(Abstract Only)

Recent work on the history of social control in Europe shows that, for a long time, formal control by state agencies was only one, perhaps minor form within the spectrum of discipline and regulation. Church meetings, guilds and other workplace organizations, charitable institutions and neighborhood associations all were important arenas for non-state control. Moreover, the inhabitants of local communities exercised social control over each other. In the course of the modern period state regulation gradually increased in importance, in particular since the emergence of the police (from about 1830). Nevertheless, industrial paternalism characterized labor relations and communal controls remained vigorous until the mid-twentieth century. By the 1980s, politicians in various European countries suddenly realized that community supervision had disappeared and tried to recreate it. This movement was visible in the United States as well, in the form of neighborhood surveillance projects. Nevertheless, the main trend in the US, and to a lesser extent in European countries, was toward the "penal state." A second paradox lies in the cultural background of social control. For centuries, informal controls could be effective because their legitimacy depended upon a less exclusive sense of privacy. Modern projects of informal supervision, therefore, cannot succeed unless they respect the contemporary boundaries of privacy. Within the context of the penal state, however, respect for privacy is not regarded as a virtue, as evidenced by the availability of criminal records on the internet.