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A Summer Classic: Moral Panic over a Pier Shooting

By Jonathan Simor

It is a reminder of how hard the past is to leave behind (especially when your leading politicians belong to it).  By now the whole nation knows the basic facts.  Francisco Sanchez, a 45 or 52-year-old Mexican national shot and killed Kathryn Steinle, 32 year old resident of a nearby suburb in a chance encounter along San Francisco?s popular and seemingly safe waterfront Embarcadero Boulevard last week.  It had all the makings of what criminologists call a ?moral panic? an untoward event, small or large, that becomes a vehicle for vast social and political anxieties over race, class, and national identity.  A low status villain---non-White, poor, non-citizen, long criminal record, multiple incarcerations, kills a high status victim--White, middle class, citizen, mother of children, never been in trouble with the law...continue to full post

Full post as published by Governing Through Crime on July 08, 2015 (boomark / email).