Social Control: Formal and Informal
What Is Social Control?
Social control refers to the range of ways in which societies regulate behaviour and encourage conformity. Without social control, functionalist sociologists argue, social order would break down — the shared norms and values holding society together would lose their binding force. Sociologists identify two broad categories of social control: formal social control and informal social control.
The distinction matters for sociology because different perspectives disagree sharply about whose norms are enforced, who benefits from social control, and whether the mechanisms of control operate fairly across different social groups.
Formal Social Control: The Criminal Justice System
Formal social control is exercised by agencies of formal social control — primarily the police, the courts and the prison system. These agencies are authorised by the state to use legal power to enforce rules and impose formal sanctions on those who break the law.
The police act as the front line of formal control, with powers of stop and search, arrest and detention. However, sociologists note that policing is not neutral: the decision to stop, question or arrest a suspect involves discretion, and research suggests that this discretion can be applied unequally. Interactionist sociologists point out that police stereotypes about who “looks criminal” influence where resources are deployed and who is stopped. Courts determine guilt and impose sentences. Prisons serve multiple stated purposes: punishment, deterrence, rehabilitation and incapacitation (removing offenders from society). Critics of the prison system argue that it disproportionately incarcerates people from disadvantaged social backgrounds and has limited effectiveness as a deterrent.
Functionalist view: The criminal justice system performs a necessary social function. By identifying, prosecuting and punishing offenders, it reinforces the collective moral boundaries of society (Durkheim’s boundary maintenance function). Without formal control, social order would collapse. The police and courts are seen as broadly serving society’s shared interests.
Marxist view: Marxist sociologists argue that formal social control primarily serves the interests of the bourgeoisie. The police and courts direct their attention disproportionately at working-class crime (street theft, disorder, benefit fraud) while largely ignoring or under-penalising the harmful acts of the powerful (corporate crime, tax avoidance, financial fraud). The prison population in England and Wales is drawn overwhelmingly from disadvantaged backgrounds — a pattern that Marxists argue reflects the class-based nature of formal control.
Interactionist view: Formal control involves discretion at every stage — police officers decide who to stop; prosecutors decide who to charge; judges and juries assess credibility. Becker’s labelling theory shows that these discretionary decisions are shaped by stereotypes and social power, not just by the evidence of rule-breaking. The result is selective enforcement that amplifies existing inequalities.
Informal Social Control: Family, Peers, Media and More
Informal social control operates through the everyday expectations, pressures and reactions of social groups rather than through legal authority. Its agencies include the family, the peer group, the school, religion, the media and the workplace. Informal control works primarily through informal sanctions: praise, approval and inclusion on one hand; ridicule, disapproval and social exclusion on the other.
The family: The family is typically the first agency of socialisation and informal control. Parents establish rules, reward conformity and sanction deviance long before formal institutions intervene. The norms children internalise in the family setting — about honesty, aggression, gender behaviour — shape their behaviour in other social contexts. Feminist sociologists note that family-based informal control operates differently for boys and girls: daughters are typically given less freedom of movement, face earlier curfews and are held to different standards of behaviour.
The peer group: As young people grow older, the peer group becomes an increasingly important source of informal control. Peer approval and rejection are powerful motivators: individuals conform to group norms (dress, speech, attitudes, behaviour) to maintain belonging and social status. Subcultural theorists like Cohen argued that peer groups can also exert control in the direction of deviance, where group norms celebrate norm-breaking and where conformity to the wider society’s expectations earns ridicule rather than approval.
Education: Schools exercise informal control through teacher expectations, praise and punishment, the hidden curriculum (embedding norms of punctuality, obedience and effort) and through peer dynamics. The formal rules of schools (uniforms, timetables, detention systems) overlap with informal peer pressure to shape student behaviour.
Religion: Religious institutions and belief systems promote moral codes and community expectations. Fear of social exclusion from a religious community, or internalised religious values, can serve as powerful informal controls. In more secular societies, the direct influence of religion on everyday conformity has arguably declined, though religious values continue to shape family norms.
The media: The media exerts informal control by setting agendas, shaping public norms and rewarding or stigmatising certain behaviours. Media coverage of crime, in particular, can contribute to moral panics that heighten public anxiety and informal social pressure. Advertising and popular culture promote norms of consumption, gender behaviour and lifestyle that function as informal expectations.
Heidensohn: Patriarchal Control and Female Conformity
Frances Heidensohn, in Women and Crime (1985), offered a feminist explanation for one of the most consistent patterns in crime data: women commit far fewer crimes than men. Rather than explaining this through biological difference or individual psychology, Heidensohn argued that women are subject to far more intensive social control than men, making it structurally more difficult for them to deviate.
Heidensohn used patriarchal control theory as her framework. She identified three domains in which women are controlled more tightly than men:
- Control in the home: Women are expected to spend the majority of their time on domestic labour and childcare. Those who challenge these expectations risk male violence as an assertion of patriarchal authority. Men as the main or sole breadwinner hold financial power that limits women’s independence. Daughters are controlled more strictly than sons — earlier curfews, more restrictions on movement, greater expectations of domestic contribution.
- Control in public: Women face the threat of male sexual violence in public spaces, which acts as an informal deterrent against independent movement, particularly at night. The cultural idea of “separate spheres” — women’s proper place as the home — means that women who occupy public space conspicuously or in ways that challenge expectations may face ridicule, harassment or judgement.
- Control at work: Women are controlled by male-dominated hierarchies and subjected to various forms of sexual harassment. Organisational cultures and workers’ organisations have historically been male-dominated, limiting women’s opportunities and autonomy.
Heidensohn’s argument is that women’s lower crime rates are not evidence of superior morality or greater law-abidingness but the result of more intensive control that restricts their opportunities to offend. This connects directly to the broader feminist argument that social life is structured by patriarchy and that gender shapes social experiences in profound ways.
Heidensohn (Women and Crime, 1985) argues that women’s lower crime rates reflect the intensity of patriarchal control they face — in the home (domestic expectations and male violence), in public (threat of sexual violence, separate spheres ideology) and at work (male-dominated hierarchies and harassment).
Formal control uses legal authority (police, courts, prisons) backed by state-imposed sanctions. Informal control uses social pressure and norms (family, peers, media, religion, education) and operates through everyday interaction. Both types can be analysed from functionalist, Marxist, feminist and interactionist perspectives — each asking different questions about who controls, who benefits and who is most controlled.
Heidensohn’s work has been influential but also criticised. She has been challenged for making generalisations that do not apply to all women: the experience of control differs significantly by class, ethnicity, age and location. Her account also focuses on why women do not commit crime, which some argue tells us less about women’s actual offending patterns (particularly as rates of female offending have changed since 1985) than about the exceptional circumstances under which women do offend. Carlen’s later work on women, crime and poverty (1988) added the insight that when the “class deal” and “gender deal” both fail working-class women, crime becomes a rational alternative — extending the feminist account to intersect with class inequality.