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When Winston writes in the new diary for the first time, he immediately thinks about how he committed thought crime. Does he think of this so quickly just because guilt is a natural human emotion, or because Big Brother has engraved the nonexistent laws into the minds of the people of Oceania?
If one considers Foucaldian ideas on power, particularly his essay on "Panopticisms" (in his work Discipline and Punish I do believe), I would be inclined to go with the second option.
Foucault's ideas stipulate that society is a metaphorical 'panopticon'. To illustrate this, imagine a tower with surrounding prison cells. The building is made such that one person in the tower can view every prisoner in their individual cells at all times. However, the prisoners have no way of seeing the guard. The prisoners are thus under constant watch, which forces them to adapt their behaviour according to the expectations/laws of the prison. Interestingly, though, as the prisoners have no way of seeing the guard, they also have no way of knowing if there is a guard to begin with. The guard could get up and leave the tower, but the prisoners would still feel that they might be watched at any moment, because they do not know when the tower is or is not being occupied. Their behaviour maintains a constant, submissive pattern regardless of whether anyone is actually watching over them, because they have wholly internalised the fear of being watched. (Foucault goes on to argue how modern society functions through a panoptic exertion of power, but this is not really relevant here.)
In 1984, the telescreens can be seen to figure in this same way. And even though Winston is out of the view of his telescreen, he still experiences a constant pressure.
(Also, I would not call the laws "non-existent". Just because they are not written down or not (always) articulated in spoken word, does not mean that they are not there. It has been too long since I have read the novel, though, so I am not sure to what extent they are spoken or unspoken.)