Social control
Definition
The mechanisms, formal and informal, through which societies regulate individual behaviour and secure conformity to norms. Includes criminal law and policing (formal control), and family, school, religion, and community norms (informal control). Travis Hirschi's social bond theory centres on weakened informal control as the driver of delinquency.
Related terms
- Criminology
- The scientific study of crime, its causes and distribution across populations, the operation of criminal justice institutions, and strategies for prevention and...
- Dark figure of crime
- The gap between the actual volume of crime and the amount recorded in official statistics. Crimes go unrecorded when victims do not...
- Penology
- The branch of criminology concerned with the theory and practice of punishment and imprisonment. It examines the aims of punishment (retribution, deterrence,...
- Recidivism
- The tendency of a person who has been convicted of a crime to reoffend. Measured differently across jurisdictions: by reconviction, by reincarceration,...
- Victimology
- The sub-field of criminology that studies crime victims: their characteristics, the victim-offender relationship, the impacts of victimisation, and the adequacy of legal...
Explained in
- Criminology, Law, and Forensic ScienceThe mechanisms, formal and informal, through which societies regulate individual behaviour and secure conformity to norms. Includes criminal law and policing (...