Crime and Punishment in thought of Emile Durkheim

Abstract

Emile Durkheim sees the law as a social fact, seeing crime as a normal phenomenon for causing reactions consist of effective punitive responses from society. The social utility of the crime stems from its role as regulator of moral evolution of society, to make the penalty or punishment not a panacea but an element of social cohesion, useful for the formation of collective consciousness and consensus about what may be termed the french thinker as an important precursor of modern functionalist theories.