African gangs moral panic

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The African gangs moral panic, sometimes referred to as the African gangs narrative, was a moral panic relating to the supposed presence of Sudanese-Australian criminal gangs in Melbourne, Australia. The most intense period of the panic occurred over 32 months between March 2016 and November 2018, in the run up to the Victorian state elections of 2018.

The trigger for the panic was clashes between young people and the police at the Moomba Festival on 12 March 2016, after which members of the Australian Liberal Party and the Australian media, especially the Herald Sun newspaper, made frequent reference to an "African gang" problem in Melbourne. During the panic, newspapers amplified any criminal activity committed, or alleged to be committed, by people of African origin, routinely publishing and focusing on the ethnicity of alleged offenders. This generated further comments from politicians, pressure on the police to take harsh action against the supposed threat, and led to fear amongst white Australians which was reported by the media, in a cycle which fuelled the moral panic.

Despite the salience of this discourse in the media, police and community organisations denied the existence of criminal gangs among the Sudanese-Australian community, and statistics showed that crime by Sudanese-Australian youth constituted only a tiny fraction of offences in Victoria. For this reason, media studies scholars view the African gangs narrative as an example of a racialised moral panic.

The media and political focus on Sudanese-Australians and crime in Melbourne declined sharply after the 2018 elections, but the effects of negative stereotyping, over-policing and racialisation of crime are still felt by the Sudanese community, and Black people generally, in Melbourne and across Australia. Melburnians of Sudanese origin report feeling distrust of the police and nervousness of gathering in public for fear of harassment by law enforcement.