Normal and the Pathological (From Criminological Perspectives: A Reader, P 47-50, 1996, John Muncie, Eugene McLaughlin, and Mary Langan, eds. -- See NCJ-161531)

• NCJ Number: 161535
• Author(s): E Durkheim
• Date Published: 1996
• Length: 4 pages
• Sale Source: Sage Publications Ltd
• Publication Type: Research (Theoretical)
• Language: English
• Country: United Kingdom
• Note: Abridged from "The Rules of Sociological Method, P 65-73, 1964.

Annotation

Crime is a normal and necessary part of every society, since urges for social stability coexisting with urges for behavioral change imply there will always be transgressions of behaviors embraced at a given time by the collective conscience.

Abstract

The better a social structure is defined, the more it provides a healthy resistance to all behavioral change. If there were no crimes, this condition could not be fulfilled. Nothing is good for a society indefinitely and to an unlimited extent. The authority that the moral conscience enjoys must not be excessive; otherwise, no one would dare criticize it, and it would too easily settle into an immutable form. To make progress, individual originality must be able to express itself. So that the originality of the idealist whose dreams transcend his century may find expression, it is necessary that the originality of the criminal, who is below the level of his time, shall also be possible. One does not occur without the other. Crime implies not only that the way remains open to necessary changes, but that in certain cases it directly prepares these changes. Where crime exists, collective sentiments are sufficiently flexible to take on a new form, and crime sometimes helps to determine the form they will take.