As we enter the twenty-first century it is appropriate to question whether social control through the legal order and institutionalized policing is effective and appropriate. As national societies have attempted to control and to protect against a wider range of contingencies, so they have produced more and more elaborate laws. Outside of a thin core of public morality – almost everyone will agree that murder, theft and fraud are crimes – groups would be better off setting and policing their own standards. Citizens would have to accept that different rules applied to different communities with informal self -regulation and arbitration. Far from undermining formal law, community self regulation could restore public confidence in it and by reducing the scale and scope of common rule-making and policing, make both more effective. Greater community self-control would tend to reduce inter-community friction, because individuals would not feel threatened that they would be the subject of legislation in matters of morals and lifestyles by artificial political majorities.
