Social sanction

The sanction is recognised as the main instrument of social control and constitutes an incentive for compliance, expressed in the form of rewards (positive sanction) or punishment (negative sanction). Formal sanctions are imposed by the state or by specially authorized organizations and individuals, and informal, pronounced informal by others.

Social sanctions are the means of rewards and punishments that stimulate people to comply with social norms. In this context, social sanctions can be called the guardian of social norms.

Social norms and social sanctions constitute an indivisible whole, and if some social norms is missing its accompanying social sanction, it loses its socio-regulatory function. For example, in the XIX century. in Western Europe the social norm was considered having children only in wedlock. Therefore, illegitimate excluded from inheriting property of parents, they are neglected in everyday communication, they could not get a decent marriage. But society as their modernization and softening public opinion on the illegitimate became gradually eliminate formal and informal sanctions for the violation of this provision. As a result of this social norm has ceased to exist.

Allocate shadowwalkers social control:

isolation — isolating the deviant from society (e.g.,imprisonment);

isolation — the restriction of contacts with deviant others (e.g., placement in a psychiatric clinic);

rehabilitation — a complex of measures aimed at the return of the deviant to normal.