The title of this week’s session is taken from the famous study of ‘mugging’ by Stuart Hall et al. in the 1970s in which the authors note the racialised nature of the crime of mugging and the instigation of a public ‘moral panic’ in the association of young black men and violent street crime. Taking this as a starting point, we shall look at the way in which racialised people have been seen as having a natural propensity to crime and deviance that justifies the use of ‘special measures’ against them. We shall pay particularly close attention to the cases of disproportionate incarceration and deaths in custody.