COMMUNITY AND SOCIAL CONTROL

Community and Social Control

Community and Social Control

Introduction

Modern societies are transformed at a rapid pace, bringing with it; new dimensions to traditional crimes. One of the most devastating and worrying aspects of this transformation and progress is to identify those criminal factors and devise methods to reduce them. This is carried out with the aim to propose the political, social and criminal status of modern societies to the states. This is where social control plays an integral role. Social control has always been associated with the social reaction to a deviant behavior. In fact, crime cannot be analyzed in all its magnitude, without relating to how society reacts to it, and how it punishes the criminals. We can not ignore that social control is not only aimed at people who commit crimes, but also at people for whom it is exercised. Social control, thus, forms an integral part of a civilized society, where it directs and control civil behaviors and actions.

One can social control mechanisms of a society, through different agents or instruments to ensure its acceptance by members of the society; including various norms, values, interests and behavior patterns that seek to punish the offenders through voluntary or forced means. This essay will analyze how the formulation of a community leads an improvised system of social control; and how community membership helps its citizens to be effectively “controlled” or “being responsible” in their behaviors related to the societal and personal dimensions (Rensberger, 1983, p. 28-46).

Discussion

Concept of Community

A community does not only consist of the people who constitute it. The term “community” is often used to refer to a region with administrative and regional division within a state; which holds governmental and autonomous institutions that deal with the organization of this community along with its maintenance and development. Generally, a community already exists before the birth of any of its current residents, and continues to exist when they disappear. It is something that goes beyond its components, residents or members. A community may have members who have moved temporarily to other locations, perhaps at some point want to return, but not all do. There are “communities” that do not have a physical location, but are limited by a group of people with common interests (Merton, 1973, p. 605). However, a community's focus of attention is usually an activist group in a specific geographical location.

In urban areas, a community may be a group of several homes of people with a common origin. In turn, this setting can be a part of neighborhood or any other local urban divide. As links become more extensive, there is greater heterogeneity (differences of origin, language, religion and other traits that make a common identity) between the members of a community. In general, an urban community has vague links, it is harder to define, is more heterogeneous (diverse, mixed), more complex, more difficult to organize using ordinary methods of community development, and have more complex ...