Did you know that “African gangs in Melbourne” was just a moral panic? Apparently there was no serious problem with South Sudanese youth violence at all. Don’t believe me? There’s a whole Wikipedia page saying so, complete with academic citations. The problem is that even the data from the time showed serious overrepresentation in violent offending, and subsequent research found the overrepresentation remained even after comparing people of the same age. A decade later, Victoria has a worse youth crime problem that is deteriorating and the government itself now talks openly about youth gang crime and South Sudanese overrepresentation in the justice system. This teaches us at least two lessons. First, a Wikipedia and academia are ideologically captured and should be treated with suspicion. Second, maybe dismissing the problem as a “moral panic” rather than confronting it wasn’t quite the triumph of enlightened policymaking it has been presented as. Now let’s apply those lessons more broadly to some of the policies challenges we face today.