THEORIES OF SOCIETY: Foundations of Modern Sociological Theory

VOLUME II

The Free Press of Glencoe

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872 Part Three, Sec. D-Social Structure, Motivation of Deviant, Conforming Behavior

I- THE ELEMENTS OF DEVIANCE AND SOCIAL CONTROL

1. On the Normality of Crime BY EMILE DURKHEIM

IF THERE is any fact whose pathological character appears incontestable, that fact is crime. All criminologists are agreed on this point. AI· though they explain this pathology differently, they are unanimous in recognizing it. But Jet us see if this problem does not demand a more extended consideration.

We shall apply the foregoing rules. Crime is present not only in the majority of societies of one particular species but in all societies of all types. There is no society that is not confronted with the problem of criminality. Its fonn changes; the acts thus characterized are not the same everywhere; but, everywhere and always, there have been men who have behaved in such a way as to draw upon themselves penal repression. If, in proportion as societies pass from the lower to the higher types, the rate of criminality, i.e., the relation between the yearly number of crimes and the population, tended to decline, it might be believed that crime, while still normal, is tending to lose this character of normality. But we have no reason to believe that such a regression is substantiated. Many facts would seem rather to indicate a movement in the opposite direction. From the beginning of the [nine- teenth] century, statistics enable us to follow the course of criminality. It has everywhere increased. ~n France the increase is nearly 300 per cent. There 1s, then, no phenomenon that presents more in- disputably all the symptoms of normality, since it appears closely connected with the conditions of all collective life. To make of crime a form of social morbidity would be to admit that morbidity is not something accidental, but, on the contrary, that in certain cases it grows out of the fundamental con- stitution of the living organism; it would result in wiping out all distinction between the physiological and the pathological. No doubt it is possible that

Reprinted from Emile Durkheim, Tile Rules of Sociologi- cal M ethod, trans. Sarah Solovay and John Mueller, ed. George E. G. Catlin (Glencoe, Ill. : The Free Press 1950) pp. 65- 75, with the permission of The Free Press. ‘ ‘

crime itself will have abnormal forms as, for elt· ample, when its rate is unusually high. This excess is, indeed, undoubtedly morbid in nature. What is normal, simply, is the existence of criminality, provided that it attains and does not exceed, for each social type, a certain level, which it is per· haps not impossible to fix: in conformity with the preceding rules.1

Here we are, then, in the presence of a conclu· sion in appearance quite paradoxical. Let us make no mistake. To classify crime among the phenomena of normal sociology is not to say merely that it is an inevitable, although regrettable phenomenon, due to the incorrigible wickedness of men; it is to affirm that it is a factor in public health, an integral part of all healthy societies. This result is, at first glance, surprising enough to have puzzled even ourselves for a long time. Once this first sur- prise bas been overcome, however, it is not difficult to find reasons explaining this normality and at the same time confirming it.

In the first place crime is normal because a society exempt from it is utterly impossible. Crime, we have shown elsewhere, consists of an act that offends certain very strong collective sentiments. In a society in which criminal acts are no longer committed, the sentiments they offend would have to be found without exception in all individual con- sciousnesses, and they must be found to exist with the same degree as sentiments contrary to them. Assuming that this condition could actually be realized, crime would not thereby disappear; it would only change its form, for the very cause which would thus dry up the sources of criminality would immediately open up new ones.

1. From the fact that crime is a phenomenon of normal sociology, it does not follow that the criminal is an indi- vidual normally constituted from the biological and psycho- logical points of view. The two questions are independent of each other. This independence will be better understood when we have shown, later on, the difference between psy- chological and sociological facts. .

Emile Durkheim: On the Normality of Crime 873

Indeed, for the collective sentiments which are protected by the penal law of a people at a speci- fied moment of its history to take possession of the public conscience or for them to acquire a stronger hold where they have an insufficient grip, they must acquire an intensity greater than that which’ they had hitherto had. The community as a whole must experience them more vividly, for it can ac- quire from no other source the greater force neces- sary to control these individuals who formerly were the most refractory. For murderers to dis- appear, the horror of bloodshed must become greater in those social strata from which murderers are recruited;· but, firsLjt. must become greater throughout the entire society. Moreover, the very absence of crime would directly contribute to produce this horror; because any sentiment seems much more respectable when i~ is always and uniformly respected.Social Science – Sociology