ABSTRACT
The concept of social control has a long and controversial history not only within sociology, whose development it accurately mirrors, but also in political science, anthropology and social psychology. It is not my intention to retrace this history. Rather, in a book whose central focus of attention is the criminal justice system, I would like to single out, through an analysis of some of the applications of the concept, the ways in which it can be used to situate the criminal justice system itself and to understand aspects of it which have hitherto been rather hidden in the Italian literature.
