In this article, one of Stuart Hall’s seminal works in his Birmingham era, Policing the Crisis, is critically reviewed. In comparison with Stanly Cohen’s classic model of moral panics, Stuart Hall et al. transformed Cohen’s processual paradigm by appropriating Gramsci’s theory of hegemony, which assumes moral panics about mugging and youth culture are basically an ideological representation of fundamental hegemonic crisis that fractured the once consensual relationship between state and society. In spite of major differences of sociopolitical contexts, the critical institutional-historical approach to moral panics and social crisis adopted in Policing the Crisis is relevant to studies on ever-rising moral crisis and media discourse in the fast transforming Chinese society.