2.1✅

• for society to function smoothly people need to behave more or less as others expect them to, example: if the postman decided to post all the mail to just 1 address in each street
• social control involves persuading or compelling people to conform to society’s norms, laws and expectation
• society has ways of achieving control over it’s member‘s behaviour, which we can group into 2 main forms: internal + external forms of social control
• internal forms of social control: these are controls over our behaviour that come from within ourselves, from our personalities or our values, as such they are therefore also forms of self-control
• internal forms of social control: they lead us to conform to the rules of society + the groups that we belong to because we feel confidently that is it the right thing to do
• there are 3 main topics that come under internal forms of social control they are: moral conscience or superego, tradition and culture + internalisation of social rules + morality
• external forms of social control: as well as internal forms of control such as our conscience, society has external forms of control that aim to ensure we conform to its expectations + keep to its rules
• external forms of social control: society does this through agencies of social control
• there are 4 main subtopics under external forms of social control they are: agencies of social control, the criminal justice system, coercion, fear of punishment
• Moral conscience or superego:

  • Freud’s psychoanalytic theory: we conform to society’s expectations + obey its rules because our superego tells us to
  • id, ego + superego form part of our personality
  • superego: tells you what is right and wrong + inflicts guilt feelings on you if you fail to do as it asks, it develops through early socialisation within the family, tells you how to behave, it restrains the animalistic urges of the id 
  • if you act on your urges of the id it will lead you to anti-social + criminal behaviour 
  • superego allows self control + behaviour that is socially acceptable 
• Tradition + Culture:

  • the culture to which you belong to becomes part of you through socialisation
  • you accept their values, norms, traditions as part of your identity 
  • examples-religious traditions: Muslim’s tradition = fasting, Jewish tradition = sharing the Shabbat evening meal
  • conforming to your traditions is an important way to affirm your identity + to be accepted as a member of the community
• Internalisation of social rules + morality:

  • both the superego + traditions you follow become part of your inner self or personality 
  • they start as things outside of us = either through our parents rules + values = superego
  • or it starts as things such as our culture or social groups = tradition
  • socialisation: in both cases we internalise the rules through socialisation, either from parents, wider social groups or institutions like religion, school, peer groups, where society’s rule + moral code become our own personal rules + moral code, you conform to social norms 
  • ‘rational ideology’ = an idea to achieve social control, your conscience guides you to follow laws + rules due to experiencing feelings of guilt, anxiety or worry from within, it enables us to keep within the law 
• Agencies of social control:

  • organisations + institutions that impose rules on us in an effort to make us behave in certain ways e.g. family, peer group or education system 
  • example: parents may send a naughty child to bed, or teachers may give a disruptive student a detention
  • negative sanctions = punishments 
  • agencies of social control also give positive sanctions (rewards) to those who conform e.g. hardworking student earning praise or being given a gold star 
  • positive + negative sanctions help encourage social control, echoing Skinner’s operant learning theory where punishment deters undesired behaviour + rewards encourage acceptable behaviour 
• The criminal justice system (cjs):

  • contains several different agencies of social control: each have the power to use formal legal sanctions against the person in an attempt to make them conform to societies laws 
  • police: power to stop, search, arrest, detain + question suspects 
  • cps: charge a suspect + prosecute them in court 
  • judges + magistrates: power to sentence the guilty to a variety of punishments 
  • they have positive sanctions (rewards) used to control behaviour = e.g. helping the prosecution is likely to earn you a lessened sentence + for good behaviour you may be given more privileges + earlier parole 
• Coercion:

  • involves the use or threat of force in order to make someone do (or stop doing) something
  • can be physical or psychological violence
  • negative sanctions of the cj: sending someone to prison for stealing, it is aimed at preventing further offending 
• Fear of punishment:

  • one way of trying to achieve social control + make people conform to the laws 
  • form of coercion: as it involves the threat that force will be used against you if you do not obey the law 
  • e.g. if you commit an offence you could be arrested, charged, convicted + jailed all against your will 
  • deterrence: some theories like right realists believe that the fear of getting caught + punished is what ensures that many of the would-be criminals continue to obey the law, fear acts as a deterrent 
• Control theory:

  -> control theorists ask “why do people obey the law”

  -> Travis Hirschi: believes that people conform because they are controlled by their bonds to society which keeps them from deviating, he argues that ‘delinquent acts occur when an individual’s bond to society is weak or broken’
• Hirschi’s 4 elements (individuals bond to society):

  • Attachment: the more attached we are to others, the more we care about their opinion, the more we respect their norms, the less likely we are to break them, especially w/ parents + teachers 
  • Commitment: the more committed we are to a conventional lifestyle (good education + job) the more risk we lose by getting involved in crime, more likely to conform to societies lifestyle 
  • Involvement: more involved you are in conventional, law-abiding activities e.g. studying, partaking in sports, the less time + energy you will have to become criminal, keeps youths off the streets + busy w/ legal activities 
  • Beliefs: if you are socialised to believe it is right to obey the law your less likely to break it 
• the 4 elements are: Attachment, Commitment, Involvement + Beliefs 
• Parenting:

  -> control theorists emphasise the role of parenting in creating bonds that prevent young people from offending 

  -> e.g. Gottfredson + Hirschi argued that low self-control is a major cause of delinquency + it is due to poor socialisation + inconsistent or absent parental discipline 
• Parenting:

  -> Riley + Shaw: believed that lack of parental supervision led to deliquency they believe parents should:

  • involve themselves in their teenagers lives + spend time w/ them 
  • take a strong interest in what they do at school + how they spend time w/ their friends 
  • show strong disapproval of criminal behaviour + explain the consequences of offending 
• Walter Reckless:

  -> importance of parenting + socialisation 

  -> some psychological tendencies lead to criminality, although effective socialisation can provide ‘internal containment’ by building the self control to resist the temptation to offend 

  -> external controls like parental discipline can provide ‘external containment’
• Feminists:

  -> used the control theory to explain women’s low rate of offending

  -> Frances Heidensohn argues that patriarchal (male-dominated society) controls females more closely, making it harder for them to offend 

  -> women spend more time on domestic duties = there is less opportunity to engage in criminality outside the home 

  -> Pat Carlen found that females who do offend often failed to form an attachment to parents as the suffered abuse in the family or were brought up in care