Differences Between Formal and

Informal Social Control

Social control can be considered as an important aspect of an individual's socialization
process. There are some universal norms or rules that members of all societies must follow.
Any deviation from these norms may result in a minimum level of punishment to ensure
social order. It refers to the processes of regulating individual or group behavior in a
society, which encourages conformity and obedience. It may include social or political
mechanisms. Its two forms are formal and informal controls.

Formal Social Control:

Formal social control is implemented by authorized agents including police officers,

employers, military officers, and others. It is carried out as a last option in some places
when the desired behavior is not possible through informal social control. The situations
and severity where formal control is practiced vary between countries.

This is practiced through law as statutes, rules and regulations against deviant social
behavior. For example, certain laws such as the prohibition of murder may apply to all
members of a society. Fishing and hunting regulations are made for certain groups.
Corporate laws are established to govern the behavior of social institutions. Formal control
is conducted by the government and organizations through law enforcement mechanisms. It
can also be carried out through some formal sanctions, including fines and imprisonment.
Formal control processes in democratic societies are determined and designed through
legislation by elected representatives.

Formal control is enforced by courts or judges, military officers, police officers, school
systems or teachers, and government agencies or bureaucrats.

Informal Social Control:

It is exercised by a society without establishing any rule or law. It is expressed through

norms and customs. Social control is carried out by informal agents alone in an unofficial
capacity. Traditional societies mostly integrate informal culture of social control to
establish social order.

Shame, sarcasm, criticism, ridicule and disapproval are some of the informal sanctions.
Social discrimination and exclusion are included in informal control in extreme deviant
cases. Self-identity, self-esteem, and self-esteem are affected by informal control through
loss of group approval or membership. The severity and nature of informal control
mechanisms differ for varied individuals, groups and societies.
Informal is effective in small group settings, including friends, family, neighborhood, work
group, and others. However, in some large, complex societies, informal social control and
disapproval are easily ignored. In such situations, it is necessary to follow the formal.

Some of the differences between formal and informal social control are:

• Formal social control includes written statements, formalized and codified in laws, rules
and regulations. While informal control does not contain any written rules.

• Formal oversight agencies are authorized agencies created by the government and
informal oversight agencies are created by social networks and organizations but not by the
government.

• Formal control is much more effective and stronger than informal social control. Any
situation that cannot be handled by informal control is subject to formal control.

• Formal control is effective even for large population groups, but informal control is
effective only for a small group of people.

Social control, formal or informal, therefore helps in the regulation of society. The study of
social control includes disciplines of sociology, anthropology, psychology, law, and
political science.

Forms of social control. Formal and informal social control.

It refers to the customs, traditions, norms and other social values inherited by the
individual. It is exercised by a society without explicitly stating these rules and
expressed through custom, norms, and mores using informal sanctions such as
criticism, disapproval, and blame. In extreme cases this may even include social
discrimination and exclusion. This implied social control generally has more control
over individual minds because they become instilled in their personality. Traditional
society primarily uses informal social control embedded in its customary culture
that relies on the socialization of its members to establish social order. More rigidly-
structured societies may place increasing reliance on formal mechanisms.

Formal Social Control:

It is expressed with law such as statutes, rules, and regulations against irregularity.
It is conducted by the government and organizations using law enforcement
mechanisms and other formal sanctions such as fines and imprisonment. In
democratic societies the goals and mechanisms of formal social control are
determined by legislation by elected representatives and thus enjoy a measure of
public assistance and voluntary compliance. According to the propaganda model
theory, leaders of modern corporate dominated societies employ indoctrination as
the means of social control. Several intellectual figures such as Noam Chomsky
have discussed the existence of the systematic diagonal in modern media. The
marketing, advertising, and public relations industries have been said to use mass
communications to serve the interests of certain business elites.

Powerful economic and religious lobbyists have frequently used school systems
and centralized electronic communications to influence public opinion. Democracy
is restricted because the majority is not given the information necessary to make
rational decisions about ethical, social, or economic issues. To maintain control
and regulate their issues, authoritarian organizations and governments promulgate
publishing rules and decrees. However, due to a lack of popular support for
enforcement, these entities may rely more on force and other severe sanctions
such as censorship, expulsion and limits on political freedom. Some totalitarian
governments, such as the late Soviet Union or current North Korea, rely on police
state mechanisms. Sociologists consider informal means of social control vital in
maintaining public order, but also recognize the need for formal means as societies
become more complex and to respond to emergencies. The study of social control
falls within the academic disciplines of anthropology, economics, history, law,
political science, psychology, and sociology.

The Informal Law.

The functional conception of law has enriched the traditional structuralist vision,
concerned with the positioning of law as an element of a stable social structure. To
ask about the functions of the law is to observe it in movement within the
relationships of the subjects who use it and see what purposes it pursues or what
meaning its promulgation had in the mind of the legislator. This functional vision of
law came from the hand of sociologists of law, contributing to them the first
protagonists of the revolt against formalism, conceived in the transition from the
19th to the 20th century. Law is an instrument of organization of society, a means
for its own subsistence, since without a minimum of organization society, collective
of an always difficult balance of wills, could not remain.

The theorists of the social pact intuited the need for the constitution of a political
society after the abandonment of the state of nature, because said society would
provide the necessary organization so that the natural rights of people were
respected. In the state of nature, absolute rights were enjoyed, but totally
unprotected and subject to the law of the strongest; With the constitution of the
political society, the public powers and their norms would provide the necessary
protection, although the rights would no longer be absolute.

The organization of society is one of the most transparent functions of law,

because there are no possibilities of subsistence outside of it, and any society,
even the most basic family one, needs a minimum organization. From this concept
of social organization, we then say that the acts for which the law does not require
any formality are called consensual or “non-formal”, and those that, on the
contrary, must fill a certain form, are called formal.

From this point of view, acts can be classified as formal and non-formal.

There are various types of formalities that entail various sanctions: it is worth
distinguishing between solemnities, enabling formalities, "ad probationem"
formalities and publicity measures. The violation of each produces, respectively,
relative nullity, deprivation of a means of proof, pecuniary liability and
ineffectiveness of third parties (non-enforceability due to lack of substantial
publicity).

The solemnities are the external requirements prescribed by law as indispensable

for the very existence of the act; They are the ways in which, in certain acts,
consent must be expressed for it to be considered given. Its omission produces the
non-existence or absolute nullity of the act.

The enabling formalities are the necessary requirements to complete the will of an
incapacitated person or to protect him or her. If they are missing, the act exists, but
vitiated by relative nullity.

The evidentiary formalities are made up of certain forms that serve as the main
means of proof of the act. If they are not used, the legislator deprives the act of
certain means of proof. Example: it is known that acts or contracts that contain the
delivery or promise of something worth more than two hundred bolivars must be in
writing, and if not, they cannot be proven by witnesses.

The formal and the fundamental constitute two categories that, unavoidably and
frequently, must be weighed when we have to study and apply legal institutions
and norms. It is something like always being in the "classic dyad between
substance and form", because the substance corresponds to the fundamental, to
the background, to the main thing, while the form, important as it is, implies the
essential container that it has. must be valued in its logical significance, as we will
explain below.

The word form and its derivatives formal and formality can be conceptualized with
various connotations. The word form in law can be used to conceive the logical
idea, universal notion of law, sign of legality, but it can also be used to refer to the
elements and external appearances that a certain legal provision requires as
necessary for the actions to have or produce. certain legal consequences, as could
be the case of a public deed that must necessarily be granted to perfect a sale of
real estate. External forms as material elements are important and the law resorts
to them to offer security to the interested parties or parties, and all this can have a
different valuation, depending on the requirement made by the legal norm, without
having to go to the extremes of to think that the most important thing of all are the
forms and that the law develops everything based on them. The evolution of
humanity and its great legal moments have pointed out various meanings and
orientations that can be clearly revealed when we analyze the evolution of the
famous Roman Law, whose historical evolution between the initial ritualism (let's
say anti-causalist) and the era of greatest lucidity in which Roman Law accepts the
cause and becomes causalist.

This is one of the most significant variations for us, because much of the causalist
Roman Law, which inspired Napoleonic civil law, later developed in the work of
Andrés Bello, is repeated in the Civil Code of our country.

The word formal is also used to describe the law, when we refer to the legal
regulations duly issued. In that case we speak of Formal Law, to oppose the
concept to informality, to the so-called Informal Law, constituted by the provisions
applied, but improperly issued, that contradict the regularity of the legal order, and
by administrative uses, customs or ways of acting. or not, that are used, applied or
required against the good sense of the formal legal order. Formalities, for their part,
are used in the legal system under different perspectives and categories, as they
are known.

So, the form, the formal and the formalities constitute an important face of the idea
and legal life, while on the back of the medal is the fundamental, what is main,
what is background, whose figure, relationships and Situations constitute the
proper purpose of law, as a link and means of objective coordination between
human beings and in the connection of things with natural and legal persons.

The fundamental thing is the substance, it is the matter and the reason for being of
the legal product. It indicates the goal that is pursued, because the right is both
instrumental and finalist. It is instrumental in nature because it is the essential
system used for life and social organization, and it is finalistic because its ideal and
abstract nature and its content pursue an end.

This leads us to say that the law is not an end in itself, the end will be the common
good, the organization and well-being of the community, and the specific purposes
of each particular norm.

Additionally, it is necessary to take into account that formalities are also related to
the circumstances of procedure, particularly important in Procedural Law, but not
only in this field.

The circumstances of procedure are circumstances necessary for situations and

actions to be appropriate (in accordance with the law, to be valid and to be
effective).

Among the circumstances of procedure, we can note the budgets, requirements

and conditions. The budgets are those that have to be met prior to the action for it
to be valid and effective. The procedural requirements are those that are required
to be met at the time of the action, so that it is valid and effective. And, the
conditions of procedure are those that must occur after the action for it to be
effective (validity is not compromised here).

From another angle, the issue of formalities can also be observed when we talk, in
substantive matters, about substantive or formal requirements. Form requirements
are met through formalities. The substantive requirements look at substantive
issues. In a sale of real estate, for example, the public deed is a formal
requirement, while the agreement of wills on the thing and the price constitutes
substantive requirements.

What has been said above also serves to differentiate mere formalities from formal
requirements, because these cannot be omitted. The omission of the others, that
is, of the mere formalities, would cause minor negative consequences.

Informal social control

In the study of crime and its prevention methods, we find two types of social control,
formal social control and informal social control. The first refers to the institutions and
professional people aimed at preventing the commission of criminal acts. The second
would carry the same function, however it would be carried out through non-
institutionalized means. Informal social control occurs through the process of socialization
of the individual, in which different institutions such as the family, school or the media
intervene. These institutions will be responsible for teaching the individual the rules to
follow, values and methods of conduct in order to be integrated into society.