Panic (Bloodlands collection)

by Harold Schechter

widespread belief that the nation’s high schools and colleges had become the hunting grounds for a virtual army of mass-murdering “killer kids.”

Sociologists refer to these periodic alarms as “moral panics” and describe them as a form of mass hysteria, typically ignited by a handful of shockingly similar crimes that happen in rapid succession.

A distinguishing feature of moral panics is that the fear they provoke is far out of proportion to any actual threat.

Empirical evidence, however, has little effect on irrational belief. A few terrible crimes are all it takes to set a moral panic in motion.