In the article I assigned by Schichor on “The Why of Punishment,” the author spends a lot of time on the topic of social control. For the first part of your discussion board post, I want you to address the following two questions about formal and informal social control:
- Which form of formal social control do you consider to be in the greatest need of reform and why?
- What do you consider to be the informal social controls that you witness the most in your day-to-day life?
Next, in the assigned article by Miethe and Lu, the authors detail the evolution of various penal sanctions and punishment philosophies. We frequently get bogged down and have a tendency to focus on only the negatives in the criminal justice system. Reading over the many changes punishment approaches and philosophies delineated in this article. In which areas do you believe we have made the most notable progress, and where do you think we still need to the most work – and why?