Informal Social Control

Informal social control, or the reactions of individuals and groups that bring about conformity to norms and laws, includes peer and community pressure, bystander intervention in a crime, and collective responses such as citizen patrol groups. The agents of the criminal justice system exercise more control when informal social control is weaker (Black, 1976).

Famous quotes containing the words informal, social and/or control:

    “We as a nation need to be reeducated about the necessary and sufficient conditions for making human beings human. We need to be reeducated not as parents—but as workers, neighbors, and friends; and as members of the organizations, committees, boards—and, especially, the informal networks that control our social institutions and thereby determine the conditions of life for our families and their children.”
    —Urie Bronfenbrenner (b. 1917)

    “... to most mortals there is a stupidity which is unendurable and a stupidity which is altogether acceptable—else, indeed, what would become of social bonds?”
    —George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)

    “Only one thing is certain: if pot is legalized, it won’t be for our benefit but for the authorities’. To have it legalized will also be to lose control of it.”
    —Germaine Greer (b. 1939)