Category: crime control
What is Social Control?
Social control refers to the mechanisms a society uses to get individuals to conform. This post covers sociological perspectives on social control such as Functionalism, Marxism and Interactionism
A broad definition of social control is 'all of the formal and informal mechanisms and internal and external controls that operate to produce conformity'*
Social control is the opposite of deviance. Sociologists of deviance ask 'why do people break social norms and values'? Social control theorists ask 'why do people conform to social norms and values'?
NB for students studying the crime and deviance component of A-level sociology, most resources tend to focus on the 'crime and deviance' aspect, NOT the social control aspect, but the question of why people conform is just as important as the question of why people break the rules!
Origins of the Concept of Social Control
The concept is often traced back to the seventeenth century Philosopher Thomas Hobbes who argued that in a society of self-interested individuals a great power (the State) was needed to prevent things deteriorating into a war of all against all.
Individuals agreed to give up some of their individual freedoms by promising to obey the laws of the State, and in return the State promised to protect individuals.
Talcottt Parsons (1937) developed one of the earliest sociological perspectives on social control. He argued that conformity was not just produced by external agencies coercing individuals to obey rules through the threat of punishment, but also through individuals internalizing norms and values through socialization.
Travis Hirschi (1969) developed this idea further when he argued that juvenile delinquency was the result of an individual's bonds to society were weakened. His theory emphasized the importance of ties to family, peers and other social institutions such as education and work as important in maintaining social control.
Types of social control theory
One way of dividing up theories of social control is to separate them into conformity producing and deviance repressing approaches (Hudson 1997) suggested there were
Conformity producing theories tend to focus on how people learn to conform by internalising social norms and taking on social roles (like with the Functionalist view of the family or education)
Deviance repressing theories tend to look at the relationship between deviance behaviour and the measures used to reduce it (like with right and left realist approaches to deviance).
Better methods combine both types of approach
Parsons' approach to social control
Parsons was interested in the question of how societies produce enough conformity to reproduce themselves (or carry on) across several generations.
He pointed out that the majority of people to do not seem to mind conforming to most of society's norms and values for most of the time during most of their lives. In other words most people willingly conform.
Parsons argued that socialization was central to this 'willing conformity'. Socialization within institutions such as the family and education helped individuals to internalize the norms and values of a society and convince people that a 'good-person' was one who willingly conformed to society's rules.
Matza's Techniques of Neutralisation
David Matza's work on 'techniques of neutralisation' supported this view. He pointed out that even people who broke the laws of society still shared the general values of that society.
Matza argued that when people committed deviant acts, they employed 'techniques of neutralisation' to explain why they had broken social norms and/ or values.
Techniques of neutralization may include such things as 'I was drunk, so I was out of control' or 'that person is nasty, they deserved it', and they are used by individuals to justify why they were temporarily deviance on that particular occasion.
Matza argued that 'techniques of neutralisation' enabled people to convince themselves that there were exceptional circumstances which explained their occasional acts of deviance, while at the same time allowing them to maintain their self-concept as someone who generally conforms to social norms most of the time.
Hirschi's Control Theory
Hirschi's theory of social control emphasized the importance of attachments and social bonds. The more bonds an individual has to society, the more time he or she spends involved with other people and social institutions, then the less likely that individual is to commit deviance.
In Hirschi's theory, deviance doesn't really need explaining: it happens whenever an individual is cut free from social bonds and has the opportunity to be deviant.
Marxist Approaches to Social Control
Unlike the three consensus approaches above, Marxists tend to see social control as being consciously or unconsciously 'engineered' by the capitalist class and the state.
In terms of 'conformity producing' approaches – Marxists see the norms and values of education as working to produce a docile and passive workforce – as outlined in Bowles and Gintis' Correspondence Theory.
The media is also seen as an important agent of social control – processes such as agenda setting and gatekeeping mean the elite's view of the world is presented as normal, thus producing ideological control.
Marxists are also critical of how 'deviance is reduced' – seeing the police as working with the elite and the state – working class street crime is, for example, over-policed and prosecuted, while Corporate Crime is relatively under-policed and prosecuted.
Interactionist Approaches to Social Control
The labelling perspective sees social control and deviance as having an ironic relationship.
The more the agencies of social control try to prevent deviance, by labelling and policing certain behaviours as deviant, then the more deviance will be created.
A lot of research from the interactionist perspective has focused on how it is certain types of people (rather than behaviours) who tend to get labelled as deviant, and thus are more likely to become deviant.
(*) Giddens and Sutton (2017) Essential Concepts in Sociology
Author Karl ThompsonPosted on March 18, 2020 March 13, 2020 Categories Crime and Deviance, crime controlTags crime, Deviance, perspectives, social controlLeave a comment on What is Social Control?
The deportations of foreign nationals – an example of a state crime?
The British government recently tried to deport 42 Jamaican nationals who had committed offences and in the United Kingdom and served more than 12 months in jail.
However, a last minute human rights challenge in the Court of Appeal meant that only 17 were deported and 25 were taken off the plane, because for the government to deport them would have been against their human rights, protected under International Law.
Many of those people who were saved from deportation had come to Britain from Jamaica as children, and had lived in Britain for several years, some for over a decade, and some even had families here.
The government attempted to claim that all 42 had been committed of serious offences. Some had, but others appear to have been committed on relatively minor drugs offences.
One of the people taken off the flight (according to this BBC article) had actually served for the British army in Afghanistan, had been diagnosed with PTSD and been convicted of GBH, related to his poor mental health.
Is this a state crime?
Technically the government has the right to deport people who have committed an offence that resulted in more than 12 months in jail, UNLESS it is against their human rights.
So whether these deportations are examples of state crimes depends on whether deporting them harms their human rights….
The guidelines for this lie in the United Nation's charter of Human Rights, and as far as I'm aware the lawyers for the 25 people taken off the plane picked up on article number 8 – the right to legal support if we are treated unfairly.
There's also a possibility that deporting people with young families breaches article number 16.
Is this an effective measure of control?
While shipping criminals out of the country is obviously a very effective way of getting rid of criminals, and a pretty effective deterrent, I have to ask what the effect of this will be on those leaving behind younger children?
What do you think? Is this an appropriate response, should criminals' individual rights be taken into account in such matters?
Author Karl ThompsonPosted on March 6, 2020 Categories Crime and Deviance, crime controlTags crimeLeave a comment on The deportations of foreign nationals – an example of a state crime?
Does Prison Work? The Stats suggest not!
What can prison population statistics tell us about Crime Control in the UK? Is Prison an effective strategy for controlling crime?
These are questions that should be of interest to any student studying the Crime and Deviance option within A-level sociology.
Scotland, England and Wales have high prison populations
In England and Wales we lock up 40% more people than in France and almost twice as many people as they do in Germany, which are broadly comparable countries.
Yet there is no link between the prison population and levels of crime
England and wales have seen a rising prison population and a rising then a rapidly falling crime rate
Finland has seen a declining prison population and a rising and then a gradually declining crime rate.
Canada has seen a broadly level prison population and yet a relatively stable crime rate.
Most people are serving short sentences for non-violent offences
Nearly 70% of the prison population are in for non-violent offences – which means that 30% are in for violent offences. In those prisons where the two populations are mixed, this must be awful for some of those non-violent offenders.
People are getting sentenced for longer
I'm not sure what's underlying this rise in more serious offences …. the most obvious long-sentence crime of murder has decreased in recent years, so maybe this is for violent gang related and terrorist related crimes which involve in harm rather than death ? Something to research further!
Does Prison work?
In short, if controlling crime is what you hope to achieve, then no it doesn't because nearly 50% of those sent to prison are recalled within 1 year of being released.
However, there are more reasons why you might want to lock people up other than just rehabilitating them and preventing future offending – there is an argument that they just deserve to be punished whether they reoffend or not.
How do community service orders and suspended sentences compare to prison?
it seems that both of these are more effective at preventing reoffending, but the difference isn't that great:
63% of people who serve sentences of less than 12 months reoffend compared to
56% of those who receive community orders and compared to
54% of those who receive suspended sentences.
HOWEVER, this may be due to the fact that those avoiding jail have different circumstances and/ or different characters to those who do go to jail – they might just be the kinds of people less likely to reoffend already!
Overall these prison statistics suggest that while we like to lock people up in England and Wales, there is little evidence that doing so prevents crime.
Maybe we should be looking for cheaper and more effective solutions – such as early intervention (initially expensive but cheaper than several years in and out of jail), or public shaming for example?
This post is based on data taken from 'Prison the facts, Summer 2019', published by the Prison Reform Trust.
Author Karl ThompsonPosted on July 24, 2019 July 24, 2019 Categories Crime and Deviance, crime control, Sociological conceptsTags crime, crime control, Deviance, prison, punishment, StatisticsLeave a comment on Does Prison Work? The Stats suggest not!