The Three Levels of Social Control and the Police.

The Three Levels of Social Control and the Police
Student’s Name
Institutional Affiliation
Date
The Three Levels of Social Control and the Police
Deviant behavior refers to any form of behavior that does not observe the norms of society. In other words, it is a kind of behavior that deviates from the beliefs of society. Some of the deviant behaviors in societies include robbery, assault, rape, theft, and murder. The essay focuses on the three levels of social control that are necessary to manage deviant behaviors. It also illustrates the role of police in the three levels of social control.
The Three (3) Levels of Control over Deviant Behavior
Social control over deviant behaviors takes place at three levels. The three levels include self-control, informal controls, and formal controls. At a self-control level, individuals are encouraged to regulate their emotions and thoughts whenever they encounter temptations. As a result, they learn the importance of social bonds as a key factor that discourages criminal involvement in society.
At informal controls level, friends and the nearby people learn the necessity of rewarding conformity and punishing nonconformity within the society. More so, the level allows peer and society pressure to intervene in every behavior that deviates from the societal norms (Hollinger & Clark, 2016). It also encourages societal members to participate in collecting responses through citizen patrols to ensure the issues of deviant behaviors are dealt with accordingly.

The formal controls level is the level that allows state and authorities to intervene so that they can discourage nonconformity and deviant behaviors in the society (Hollinger & Clark, 2016). The level also encourages the enforcement of external sanctions by the government to control and prevent any emergence of chaos in society.
The Role of Police in the Three Levels of Social Control over a Deviant Behavior
In the above-discussed levels of social control over deviant behaviors, police play quite significant roles. For example, sometimes, they exercise both illegal social control and an extra-legal when dealing with situations that violate the custom of the society (Drakulich, 2018). At the formal level, the police partners with the state and the entire community members by taking moral and legal considerations into an account in making a wise decision over criminal and deviant behaviors that happen within the society. Again, by actively participating in social control over deviant behaviors, police enact social control by using legal weapons when the need be at personal and social ends.
References
Drakulich, K. (2018). The Role of Perceptions of the Police in Informal Social Control. Retrieved from http://www.academia.edu/4662144
Hollinger, R. C., & Clark, J. P. (2016). Formal and informal social controls of employee deviance. Sociological Quarterly, 23(3), 333-343.