On Oct. 9, Ashland University’s College Democrats and Criminal Justice Department partnered up to host “Fear, Politics and Crime,” a presentation by AU’s Dr. Jared Rosenberger.  

The event started at 6 p.m. and took place in Ronk Lecture Hall in the Dwight Schar Education Building on campus.  

Rosenberger, the speaker at this event, is an Assistant Professor in AU’s Criminal Justice and Sociology Department. His areas of specialty range from Criminology, Media and Crime, Fear of Crime, Social Theory and Juvenile Delinquency.  

Throughout the evening, Rosenberger covered multiple different topics related to fear, politics and crime.  

The current state of U.S. politics was discussed as well as some events in recent history.  

“I think for politicians, moral debates are the debates they want to be in,” said Rosenberger.  

“By definition, when you’re in a moral debate, you can ignore data, you can ignore research, you can ignore facts because that’s not what a moral debate is about.” 

He then went on to discuss how moral debates can be related to the course of events happening in the U.S. today; The National Guard has been deployed in multiple cities around the country for reasons he found unnecessary.  

This action by the government has increased fear among many citizens. 

Rosenberger was able to take the fear spreading over our country today and relate it back to a time in the 1970’s, The War on Drugs.  

According to The National Library of Medicine, The War on Drugs subjected millions to criminalization, incarceration and lifelong criminal records. It disrupted or altogether eliminated many citizens’ access to sufficient resources and support to live healthy lives.  

“It changed the perception of people, and it made them willing to punish and punish harshly,” said Rosenberger.  

Other forms of moral panic were discussed at the event. For example, following the tragic events on Sept. 11, 2001, fear overtook the U.S.  

Rosenberger shared his insights into that type of fear. “(U.S. citizens) were seeing terrorism and immigration as the same thing.” 

After the attacks on 9/11, the U.S. reorganized intelligence agencies and created the Department of Homeland Security as well as implemented new security protocols in the country and outside of the borders.  

“Fear is a powerful motivator and to end that fear, people are willing to give up their rights and their freedom,” said Rosenberger. He continued, “We were afraid of terrorism and willing to allow mass surveillance.”  

Throughout his presentation, Rosenberger shared many different sets of gathered data from surveys and research.  

“Fear largely is a unifying thing,” he said. “It’s why moral panics are so common.” 

His discussed the murder rates from the current year and years passed. Typically, the rate is thought to be much higher than what data shows; the impact of fear is evident in the U.S. 

“Viewers of television, for example, estimate their weekly odds of being a victim of a violent crime are one in 100; the actual statistic is one to 10,000,” said Rosenberger.  

He then began to explain why many people think this way.  

“Violence is not complicated; it doesn’t require excellent writing or anything like that; it’s universally understood.” 

“People understand punching and kicking in ways that they don’t understand humor or romance,” said Rosenberger.  

Toward the end of the discussion, some key takeaways were given to help prevent panic, fear and crime.  

“I think media literacy is super important; an understanding of what data manipulation looks like, what anecdotal fallacies are, what misinformation looks like and how to identify it, how to fact check it,” Rosenberger explained.  

“If we can teach people to do this, they’re going to be in a much better shape.”