What is Formal Social Control? What are Some Examples?

Governmental policy, especially via legislation, is an evident example of formal social control that demonstrates what may be acceptable or unacceptable in a certain society.

Germany’s official ban on propaganda by Nazi, Communist and Muslim extremist groups via Strafgesetzbuch section 86 amply illustrates how elected officials may readily outlaw the expression of opinions deemed to be dangerous to a particular society (Strafgesetzbuch, 86).

Another example is Hungary’s zero-tolerance policy toward Antisemitism, introduced in 2010 under the leadership of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán (Kovács, 2022).

The policy has outlawed hate symbols and banned paramilitary groups deemed to be hostile to Hungary’s Jewish community.

The criminal justice system is a collection of social institutions, such as legislatures, police, courts, and prisons, that creates and enforce laws.

Each of these institutions is an agent of formal social control.

Police Force

The enforcement of laws and the capture of criminals play a vital role in formal social control. This, however, would not be possible without a committed police force. Both minor infractions (e.g., parking violations) and major crimes (e.g., robbery and murder) might be averted by the mere presence of law enforcement officers.

Additionally, certain approaches such as broken windows policing may serve to reduce both undesirable behavior and the likelihood of violent crime (Donald, 2016).

The punishment of misdemeanors such as public drinking, loitering and vandalism can function as an admonition that serious felonies would produce extremely harsh consequences.

Police officers have the power and authority to choose to ignore an incident, to label people as ‘suspicious’ or ‘potentially criminal’, to stop and search a person, to issue formal or informal warnings and to arrest a person using force if necessary.

It is important to understand that the police are expected to police all sections of society equally. However, interpretivist sociologists note that this rarely happens – some groups attract more police attention.

John Lambert observed police­suspect interaction on the streets and noted that officers use stereotypical assumptions or labels about what constitutes ‘suspicious’ or ‘criminal’ in terms of social types and behavior, i.e. the decision to stop or arrest someone may be based on whether they or the group to which they belong correspond to a negative stereotype held by a police officer.

It is important to understand that the 43 police forces in the UK do not operate in a standardized fashion, i.e. they do not necessarily follow the same rules or have the same priorities as each other. For example, the official criminal statistics on cannabis use and prostitution are often unreliable because some forces consistently crackdown on these offenses whilst others turn a blind eye to them.

Prison Service

The purpose of prison is to be the ultimate deterrent, both controlling crime and punishing offenders.

Incarceration punishes lawbreakers, isolates them from the rest of society, and seeks their rehabilitation and eventual reintegration.

All these objectives strive to procure the conformity of former delinquents and malefactors to a society’s norms for conduct codified into law. Imprisonment that removes a criminal from the public can be construed as an elimination of a bad example, which, if followed by more individuals, could undermine the stable fabric of social relations (Sampson, 1986).

Meanwhile, rehabilitation and reintegration programs seek to diminish the likelihood of reversion on the part of former offenders.

Judicial Courts

The role of the courts is to determine guilt and impose an appropriate sentence.

The concurring testimony of history shows how judges can drive social change, and thereby fundamentally alter what is considered acceptable in a certain society.

Brown v. Board of Education, which ruled school segregation to be unconstitutional, inspired massive changes in attitude toward race in American society.

That the Supreme Court of the United States is considered an institution whose decisions are expected to be enforced, evidently, plays a significant role.

It bears noting however, that the power of the judiciary to exert formal social control is not boundless, as evidenced by the heavy litigation on issues ranging from gun rights to healthcare, which in effect, demands the overturning of past judicial precedents.