ABSTRACT
Social control agencies can be classified by the kinds of technique which they employ. At one extreme, an agency can rely exclusively on persuasion. It is responsible for deviants who are thought to respect its authority and status. They accept its goals and interpretations as reasonable and legitimate. It can reform the wayward by invoking the common sentiments to which they both subscribe. In this case, the agency conceives its task to be clarifying complicated moral questions, urging the desirability of the proper path, and providing the facilities and instructions which can lead to reform. Such organizations as Alcoholics Anonymous, Synanon and Grendon Underwood Prison aim at what Gusfield calls ‘assimilative reform’. When the deviants do not respect the authority of an agency, however, force may be used to compel obedience. Gusfield (1963, p. 77) describes the polar cases of assimilation and coercion in his history of the American temperance movement:
The champion of assimilative reform viewed the drinker as part of a social system in which the reformer's culture was dominant. On this assumption, his invitation to the drinker to reform made sense. The champion of coercive reform cannot make this assumption. He sees the object of reform as someone who rejects the social dominance of the reformer and denies the legitimacy of his life style. Since the dominance of his culture and the social status of his group are denied, the coercive reformer turns to law and force as ways to affirm it.
