NCJ Number
131305
Date Published
1991
Length
400 pages
Annotation
Informal control has raised numerous issues associated with the need to induce conformity, and this book offers criminological and sociological viewpoints on informal control.
Abstract
Key regulatory mechanisms which play a role in informal control are the family, groups, communities and neighborhoods, work, culture, ideology, politics, religion, public opinion, mass media, morals, customs and traditions, upbringing, arts and sciences, medicine, and sports. These mechanisms generate ethical dilemmas which arise mainly from the variety of authorities and the power with which the individual is permanently confronted and in the way he or she can be supervised, punished, made to conform, and even manipulated. Informal control in the role of restricting deviance is the focal point of the preceding regulatory mechanisms. Although these mechanisms represent factors of cohesiveness and instruments of maintaining and preserving order, they can be quite contestable. The mechanisms are always ready to influence, to change people, and to manipulate individuals with the most diverse potentials and degrees of control activity. Individuals are uniquely susceptible to being controlled and punished, and this can lead to possible antagonism in the ethics of informalism, to State paternalism over informal control, and to processes of State deregulation in some areas which are left to the self-regulation of primary and secondary groups. Since regulatory mechanisms associated with informal control are charged with emotions, it is questionable whether informal control can be ethically neutral and just. 201 references and 490 footnotes