Urban policies have increasingly been ‘criminalised’ as regeneration, public housing management and homelessness programmes have been aligned with the aims of criminal justice and anti-social behaviour measures. In this article, policies that tackle problem places, people and behaviours are interpreted as expressions of social anger and fear that are made tangible via periodic attacks on social marginality. Case examples are offered in which urban policies appear as a kind of social catharsis or exorcizing of fear/anxiety. Such urban policies appear to construct social vulnerability as a threat that thereby helps to trigger interventions that might help realize goals of urban renewal and release from worries about criminality and urban social decline. This model of control and policymaking is developed by drawing on the emotional energies at the heart of cultural criminology and critical perspectives taken from contemporary urban studies.