On self-help in modern society

Abstract

In a modern society, conflict between people is frequently defined as crime and is handled by officials of the state such as police, prosecutors, and judges. It is taken for granted that ordinary citizens must turn to law for help [1]. This mode of social control has several distinctive consequences: it dramatizes the deviant character of an offense, for example [2], and it may escalate hostility between the parties involved [3]. Its patterns of detection and other procedures also affect the nature and distribution of crime itself, making some kinds of conduct in some places more vulnerable to observation and intervention, leaving other kinds in other places relatively immune. Finally, for the offender, law tends to be more stigmatizing and disabling than other social control and so may even render future conformity less likely [4]. If, however, people were to engage in more self-help rather than relying so heavily upon law, that is, if they were to exercise more social control on their own, a different kind of public order would prevail [5]. In the nature of the case, many incidents would effectively be decriminalized, since they would no longer be formally defined and handled as criminal, and beyond this, many patterns of conduct themselves would surely change in response to new risks and opportunities. In this paper, we specify several conditions under which self help flourishes and suggest a number of techniques by which it might be stimulated. Self-help is by no means a new phenomenon. Rather, it is a social practice which has been commonplace in many settings, and which is present to some degree nearly everywhere. It is a quantitative variable, which may be greater in one place and weaker in another. Historically, for instance, the degree of self-help has been highest in primitive societies, in bands and tribes, and has declined progressively with social evolution and the growth of law [6], Within modern societies as well, some groups of people engage significantly in self-help even to the point of organized vigilantism while others are more dependent upon legal control [7]. The same individuals may have recourse to self-help upon some occasions and turn to law upon others [8J. It might also be noted that, like law, self-help has both preventive and remedial aspects, and these vary quantitatively and to some degree independently across social locations. The problem is to isolate the conditions which permit us to predict and explain variation of this kind. Developments in the theory of law and in the theory of altruism, or helping behavior, provide useful perspectives on this topic. The theory of law is relevant since self-help, like other non-legal social control, generally varies inversely with law [9], and what predicts the one may therefore predict the other in a pattern of opposition. The theory of altruism is relevant as well, since the exercise of informal social control by one person on behalf of another, including his or her Donald Black is Professor and Chair, Department of Sociology, University of Virginia. M.P. Baumgartner is Assistant Professor of Sociology, Rutgers University, New Brunswick.