NCJ Number
187254
Journal
Judicial Explorations Volume: 26 Issue: 5 Dated: June/July 2000 Pages: 58-74
Date Published
2000
Length
17 pages
Annotation
The article looks at the increase in criminal sanctions and its relationship to and effect on social control.
Abstract
The article emphasizes that in the economic and ecological field criminal penalties are getting more and more accentuated. This increasing criminalization could be a compensation of the diminishing informal social control in society. But, if informal social control has indeed diminished, this could also mean that punishments are hardly effective and produce a boomerang effect: criminality increases because of the new penalties. The introduction of new penalties can bring about unintended consequences like the weakening of the moral authority of the law and the stimulating of feelings of injustice. When sanctions are seen as injust, they will be challenged. The article concludes that we should not always criminalize behavior that social control cannot regulate. Criminalization should be dependent on two criteria: is there a broad societal consensus to condemn certain behavior, and are legal sanctions sufficiently effective to enforce obedience?