Stranger Danger - Family Values, Childhood, and the American Carceral State

Stranger Danger examines the moral panic over child kidnapping and exploitation that erupted in the late 1970s and early 1980s. It shows how several high-profile cases of missing and murdered white photogenic children generated a national furor over child safety and led to the creation of new legal and cultural instruments designed to keep children safe-and to punish those who ostensibly wished them harm.