The Inevitability of Crime

• From the above account, we might expect that functionalists would regard crime and deviance as wholly negative - a threat to social order and even the very existence of society. For example, if each of us chose to 'do our own thing' - whether it be refusing to work or helping ourselves to others' possessions - it is hard to imagine how society could continue to exist.
• However, while functionalists see too much crime as destabilising society, they also see crime as inevitable and universal. Every known society has some level of crime and deviance - a crime-free society is a contradiction in terms.

  For Durkheim (1893), 'crime is normal.... an integral part of all healthy societies'.
• There are at least two reasons why crime and deviance are found in all societies. Firstly, not everyone is equally effectively socialised into the shared norms and values, so some individuals will be prone to deviate. Secondly, particularly in complex modern societies, there is a diversity of lifestyles and values. Different groups develop their own subcultures with distinctive norms and values, and what the members of the subculture regard as normal, mainstream culture may see as deviant.
• In Durkheim's view, modern societies tend towards anomie or normlessness - the rules governing behaviour become weaker and less clear-cut. This is because modern societies have a complex, specialised division of labour, which leads to individuals becoming increasingly different from one another. This weakens the shared culture or collective conscience and results in higher levels of deviance. For example, Durkheim sees anomie as a cause of suicide.