ABSTRACT
This chapter begins with a concern over the law and order issue, and especially the role social scientists have played in lending academic respectability to the demand for ever more and better means of control. In consensus theory, criminal behaviour was crucial; law and sanctions were said to have developed in response to problems posed to a society through the criminality of certain of its members. To understand law and sanctions, one must first understand behaviour, for the nature of the law and the enforcement system depended on the nature of the crime problem. When people's assessments of the seriousness of offences were compared with the seriousness accorded them in the written law and in actual enforcement the results were again in line with the conflict approach. The findings contrary to consensus theory were sufficiently persistent as to cast doubts on the propriety of using the approach as a model.
