2.1

• What is social control?


  controlling society.

  • enforcement of conformity by society upon its members - by law or social pressure
  • Society's attempts to discourage behaviour that harms or threatens society 
  • Society's attempt to make us conform to social norms and values 
• Internal social control:

  • learn to regulate own behaviour
  • learnt throughout school
  • conscience
  • the power of internal means of control, such as one's own conscious, ego, and sensibilities about right & wrong, are powerful in mitigating the likelihood that one will deviate from social norms 
  • Conscious may tell you right from wrong 
• Internal social control


  Individuals engaging in non-delinquent community activities felt they had too much to lose by joining delinquent groups
• Stake in conformity


  Breaking rules means that you have more things to lose
• Stake in conformity

  • Being in a girl guides may make you conform to society's rules better
• Ivan Nye's view on youth control


  Youth are controlled even when free from direct control: their anticipation of parental disapproval (indirect control), and through the development of a conscience (internal constraint)
• We are still controlled by what others may think of us
• A conscience is created to stop us from doing what we think is wrong
• Parents stop us from doing things for the fear of disappointment
• Foucault's view on state control

  The state moulds the minds of its subjects so that individuals conform even when out of the direct gaze of the punishing authority
• The state conforms us to the standards it has put down
• Conformity to state standards

  • Prison watch towers. We act as we are meant as someone may be watching
• What is external social control?

  external pressures compel members of society to conform to social rules. This may kick in when internal social control fails.
• forms of coercive external social control:

  Force may be used to achieve desired end or results.

  • dogs, batons or water canons may be used by police as a threat
  • police may do graduated responses- gradually go up in coercion
  • some forms may include imprisonment, injury, death penalty etc
• Fear of punishment- external social control:

  • Use of punishment to act as a deterrent 
  • Individual deterrence- punishment imposed on offenders to deter them from committing crime 
  • Suspended sentence 
  • May be told to not get sent into course 12 months within first trial or else they will get punished for the original 
  • General deterrence- fear of punishment that prevents others from committing similar offences 
  • Boundary keeping 
  • Links to functionalism 
  • By seeing the consequence of an action for someone else, prevents me from committing crime e.g. mandatory life sentences for murder