Topic 1: Defining crime and deviance

Crime, deviance and social control

Social control is the process of socially regulating people's actions, behaviour, appearence and their thinking. It can be achieved in three ways:

• Coercion: people are forced to act in certain ways through fear of sanctions.
• Legitimisation: people are trained to believe through socialisation that some actions are acceptable and others less so.
• Internalisation: some rules become part of an indiviudal's thinking so they can't be broken as they're part of the person's identity.

Social control comes in two forms, formal social control and informal social control.

Formal social control is where written rules, laws, guide peoples actions. People who break the law are punished according to a set of legal principles or guidelines. By breaking the law there's a possibility of conviction in a court. It makes the individual a criminal.

Informal social control is where there are unwritten rules within society, such as norms, mores and values. They regulate our behaviour. Those who break the unwritten rules are deviant and therefore a punished by members of society through hostility, rejection and possibly bullying. 

Crime and deviance are related but not the same concepts. Crime depends on the law, making…