CRIM 205 Chapter Notes - Chapter 4: Joel Rifkin, Jeffrey Dahmer, Moral Panic
10 Sep 2017
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Chapter 4: myths and murder: the serial killer panic. These panics are important in their own right for what they reveal about social concerns and prejudices often based on xenophobia and anti-immigrant prejudice. Also, bureaucratic factors sometimes play a part when an agency promotes a panic in order to enhance its own power and prestige: an example: the marijuana scare in the mid 1930s. The 1980s were a particularly fruitful period for such media panics over crack, child sexual abuse, juvenile satanism, sex and violence in rock lyrics and aids. Serial murder was the topic of numerous stories in magazines and newspapers, as well as television programs. Serial killers accounted for perhaps 20% of american murder victims, or some 4000 a year, according to the accounts. Robert o. heck of the justice department for the view that as many as 4000 americans a year, at least half of them under the age of 18, are murdered this way.
