Social Control — Meaning and Purpose, Types of social control-formal and informal

Long before the police arrive, your neighbour's raised eyebrow, your mother's disappointment and your community's gossip have already been keeping you in line. Law is only the most visible, most dramatic layer of something society does constantly and mostly invisibly: control behaviour. Understanding the whole apparatus — not just its legal tip — is what lets a lawyer see why some rules never need a court to be obeyed, and why others cannot survive without one.

In two minutes

Social control is the sum of methods, formal and informal, by which a society induces its members to conform to accepted norms, and law is only its most visible formal instrument, sitting alongside informal mechanisms like family, religion, custom and public opinion that do most of the everyday work of keeping people in line.

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