Examine the role of formal and informal social control in controlling individuals

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Examine the role of formal and informal social control in controlling individuals’ behaviour.

In Emile Durkheim’s early writings, he stated that society must have some form of boundaries to behaviour that is acceptable. Social control provides the basis for society to police its boundaries and is the way that societies deal with the deviant and criminal behaviours that a minority of societies members subscribe to. There are two types of social control, formal, which is practiced by specific social agencies which have the role of maintaining order in society, and informal, which is where social interaction pushes society’s members back into conformity.

        Most societies tend to have a mixture of informal and formal control mechanisms, and the balance depends upon the type of society. In societies like that of Britain, which is highly multicultural, it is suggested that since a collective conscience is basically impossible to achieve, formal methods of social control are more useful. According to functionalists, without control and punishment, society would collapse into a state of anomie. They suggest that the process of prosecution provides a constant means of checking whether the law reflects the views of the majority in society. With formal social control, it is suggested that if someone commits a crime, they will be punished by the justice system accordingly. For example, if someone commits and act of violence, they might be punished with jail time for example. Punishments like this often deter people from committing crime in the first place as they have seen example of other people, but also deters people from committing again. For example, if someone has received a fine from committing vandalism, it is thought that they would not do it again as paying a fine may have shown that being a vandal wasn’t worth it. For example, when the Zero Tolerance policy was adopted in New York, it showed that as the punishments became more severe for smaller acts of crime, people were less likely to commit the crime as they saw their lives being affected greatly by the punishment. However, in some cases formal social control have been argued against as in Britain for example, some prisons hold reoffending rates of about 74% for the people who have served lesser jail terms showing formal social control may be not working in some cases. However Marxists such as Hall argue that the criminal justice system operates solely for the benefit of the ruling class. They believe it is based on controlling the working class and to ensure that any opposition to Capitalism is removed. They do recognise the why the legal systems exists yet believe harmful acts performed by the middle-class are often ignored. Therefore formal social control is effective in controlling the working class, yet is pursued in the interests of the middle-class.

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        For informal social control, although it is now harder to describe due to multiculturalism, it is still present within societies. Durkheim wrote that societies could only exist if the members shared a collective conscience and this basically describes how informal social control works. The majority of society looks at certain acts which people commit in very negative ways, and this is suggested to cause criminals to think before they do the crime, or wish they’d never committed it in the first place. Social bonds, attachment, commitment, involvement and belief,  exist which bind people together in society to prevent them from ...

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