ABSTRACT
This chapter shows how both the philosophy and the methods of the state's institutions for controlling deviant behaviour have changed since the nineteenth century. It suggests that as the social sciences provided a more complex analysis of the influences on behaviour, punishment began to be seen as a less adequate means of control, and was increasingly replaced by limited reward. Finally, the chapter indicates how the provision of welfare has come to be very closely linked with other measures of social control, and how social work has begun to occupy a key role in relation to both the welfare and the controlling function of state intervention. In the nineteenth century, the method of social control most favoured by writers about social policy was law backed by punishment; yet the way in which these authors understood the effects of punishments prescribed by the state was complex.
