming mob’ left an image of a besieged town from which innocent holidaymakers were fleeing to escape a marauding mob.

Important as such errors may be in the short run, they cannot explain the more intrinsic features of deviance inventories: processes such as symbolization and prediction, the direction of the distortions rather than the simple fact of their occurrence, the decision to report the deviance in the first place and to continue to report it in a particular way.

The behaviour itself was not particularly new or startling. … The Mods and Rockers didn’t become news because they were new; they were presented as new to justify their creation as news.

The more unclear the news item and the more uncertain or doubtful the newsman is in how to report it, the more likely it is to be reported in a general framework that has been already established.

The process of spurious attribution is not, of course, random. … Thus Jews are intrusive, but also exclusive; Negroes are lazy and inert, but also aggressive and pushing; Mods are dirty and scruffy, but also slickly dressed; they are aggressive and inflated with their own strength and importance, but they are also cowardly.

These images are part of what Berger and Luckman refer to as the ‘conceptual machinery that accounts for the deviant condition’, and as such, perform a basic function in justifying a particular view of the world: ‘… the deviant’s conduct threatens the societal reality as such, putting into question its taken-for-granted cognitive and normative … operating procedures.’ … The only way to make sense of vandalism is to assume that it does not make sense; any other definition would be threatening.

If the sexual offender is seen as sick, then one attempts to cure rather than punish him; if the typical shoplifter is seen as the ‘harmless little old woman’ or the ‘kleptomaniac’, then this group will be less subject to formal legal sanctions. … An integral part of the conceptual machinery then, is the body of justifications and rationalizations for acting in a particular way towards the deviant.

This type of warning is equivalent to inhabitants of a flood area being told to evacuate when sirens sound; but while their evacuation would reduce the effects of the disaster, the Brighton inhabitants, sensitized to report signs of a ‘little Clacton’ would, in fact, create deviance in something like the original sense suggested in the transactional approach. This is the paradox intrinsic in moral panics.

Constant repetition of the violence and vandalism images and reports about preparations for the next ‘invasion’ generated an atmosphere in which something had to happen.

In such ambiguous situations, rumours should be viewed not as forms of distorted or pathological communication: they make sociological sense as co-operative improvisations, attempts to reach a meaningful collective interpretation of what happened by pooling available resources.

On a number of occasions spectators were observed cheering the police when they made an arrest and when boys were bundled into a police van, the type of remark one heard was ‘that’ll teach them a lesson’, or ‘put them in Lewes for a few nights, that’ll show them’.

The Mods and Rockers symbolized something far more important than what they actually did. … When this was combined with a too-open flouting of the work and leisure ethic, with violence and vandalism, and the (as yet) uncertain threats associated with drug-taking, something more than the image of a peaceful Bank Holiday at the sea was being shattered.

Between 1984 and 1991 (inclusive) there were about 8 citations of ‘moral panic’ in UK newspapers; then 25 in 1992, then a sudden leap to 145 in 1993. From 1994 to 2001, the average was at 109 per year.