Social control

Social control

1. Informal - negative comments, looks, exclusion

2. Formal - organisations that exist solely or partly to enforce order

3. Feeley and Simon - social control has changed from controlling deviant acts to potentially deviant behaviour. Police patrol working class and ethnic minorities whilst private security looks after public places ie shopping mall

   • Actuarialism - risk calculation

4. The function of punishment

   • Durkheim - centuries ago punishment was used as a form of revenge and public display to act as a deterrent, whereas now, punishments are out of necessity. However, punishment is still fulfilling the same functions in society e.g. more humanitarian precautions provide same deterrent.
   • Collective conscious
   • Heal wounds opened by criminals
   • Healthy and functional
   • Maintains consensus
     • Although not everyone always agrees on the punishment given e.g. Oscar Pistorius

5. Cohen

   • Punishment makes up part of our everyday life and experiences through:
     • Specialist language used by doctors and lawyers to justify their elitist position
     • Systems of classification - pigeon holed by class, gender and age, which leads to self-fulfilling prophesy
     • Timetabling - day to day control over experiences e.g. education, work
   • On the surface there has been a change in:
     • Increase in the influence of the state e.g. more police
     • Specialisation of agencies of deviance - deviants separated into separate catagories
     • Segregation of deviants in punishment e.g. prisons, hospitals, asylums
     • Decline of public punishment
   • Hidden changes:
     • Decarceration (removing people from institutions such as prisons or mental hospitals) - to save the state money and further marginalise deviants in main stream society
     • Growing care in the community has led to an increase in social workers, doctors and teachers, to control in the community

6. Foucault - punishment has moved from public to internalised

   • Deviance is more acceptable in today's society, so punishment has moved from body to mind and the focus is on reform and rehabilitation

7. Rusche and Kircheimer (marxist) - punishment and laws reflect the interests of the bourgeoisie e.g. slavery was used as bourgeoisie needed unpaid labour. When slavery was no longer appropriate, working classes were controlled in prisons with mundane work, bad conditions

8. Police

   • Styles of policing
     • Consensual approach - reinforcing values, protecting people, working with the community
     • Conflict policing - imposing middle class values on modern class, impose law which reflects the bourgeoisie interests, higher patrol in working class areas
   • Police discretion
     • Reiner - ways of explaining discretion:
       • Cultural
       • Structural
       • Individualistic