Durkheim’s functionalist theory of Crime

• Functionalists view society as a stable system based on value consensus, shared norms, values, beliefs and goals.
• Social solidarity, binding individuals together into a harmonious unit, is achieved through socialisation and social control mechanisms.
• Socialisation instils the shared culture into its members to ensure that they internalise the same norms and values, and that they feel it right to act in the ways that society requires.
• Social Control mechanisms include rewards (positive sanctions) for conformity, and punishments (negative sanctions) for deviance.
• While crime disrupts social stability, functionalists view it as inevitable and universal.
• Durkheim views crime as a normal part of all healthy societies: in every society, some individuals are inadequately socialised and prove to deviate.
• In modern societies, there is a highly specialised division of labour and a diversity of subcultures, which contribute to individuals and groups becoming increasingly different from one another, and the shared rules of behaviour becoming less clear.
• Durkheim calls this anomie (normlessness).
• Crime produces a reaction from society, uniting its members against the wrongdoer and reinforcing their commitment to the value consensus, which is the function of punishment: to reaffirm shared rules and reinforce solidarity.
• For change to occur, individuals with new ideas must challenge existing norms, and at first this will be unable to make necessary adaptive changes and will stagnate.
• Davi’s argues that prostitution acts to release men’s sexual frustrations without threatening the nuclear family.
• A.K.Cohen argues that deviance indicates that an institution is malfunctioning.
• Durkheim claims society requires a certain amount of deviance to function but offers no way of knowing how much is the right amount.
• Durkheim and other functionalists explain crime in terms of its function, but just because crime does these things doesn’t necessarily mean this is why it exists in the first place.