AC 2.1 EXPLAIN FORMS OF SOCIAL CONTROL

• INTERNAL SOCIAL CONTROL: 

  • Controls over our behaviour that comes from within ourselves – from our personalities and our values. Also known as self-control 
• internal social control

  Moral Conscience or Superego: 

  • Freud’s psychoanalytic theory that we conform to society’s expectations  
  • Obey societies rules because our superego tells us to 
  • Our superego tells us what is right and wrong 
  • Inflicts guilt if we fail to do as it says  
  • Sort of internalised ‘nagging’ telling us how to behave 
  • Its function is to retrain the selfish animalistic urgers of the id 
  • Superego allows us to exercise self-control and behave in a socially expectable way 
• internal social control

  Tradition and Culture: 

  • Culture becomes a part of us through socialisation  
  • We accept the norms, values and traditions as part of our identity 
  • e.g., believers follow religious rules  
• internal social control

  Internalisation of Social Rules and Morality: 

  • Our superego and traditions become part of our inner-self or personality 
  • Both start out as something outside of us  
• internal social control

  Socialisation: 

  • We internalise rules through the process of socialisation 
  • Can be from parents or wider social groups  
  • Society's rules and moral codes become our own  
  • We willingly conform to social norms as a result  
• internal social control

  Rational Ideology: 

  • Describes how we internalise social rules and use them to tell us right from wrong  
  • Enables us to keep within the law 
• EXTERNAL SOCIAL CONTROL: 

  • Control over people exacted by society and societal agents of social control  
• external social control

  Coercion: 

  • Threat of force to make someone do something 
  • May involve physical or psychological violence  
  • Forms of pressure  
  • Negative sanctions are given e.g., detention, grounding, being arrested  
• external social control

  Fear of Punishment: 

  • A way of trying to achieve social control, make people conform to laws  
  • Fear of punishment is a for of coercion as it involves idea of threat  
  • Right realists argue that fear of being caught and punished is what ensures many would be criminals follow the law  
  • Fear acts as a deterrent 
• HIRSCHI’S CONTROL THEORY: 

  • Suggests people conform due to their bonds to society  
  • If an individual's bound is broken this is when they commit crime 
  • Hirschi believes there are four elements to a person's societal bond 
• Attachment: 

  • The more we are attached to others, more we will care about their opinion of us  
  • We will respect their norms and values  
  • Makes us less likely to break them  

  Commitment: 

  • More committed we are to a conventional lifestyle, the more we risk be getting involved in crime  
  • Makes us less likely to commit  

  Involvement: 

  • More involved we are in conventional, law-abiding activities, less time and energy there is for getting involved in criminal ones 
  • Justification for youth clubs 

  Beliefs: 

  • If socialised to believe it is right to not break the law, less likely we are to break it 
• CONTROL THEORY – PARENTING: 

  • Argue low self –esteem is cause of delinquency, results from poor socialisation, inconsistent or absent parental discipline 
  • Lack of parental supervision factor in delinquency, need to show strong disapproval of criminal behaviour, be involved in children's lives 
  • Psychological tendencies may lead to criminality, effective socialisation can lead to self-containment to be able to resist the temptation
• WOMENS LOWER OFFENDING RATE – FEMINISM: 

  • Patriarchal society controls women more closely, makes it harder for them to offend 
  • Domestic duties leave less opportunity to engage in criminal activity 
  • Females who offend often haven’t been able to form an attachment to parents, may have been abused or brought up in care