EXTERNAL FORMS OF SOCIAL CONTROL

What is external forms of social control?

Society has external forms of control that aim to ensure that people conform to its expectations and keep to its rules.

What are agencies of social control?

Things like the family, friends and education system for example that impose rules on us in an effort to make us behave in certain ways.

How to agencies aim to achieve social control?

Agencies can give out negative sanctions and positive sanctions to help people distinguish from right and wrong and so people know what behaviour is good and will get rewarded. In school, a good student may earn praise or earn something and a bad student gets things like detentions, controlling people’s behaviour.

What agencies are there in the criminal justice system that aim for social control?

The police

The CPS

Judges and magistrates

The prison service

How does coercion achieve social control?

Coercion can involve the use or threat of force in order to make someone do or stop doing something

Can involve physical or psychological violence or other forms of pressure.

Negative sanctions of the criminal justice system are also examples of coercion since they may help to deter and control behaviour into something that is ideal.

How does the fear of punishment achieve social control?

Tries to make people conform to laws by using the threat that force will be used against you if you do not obey the law and then a person can be arrested, charged, convicted and jailed.

The fear of punishment also can be a deterrent that prevents many would-be criminals from committing crimes and they instead obey the law, helping to achieve social control.