Durkheim and the Functions of Crime

We’ve been busy on the film front these past few months making a range of crime and deviance films on Hate Crime, Crime and Gender, Situational Crime Prevention and Criminal Profiling (although the latter will probably have greater appeal to psychologists than sociologists) and a final offering in what people would probably be calling a “Festival of Crime” if there were such things as festivals anymore, is an 8-minute (give-or-take) film looking at Durkheim’s ideas about how crime may be functional for society.

To this end the film is constructed around an overview of three basic functions:

  • The clarification of moral boundaries
  • Social change and law reform
  • The reinforcement of social cohesion
  • These ideas are variously illustrated by :

  • Zero-Tolerance Policing in New York.
  • the imprisonment of Dr Jack Kevorkian for helping terminally-ill patients to die.
  • the UK murder of James Bulger.
  • As ever, the film is short, to-the-point and, I would suggest, a useful way to introduce some of Durkheim’s key, counter-intuitive and somewhat controversial ideas about crime to students.


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