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.

Cohen, Stanley, Folk devils and moral panic…, loc. 617