Emile Durkheim's Theory Of Crime Essay

Crime is necessary; it serves a function in society. Although it is not preferable, with the progression and evolution of modernity and emphasis on monetary success, crime is inevitable because a perfectly stable, uniform, and able society is impossible. As the father of sociology and a functionalist, Emile Durkheim provides a variety of explanations of society’s ills, like crime and deviance, and accounts for the punishments and repercussions that follow. He asserts that man is a product of his social environment; thus, socialization begins at birth and continues through language and interaction with other people. The basis of his theory rests on the idea that the “conscience collective of a society varies alongside the division of labor. In less complex and more …show more content…
This was the first sign of problems in the new society. Although these immigrants found no protest to their own belief systems, they failed to adapt them to the previously held norms the American people valued. Inevitably, there was a sense of imbalance between the previously held norms and values and the new and evolving ones. This imbalance, Durkheim deemed ‘anomie.’ According to Durkheim, anomie reflects a sense of normlessness, the lack of any societal norms that spurs the tendency to act in a deviant way. In general terms, Durkheim’s theory of anomie proposes that because of industrialization and the need for cheap labor in this newly modern society, the influx of immigrants inherently brought with them their own sets of norms and values. Thus came a temporary imbalance of norms, anomie, which enhances individual’s propensity to commit crime in search for a stable environment. In turn, Durkheim puts forth not just a theory for the social origins of crime, but also he theorizes about the social origins of law and