Deviance and Social Control

(from Goode, 2000 and 2005, chapters 1 and 3)

• Deviance and Social Control
   

  • Norms or rules about what members of a society should and should not do are universal, that is all societies have them and the members of all societies enforce them.
  • Some norms apply in specific contexts, settings, or situation. i.e. Laughing at a funeral.
  • Some norms apply to the behavior of members of certain groups or collectivities but not to others. i.e. Street Gangs
  • Some norms apply to everyone in a given society. i.e. Killing a baby

So:  Everyone, everywhere is subjected to certain norms

• Norms imply that violators will be punished or sanctioned. There is NOT and has NEVER been a society where "anything goes." It would not last long. Thus, some minimal level of punishment of wrongdoing is necessary to ensure a minimal level of social order.

But: Most norms attempt to discourage behavior that neither directly harms anyone, nor threatens the society with chaos and disintegration. They are intended to make a statement about what is considered by some, many, or most members of a society to be right, good and proper. They embody certain principles of moral correctness separate and independent of what they do for the society's physical survival. So, we are expected to do certain things because they are right and that's the way they are done

Social Control

• Efforts to ensure conformity to a norm. It includes all of the processes by which people define and respond to deviant behavior.

    Forms of  Social Control

• Internal
• External
• Informal
• Formal
• "Semiformal"

Internal Social Control

•  The process of internalizing the norms of society and accepting them as valid. It operates through the process of socialization, that is learning and adopting the norms of the society or a particular group or collectivity within the society.

       Agents of Socialization

• Earliest Agent - The Family. Its primary function is to help children internalize the norms of the society in which they live. Failure to socialize, leads to behaviors that society regards as deviant.
• Later Agents - Schools, Peers and the Mass Media.

So: When one accepts the norms of society as valid the norms are internalized. Thus, a person feels guilty if they engage in behavior society considers wrong.

But: Because there are always some people, usually a minority, who don't accept the legitimacy of the norms, society turns to external social control.

External Social Control

• Society's effort to bring those who "stepped outside the lines" back into line. It is made up of the system of rewards and punishments, sanctions, that persons, parties, and agents use to induce others to conform to a norm. Thus, a Positive Sanction is a reward and a Negative Sanction is a punishment.

But: A great deal of social control is coercive and repressive; it relies on punishment and force.

 Informal Social Control

• Interpersonal actions between and among people to remind someone that their behavior upsets or pleases them. i.e. frowning, smiling, criticizing, praising, shunning or being warm.
• Informal agents of social control act on their own, in an unofficial capacity.

Since: Most people seek the approval of others whom they care about, they tend to adjust their behavior to avoid the disapproval of significant others by discontinuing the offensive behavior or hiding it from public view.

But: In large, complex societies, because it becomes easy to ignore the disapproval of others, informal social control is no longer sufficient to bring about conformity to then norms.

Thus: Formal Social Control becomes necessary.

Formal Social Control

• An effort to bring about conformity to the law by agents of the Criminal Justice System (CJS) i.e. police, courts and correctional institutions.

    Formal Agents of  Social Control

• Agents who have legitimate power to make people conform to the law.
• Formal agents occupy a specific status in bureaucratic organization. It is this position which give them the legitimacy to sanction wrongdoers for violating the formal code.

But: Formal and Informal social control can operate at the same time. i.e. A drug dealer who is arrested by the police and shunned by his neighbors.

"Semiformal" Social Control

• a huge territory of noncriminal, nonpenal bureaucratic social control, administered by the government, which attempts to deal with the troublesome behavior of persons under their authority.
• If a persons behavior becomes extremely troublesome,  an array of agencies, bureaucracies, and organizations may step in to handle or control that person, to punish or bring him or her into line with the rules. These employees of these agencies are known as Professional Controllers. i.e. social workers, psychiatrists, truant officers, and representatives, functionaries and officers of mental hospitals, civil courts, social welfare offices, unemployment offices, departments of motor vehicles, and public schools.

Professional Controllers

• Do not possess the power of arrest or incarceration, but can make recommendations to agents in the CJS that may have bering on arrest and incarceration.

But: It is informal social control the is exercised the most, not representatives of bureaucratic organizations.

So: Informal Social Control is the foundation of social life.

• Problem is the place of informal control as the "foundation" of social life not being clearly part of the control perspective.

URL: http://www.umsl.edu/~keelr/200/socialcontrol.htm
Owner: Robert O. Keel rok@umsl.edu
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Last Updated: Thursday, July 14, 2005 1:56 PM