If law is to act on human behavior, it should provide an environment which will enable the deviant or

potential deviant to internalize the values embodied in the law or it should provide an environment which
will force the deviant to con- form by systematically placing blocks in his achievement of his deviant values,
whenever he violates the law.

Social control is the pattern, suggestions, persuasion, restraint and coercion by whatever means including
physical force by which a society brings into conformity to the approved pattern of behavior.
Social control entails rules of behavior that should be followed by the members of a society. Some of the
rules of conduct fall into the realm of good manners as the culture defines them. As such they describe
behavior that is socially desirable but not necessarily compulsory. Other rules of conduct are not optional
and are enforced by laws.
Social control is the way in which entire social order coheres and maintains itself.
Following are the main characteristics of social control.

Social control is the control of society over individuals.

Social control denotes some kind of influence. This influence may be exercised in various ways by means
of public opinion, coercion, religion, leadership etc.

The influence of social control is essentially exerted by the society or community. The influence of social
control is exercised for promoting the welfare of all the individuals or the group as a whole.

Social control is as old as human society. It is an essential condition of the human society.

The influence of social control is universal. Where there is society, there is social control.

Social control is exercised through both formal and informal Agencies

Need of Social Control

Social control is necessary for an orderly social life. . Without social control the organization of the
society is about to get disturbed.

According to Kimball Young, it is necessary “to bring about conformity, solidarity and continuity of a
particular group or society”.

It is possible only through social control. Society has to make use of its mechanism to accomplish the
necessary order and discipline.

Herbert Spencer has put forwarded the view that society is a collection of group of individuals. Man lives in
society because it has a utility. Through society he is able to preserve his identity and views.
 In order to preserve his identity and characteristics, he has to exercise some control for which certain
rules and institutions are created. These agencies of social control are helpful for preserving the identity of
the individuals and society.

Mechanisms of Social Control

Social control is the control exercised by the society over its members. There are many people in society
who always conform to the social norms and values and they are known as conformists. But few people
who always deviate from the existing norms and values. They are known as nonconformists or deviants.

Social control mechanisms are means by which society can influence people’s behavior to conform to
expectations.

Social Control Theory

Social control theory was developed by Travis Hirschi in 1969. It is also known as the Social Bond Theory.

Hirschi refers to four elements which constitute the societal bond. These bonds include:

• Attachment -- to other individuals

• Commitment -- to following rules

• Involvement -- by typical social behaviors

• Belief -- a basic value system

When one of these four items break down, Hirschi hypothesizes that an individual may then participate
in criminal activities

Social control theory describes internal means of social control.

Social control theory has become one of the more widely accepted explanations in the field of
criminology in its attempt to account for rates in crime and deviant behavior.

Unlike theories that seek to explain why people engage in deviant behavior, social control theories
approach deviancy from a different direction.

The theory seeks to explain how the normative systems of rules and obligations in a given society serve
to maintain a strong sense of social cohesion, order and conformity to widely accepted and established
norms.

Techniques of Social Control

Types or Forms of Social Control

Formal and Informal

Formal social control - law, legislation, military force, police force, ad-ministrative devices, different
political, religious, economic, cultural and other associations and institutions

The formal means of social control come from institutions.

Man is forced to accept these forms of social control

Generally these forms are exercised by secondary groups.

The state, law, education and those which have legitimate power. They apply coercive measures in the
case of deviance.

Informal social control = gossip, slander, resentment, public opinion, sympathy, sense of justice, folkways,
mores, customs, religion, morality and such other agents

These agencies of Social Control have grown according to the needs of the society.

Folk ways, mores, customs, social norms etc. fall under this category of social control.

Generally primary institutions exercise this type of social control.

These kinds of informal negative sanctions are very effective in small-scale societies. In larger societies,
this method also works effectively in small towns and sub-groups of cities, such as a family, work group,
church, or club.

In some societies, social control involves the threat of supernatural punishment from the gods or ancestral
spirits for deviation from the norm. Since it is assumed that crimes against other people in these societies
are likely to be punished whether they are publicly known or not, this belief in divine retribution provides a
powerful tool for getting people to behave properly. The possibility that others could use witchcraft
against deviant individuals also is a common effective coercive mechanism for bringing people into line,
especially in small-scale non-western societies.

Agencies of Social Control

There are following agencies of social control

Law

Law is a powerful method of control. The state runs its administration through the government.

In primitive societies, the groups followed similar occupations and individuals shared a direct and
personal relation among themselves. These folkways, mores and customs sufficed in controlling the
individual behavior. There was almost unquestioned compliance with the formal mechanism of social
control.

In short, law is an important formal means of Control to regulate the individual behaviour in society

Law requires enforcing agencies. Laws are enforced with the help of the police, the court, and sometimes
the armed forces. Administrative machinery of the state is the main law-enforcing agency.

Increasing complexity of the modern industrial society has necessitated enormous growth of ad-
ministrative agencies. Law is, in fact the control of administrative power which is vested in the government
officials.

Law as an instrument of control performs two functions: (i) It eliminates and suppresses the homicidal
activities of individuals, (ii) Law persuades individuals to pay attention to the rights of others as well as to
act in co-operation with others. In this way law tries to protect the individuals and society and promotes
social welfare.

How laws come about varies. In small-scale societies, they usually evolve over time and are part of the
cultural tradition. These are referred to as common laws. In large-scale societies, many laws derive from
old common laws that are now formalized by being written down in penal codes. Other laws in these
complex societies do not evolve organically but are created by enactment in legislatures or by rulers.
These may or may not be codifications of existing social norms. Those laws that parallel the existing norms
usually are more likely to be accepted and followed without coercion.

Some societies emphasize the use of positive sanctions to reward appropriate behavior rather than
negative ones to punish those who do not conform to the social norms. Common positive sanctions
include praise and granting honors or awards. Simply receiving the esteem of one's peers is often
sufficient motivation for people to be model citizens. Examples of effective positive sanctions in the
United States include such things as military promotions, ticker-tape parades, and receiving good grades in
school. In order to be effective, a positive sanction does not need to offer an immediate reward.
Three types of law will be discussed: that which we have called law as punishment, law as therapy, and law
as education.

Punishment - law. The law as punishment might act in three ways. It might deter the deviant by
threatening the values he holds dear; it might act as a learning device and force the deviant to internalize
the values of the law; and it might serve through the publicity of punishment to reinforce the values of the
non-deviants

The law as punishment might fail where it is unable to provide sufficiently serious blocks to the deviant's
values. This point is quite easily seen in political deviation and has been virtually slogan- ized by Patrick
Henry's famous "Give me liberty or give me deat

A second interrelated point and one reason why the law cannot find blocks to deviant values is that,
ideally, punishment should only be directed at the deviant and never at the non-deviant if it is to achieve
social control. However, where indi- viduals have conflicting values, punishment of the criminals many
times rebounds on the innocent as well. For instance, the criminal who is thrown in jail has to be supported
out of funds which the conforming member would like to use for such things as better schools, leisure time
activities, health, etc. In this sense the punishment of the criminal is also felt as a punishment by the
conformi

Where deviant groups rather than individuals are being considered, the mechanism of control which
Durkheim and Mead"0 refer to might work in reverse. It promotes greater cohesion within the deviant
group and, thus, a breakdown of social control.

Therapy - Therapy by definition avoids several of the conditions which make law as punishment
ineffective. It does not worry about finding blocks for deviant values, since it focusses on internaliza- tion
of societal values. It reduces by definition the problem of trying to treat interpersonal relation- ships in
terms of guilt and punishment when it has no such meaning to the participants. It very definitely attempts
to meet the objections of trying to bring about change in the deviant's basic pattern by use of a simplicistic
psychological theory. The major contribution of the law as therapy is that it brings to bear upon the
deviant a more focussed kind of pressure for internalizing the values of society. It provides a highly trained
social worker to replace the former personality expert- the judge. And presumably it brings along more
effective psychological techniques roughly called therapy. It does this by clari- fying the source of conflict
and ways of evading further conflict.

Since much of modern therapy, to be effective, requires cooperation of the clients, much of the therapy
session advocated by law becomes perfunctory. Secondly, when people do not believe in therapy, they
view it as a punish- ment, and evade it in the same manner as other forms of punishment. Thirdly, the law
as therapy is rather expensive and ineffectual in cases of fundamental personality factors which lead to
conflict, or inability to share one's self with

Education - The law as education is one type of law which is designed to meet this objection. It, in a sense,
recognizes that the individual's ability to handle himself is a consequence of the regular institutional
processes. Unlike the other two types of law it does not wait until the deviant act has occurred before
becoming operative. Illustrations of the law as education exist in many areas of life. Most licensing laws are
law as education. Law as educa- tion is basically concerned with developing en- vironments which allow
individuals to internalize given values. It is the learning which takes place gradually, imperceptibly, and
informally through participation in common group endeavors. If the law as education is successful, it does
everything other types of law will do plus locating responsibility in the institutional structure. Its chief
limitation in the past was that the learning environments it presented to the individual have never
seriously been able to compete with the other environments to which they were exposed- job, family, peer
groups, etc.

State

State has a vital role in administering social control.

State functions through the government. Modern nation-states strive to be welfare states, i.e. they seek
to provide to the citizens a wide range of social services like education and medical care.

In modern societies, State has become increasingly important as an agent of social control.

Administration

Administration is very powerful and the most effective instrument of social control. It forces the individual
to obey social control. The administrations punish the violators with the help of the police, the army etc