Stranger danger : family values, childhood, and the American carceral state / Paul M. Renfro.

9780190914011 (electronic book)

New York : Oxford University Press, 2020.

English

1 online resource (296 pages) : illustrations.

HV6598 .R45 2020

364.1540973

Starting in the late 1970s, a moral panic concerning child kidnapping and exploitation gripped the United States. For many Americans, a series of high-profile cases of missing and murdered children, publicized through an emergent twenty-four-hour news cycle, signaled a "national epidemic" of child abductions perpetrated by strangers. Some observers insisted that fifty thousand or more children fell victim to stranger kidnappings in any given year. (The actual figure was and remains about one hundred.) Stranger Danger demonstrates how racialized and sexualized fears of stranger abduction-stoked by the news media, politicians from across the partisan divide, bereaved parents, and the business sector-helped to underwrite broader transformations in US political culture and political economy.

Starting in the late 1970s, a moral panic concerning child kidnapping and exploitation gripped the United States. For many Americans, a series of high-profile cases of missing and murdered children, publicized through an emergent twenty-four-hour news cycle, signaled a "national epidemic" of child abductions perpetrated by strangers. Some observers insisted that fifty thousand or more children fell victim to stranger kidnappings in any given year. (The actual figure was and remains about one hundred.) Stranger Danger demonstrates how racialized and sexualized fears of stranger abduction-stoked by the news media, politicians from across the partisan divide, bereaved parents, and the business sector-helped to underwrite broader transformations in US political culture and political economy.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Access limited to authorized users.

Description based on online resource; title from home page (viewed on March 30, 2020).

Oxford scholarship online.

Print version: 9780190913984

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