Social evils are the factors that may disrupt the social life to a large extent. They have the capacity to introduce disturbances and troubles in the lives of the individuals inhabiting the society and the overall social norms, values, relations and activities. Some of the dominant social evils include poverty, crime, corruption, drug addiction, juvenile delinquency, robbery, theft, begging and many others.
Some of these evils are closely inter-related and have the cause and effect influence over one another.
Nonetheless, all of these evils join hands together to challenge the civilized and better living conditions in human societies.
There cannot be one particular reason behind the social evils. There are different reasons that are responsible for introducing these evils and incapacitating a society to perform well for its inhabitants.
One of the basic reasons is the absence or weak adherence of rules and regulations. Without proper rules and regulations that are based on justice and fair-play, it would be very difficult to have a society without social evils.
Most of societies in the modern world enact their rules and regulations through a system of law and order. Strong law and order system strives to achieve justice and minimize the social evils. Through effective law enforcing agencies, including police, courts and prisons, an active law and order system makes utmost effort that justice is served to the people. The ones who are culprit must be punished while the ones who are innocent must not suffer ill treatment.
Experiences show that a law and order system not based on true justice fails to eradicate the social evils.
Talking about the real, it can be observed in the some of the present societies of the world that law and order system tends to favor few while discriminating others. The favored few are mostly the part of the ruling elite. Due to their authority in the society they tend to over-power the law and order system.
Therefore, the law enforcement agencies fail to bring them to justice and trail them for their crimes and misdeeds. This phenomenon also generates a sort of feeling of dissatisfaction in the common people who, looking at the biased system, tend to have no confidence in them and avoid pursuing the rules and regulations. However, most of them are not able to escape the biased law and order system.
To control social evils, punishment is considered as one of the most effective ways. However, there can be a circumstantial debate on what should be the nature of the punishment and how it should be conducted. It is important the punishment should make a culprit amend himself/herself. If the punishment further worsens the attitude of the offender, it cannot to be said to have served its purpose. It, then, rejects its own philosophy and must be altered. Nonetheless, this is not to suggest that there should not be any punishment.
Another way of controlling or eradicating social evils can be through the values that are disseminated by the social institutions. The social institutions can inculcate within the individuals the awareness about the evils and the ways to avoid them.
Among the social institutions, families and education systems can play an important role in this regard. Family, being the primary institution for an individual, can make an individual socially acceptable and guide his/her attitude in such a way that he/she becomes a positive member of society.
Then there are educational institutions. They can play a tremendous role in establishing the characters of the individuals and making them aware so that they are able to make better choices in the society that may not benefit their individual lives but the social life as well.
The roles of cultural and social institutions are also of utmost importance in this regard. They have high social value and influence and through the same they can bring about positive changes in the society by making the members of society abhor and avoid social evils and condemn them in every possible manner.