Outline and Assess Sociological Approaches to Social Control Within Crime and Deviance

... Outline and Assess Sociological Approaches to Social Control within Crime and Deviance. Society has many rules, which although they are not rigidly enforced, we conform to. But what is it which makes us conform? This is what sociologists call social control and how this relates to criminal and deviant behaviour has been discussed and disputed for many years. Social control refers to social mechanisms that regulate individual and group behavior, leading to conformity and compliances to the rules of a given society or social group. Many mechanisms of social control are cross-cultural, if only in the control mechanisms used to prevent the establishment of chaos or, as Durkheim referred to it, the state of anomie. Social control can only exist if there is a degree of order and predictability prevalent in a society. This prevalent set of norms and values does not arise spontaneously however, societies, or the more powerful members of

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