Policing The Crisis: Mugging, The State, And Law And Order

by Stuart Hall

How and why did an activity familiar in London streets as long ago as the 1860s come to be described by the British press and police in August 1972 as ‘a frightening new strain of crime’? And if mugging—for this is the crime in question—was new in 1972, how could comparative statistics be produced for its incidence going back to 1968?The authors of this highly acclaimed study argue that mugging is first and foremost a socially constructed phenomenon. It was introduced into public consciousness by media coverage of muggings in the United States and police anticipation of its appearance in Britain. Its ‘discovery’ in 1972 was followed by a crime control explosion. It received massive media coverage. Judges, politicians, and moralists presented it as an index of the growing tide of violence, of the breakdown of public morality, and of the collapse of law and order. Sentences for petty street crime jumped from six months to twenty years.This book examines the political, economic, and ideological dimensions of mugging—setting the problem of ‘crime’ in its wider historical context. It shows how the particular social definition of mugging constructed by the media and crime control agencies was able to connect with existing social anxieties in the population at large and argues that this has helped to legitimate a more coercive state role in a period of growing political, economic and racial conflict.

Genres: Sociology, Nonfiction, Politics, History, Cultural Studies, Race, Philosophy

425 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1978

About the author

Stuart Hall was an influential Jamaican-born British sociologist and cultural theorist. He was Professor of Sociology at the Open University, the founding editor of New Left Review, and Director of the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies at the University of Birmingham.

Reviews

[Shaneka Knight]

I HAVE NOT READ, but you can for free here: https://sociologytwynham.files.wordpr...

[Andrea · Rating 5 out of 5]

A monument to collective work and monumental in scale, this is a book I shall be using and thinking about for a very long time. Starting from a media panic in the 1970s around mugging, it spirals out and around to the changing world of Britain from the 50s to the 70s, the Black Power movement, the union movement, the student movement, the earthquake happening at the the very roots of the working class. I finally begin to understand Thatcher, though it is too early to cover her rise to power. I did not agree with all of the analysis of course, especially relating to Althusser, but what I loved was that there was never an easy resting on theory, but a deep respect for the historical, cultural, even geographical here. It is a brilliant example of how to do deep research, to build context, to look at how media and government and power are crafted and manipulated, to look at the manufacture of consent, to look at racism as a structural rather than a individual issue...extraordinary. It is an extraordinary piece of work, and one well worth the long haul to get through. It is difficult and long, but accessible I thought, though in one or two sections it does get into rather esoteric points that Marxists were fighting at the time, but never more than a few paragraphs, and of course, that is just another flavour of the time.

[Edward]

Somewhat terrifying quotation I read this morning on the Substack of Adam Tooze, April 9, 2025.

“I spent the previous weekend plunged into Stuart Hall et al on Policing the Crisis, the classic cultural studies treatment of 1970s moral panics, the rise of what Stuart Hall would later call Thatcherism and the ‘mugging crisis’ in Britain. The resonances of the current moment are extraordinarily intense.

…


Are we caught in one of many significant spirals unleashed by Trump’s first months in office? On Monday a Treasury market unwind was nightmarish ‘fin-fi’. Then we identify culprits. Issues converge. We cross thresholds. And come Tuesday/Wednesday here we are. The boogeyman is getting more and more real. And the next step will be that we demand ‘firm steps’. (Clearly these same mechanisms can also be seen at work in other domains of our Trumpified reality).

Anyone who does not have a Bloomberg terminal and does not live in second by second contact with the markets will experience what may or may not be about to happen only secondhand. Even if we end Wednesday in full blown meltdown, ‘we’ will still not fully know what is happening. Five years later, experts are still parsing the drivers of the crisis in March 2020.

But as of 7 am on Wednesday, the signs are not good. There is good reason to think that we may be entering fullblown bond market meltdown. The headlines of Bloomberg and the FT and the WSJ all concur. The bond market is the story. This is not normal. Even on these outlets, the Treasury market is not normally front page news. On Bloomberg it lurks under Markets → Fixed Income. And within Fixed Income you are looking for Treasuries and not high-yield etc.

This morning, bond markets dominate the news.”

[harrie kd · Rating 5 out of 5]

i read this for my thesis and it was completely invaluable, a great theoretical background and a really interesting topic. highly recommended, for both academic reading and just general interest.

[Brian Bean · Rating 5 out of 5]

Truly deserves the hype. Like any good work of Marxism the method of analysis is as important as the specific conclusions drawn. With that this is a stunning book that is tremendously useful in thinking about structures of racism, crime, and capitalism even if some of the historical moments it is engaged with are decades old and focused on Brittain. Highly recommend.
“The theoretical argument compels us to say that each section requires to confront capital, as a class, not out of solidarity for others, but for itself.”

[Evan · Rating 5 out of 5]

A skeleton key for British politics. Outdated in a way with its references to Wilson and Heath but fundamentally understands the cyclical nature of British moral panics and escalating petit authoritarianism in a way I haven’t seen so systematically outlined, placing it in a wider history and understanding of the British state and its constitution. Definitely the densest read I’ve been through this year.

[Greg Florez · Rating 5 out of 5]

A sobering read on 1960’s and 70’s UK class and race politics. It’s a massive read, but the problem is with that is that I feel that the many different threads they pulled at could be spun out more. The argument at the end is interestingly made, about the hopelessness of politicising crime knot struggle and the precarious revolutionary positioning of black wagelessness.

[Billy Jones · Rating 5 out of 5]

Strikingly relevant in today’s political climate. Written at a pivotal moment in the late 1970s, as Britain teetered on the edge of Thatcherism, Hall dissected how economic turmoil was translated into racialised moral panics around crime and disorder. These anxieties were carefully shaped and absorbed into a new political order that cemented authoritarian responses under the guise of public concern.

Today, Hall’s insights feel uncannily prescient. The economic and social discontent we see today, fuelled by inequality, insecurity, and a pervasive sense of decline, is being channelled not into a focused critique of power, but into a charged anxiety - and anger - around migration. Hall's analysis forces us to ask questions. It’s not just about who is blamed, but why, and how that blame is used.

This book is not only a historical account; it’s a vital framework for interpreting the present.

[Alex Swirsky · Rating 4 out of 5]

i want to give this 5 stars bc i think it’s a rly important piece of work, and develops many significant insights that have important implications that can be transposed onto modern society. however, i found it to be a bit all over the place, and the writing to be dense and hard to follow. the end of the book also is so far removed from the beginning lol like it goes from tackling an understanding of media and hegemony to tackling a marxist perspective of class and race divisions. all of this being said, i found this to be an interesting read! i think i would benefit from revisiting it once im in a masters program or maybe even have received the degree lol - i think i would understand it better and appreciate it a bit more. given current day panics over crime waves and the rise of identity politics (particularly the othering of immigrant communities) which fragment any ability to develop a united working class consciousness, i think this is a rly important and relevant piece of work

[Dylan]

Just essential. A completely incisive, depressingly prescient analysis of the intertwined role of media and the state in manufacturing consent for and rightward shift in governance and a simultaneous criminalization of black people. All of this was written in the VERY early days of what would come to be known as mass incarceration, and draws its analysis from a single disastrous "mugging" and the veritable hurricane of press coverage received by the ensuing fallout. For readers of Michelle Alexander's The New Jim Crow, the broad strokes and ideological aims of the project underway in the British (and American) media in the 1970s will be all too familiar. Here is an empirical account of the way headlines were written; the way statistics were inflated, ignored, or willfully misrepresented; the circular process of journalistic legitimation which derives from and feeds back into pre-established power; the way that media both-sidesism leads to passive readerly inaction in the face of strategic advances by entrenched power. A brilliant, phenomenal ideological analysis + exploration of Gramscian hegemony, a concept that Hall has been so influential in developing. Sadly it could not be more timely.

[Arda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Notes from C.S.:

Hall (1986) demonstrates the ever-changing and non-static nature of identity through his examples that showcase the evolution of the power of popular culture which intercedes with the culture of state power, as exhibited in examples from Britain, and with inspiration from Gramsci’s views on hegemony.

Hall (1986) brings examples that relate to the culture of reading as well as of the press and broadcasting, all the while observing the influence of the authority on setting the periphery for public communication. His account indicates that while the materialization of ‘freedom’ in communication may, and probably does, insinuate the right of expression for ‘all,’ yet the boundaries that had been set for that ‘right’ were based on assumptions that had already been set by dominant structures. While shifts and changes do and have happened historically with the aim for inclusivity and more tolerance towards other previously-dismissed classes, the boundaries, nevertheless, still remain the same: the limitations had been sustained beforehand by the dominant structures. In other words, authority may become modernized, perhaps popularized, but it essentially remains as what it is: authority. And this authority mixes the national with the cultural while withstanding the dominant structures and maintaining, in essence, the ideological framework and the “basic structure of social relations, the existing dispositions of wealth, power, influence, prestige, on whose foundations it ultimately rests” (Hall, 1986, p. 46).

A lot here demonstrates the importance of culture as a defining force that brings about meaning to life, and sets the parameters for how to practice, and, basically, how to live life, as the result of setting the meaning.

However ‘popular culture’ is defined, it, too, functions within an institutional system which sets its limits; restraining and regulating it in some form or another. Albeit the independent-seeming nature of cultural identities, they, too, reinforce the power relations within institutional boundaries that set their limits, as exemplified in matters such as education, work, and leisure (Hall & Jefferson, 1976).

[Jules · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was excellent, but what was excellent about it was buried within the contemporary analysis. I think this is inevitable for any book concerning contemporary culture--like obviously those particular events will be the past rather than contemporary for someone reading in 50 years time.

HOWEVER the focus on mugging felt like a bit of a red herring. Like yes, the book IS about mugging which WAS a very topical concern at the time. But what is GOOD about this book is the way it engages with much more long standing structural configurations of the British economy, the relationship with capital and the empire, and in particular Gramsci's conception of common sense. I particularly liked how empiricism and this common sense hegemony are tied together.

Like... I get why they focused on mugging. It's a pressing contemporary moral panic. But having to slog through a bunch of 60 year old Daily Mail clippings is a drag when what I valued most in this book was the more long standing structural critique provided.

I am shocked, however that this book was/is not more popular with the BLM movement. Basically articulates all of their concerns super coherently, but I suppose since it's in a British context that may have limited the appeal, I'm not sure.

[Wilson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Foundational. The “crime wave,” like mass protest, takes the form of a seditious conspiracy against Order, a hypnotic self-delusion that comfortingly explains the symptoms of capitalist crisis while obscuring and reifying their true root, which we musn’t dare touch (or even worse, name). And also the delusion is disseminated and reproduced through all kinds of cultural avenues, especially the media, who are somewhere between useful idiots and knowing accomplices. Just totally beastmode analysis.

Chapters on the (sometimes negligent) boot-licking of the mass media and the development of the ‘exceptional state’ were electric and HIGHLY RELEVANT. Final chapter on the politics of mugging w/respect to class struggle was also very interesting.

I drifted a bit through the middle sections but don’t let that dissuade you, worth the read for anyone interested in the political economy of criminal law and/or the political economy of “the news” (two of my main interests… thank you Stuart Hall et al for your tremendous contributions here).

[Inez Ryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I first read this book when I was at university in the eighties. It is still relevant today, and provides an excellent insight into the way the media presents crime, and the way media reporting generates the public perception of crime and the political response to it.

Compulsory reading for anyone interested in politics, media, or criminology!

[Sam DiBella · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent media analysis combined with how consensus, ideology, and racism work in modern Britain. Grows long on abstraction as it goes, which I didn't quite like, but it's all stuff that needed to be said.

[Merricat Blackwood · Rating 3 out of 5]

I feel like I learned a lot from the more history-focused sections; the authors bring together the various crises of the early 1970s in compelling and insightful ways. The entire "Social Production of News" section is highly skippable though.

[Leah Montange · Rating 5 out of 5]

reread first and last chapters...

[Jakob Myers · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gave me new ways of thinking about cultural hegemony, media, and how the bourgeois state navigates crises (topical!) Highly recommended.

[ia · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love this actually

[Roger Cottrell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Despite Stuart Hall's Stalinism this remains an important book and one that would probably embarrass Hall himself, today.

[Angela · Rating 4 out of 5]

Re-read. Still pretty important.