Law Enforcement through Publicity

AL.YSES of social control in civilized societies have generally proceeded on L the assumption that the principal sanctions' that government officials I can direct against lawbreaking are the ordinary fines and imprisonments provided for in a legal code.The governmental role in the total process of law enforcement has thus been pictured as restricted in the main to the application of formal sanctions. 2As a matter of fact, the historical origins of government have been traced to the need for institutionalizing formal sanctions when, at rather obscure breaking-points in social development, social control through informal mechanisms such as custom and public opinion were no longer feasible. 3 Heavy reliance upon an informal method of control such as adverse public opinion to prevent and punish violations of community law has, therefore, been regarded up to this point as a distinctive mark of relatively primitive social systems-societies without government or with only embryonic governmental forms.The effectiveness of what may be designated as the publicity sanction in this type of primary group community can be attributed to the frequency of interaction and communication among members of the group, 4 conditions which quicken and intensify the punitive weight of public disfavor.'Consequently, as the intimacy of association characteristic of tribal communities becomes an early casualty of social evolution, and as individual relationships acquire an anonymous rather than a face-to-face character, the importance of the publicity sanction as a method of insuring conformity correspondingly declines.However,