03 Section B Option 1, Key question 3 - Functionalism and crime (part 1)

Crime and social order

Functionalism explains behaviour by examining its relationship to the wider social system.

A norm is an expected way of behaving; a value is a broader belief about what is desirable. Crime breaks criminal law, while deviance breaks social expectations and need not be illegal. Functionalists ask how institutions, norms and values contribute to social solidarity: the bonds that hold people together. Socialisation and social control help maintain order, but neither produces identical people.

In The Rules of Sociological Method (1895), Émile Durkheim argued that the existence of some crime is normal for a society. Here normal means an enduring feature of collective life under the relevant social conditions, not morally acceptable. People experience different influences and develop different commitments. Some conduct therefore offends strongly held collective rules. In his imagined society of saints, even minor failings would attract severe condemnation: stronger moral uniformity would change the boundary of unacceptable conduct rather than remove every boundary violation. This is a thought experiment, not a study of an actual monastery. Durkheim's original text, chapter III.

Consider an original teaching example: in a club that condemns deliberate cheating, members may disagree about whether exaggerating a score counts as serious misconduct. More exact agreement could make previously tolerated exaggerations punishable. Removing one kind of breach does not establish that nobody will ever violate the group's standards.

Durkheim did not argue that every crime benefits everyone, or that any amount of crime is healthy. Persistent severe disorder could indicate a problem in social regulation. He did not supply a simple numerical threshold that lets us label a contemporary crime rate healthy or unhealthy. Nor does explaining why offences recur excuse the harm done to victims. His question concerns the relationship between crime and social life; moral approval of an offender is a different judgement.

Boundaries and social change

Public reactions to wrongdoing can strengthen shared moral boundaries, while challenges to existing rules can sometimes help change them.

Boundary maintenance means reaffirming the distinction between acceptable and unacceptable behaviour. An offence threatens a rule; collective condemnation and punishment can make the rule visible and renew members' attachment to it. The response may bring people together around what they value. The offender need not intend this consequence.

For example, imagine residents discovering that a local association's treasurer stole its emergency fund. Open condemnation and a fair sanction could reaffirm that entrusted money must serve the community, and encourage residents to cooperate to replace it. That is a proposed mechanism: offence, public reaction, reaffirmed value and solidarity. It is not evidence that the loss was desirable or that every resident will react alike. Durkheim's account of punishment connects the reaction to an offence with the maintenance of shared sentiments. The Division of Labour in Society, book I, chapter II.

There is also a possible social change function. If everyone conformed completely to existing rules, new moral ideas would struggle to emerge. Conduct condemned at one time can anticipate values accepted later. Durkheim used Socrates as an example of someone condemned under the laws of his society whose independent thought could contribute to moral change. This illustrates his argument; it does not establish that every lawbreaker is a reformer or every change an improvement. Rules, chapter III.

An original hypothetical application makes the contrast clearer. Campaigners breach an exclusionary rule to challenge unequal access to a public meeting. If their challenge persuades others and the rule is revised, deviance has helped expose a mismatch between an existing rule and emerging values. Whether the action causes change depends on support, organisation, power and the response of authorities. Simply breaking a rule is insufficient.

These are possible consequences of crime or deviance. They do not by themselves explain why a particular person commits an offence. A theft might provoke solidarity, yet have been caused by the offender's pursuit of money. It would be circular to say that the theft occurred because society needed unity. Durkheim explicitly distinguished a social fact's cause from its function.

The approach is strongest where a reaction demonstrably renews shared commitments. It is weaker where punishment divides groups, silences justified opposition or increases distrust. Asking whose values are reaffirmed also matters: agreement among powerful decision makers is not proof that everyone shares the rule.

Anomie and regulation

Anomie describes inadequate social regulation, which can leave expectations and obligations poorly defined or ineffective.

Durkheim argued that people need social rules that organise their relationships and constrain expectations. Anomie is often shortened to normlessness, but this need not mean the complete absence of every law. Rules may still exist while failing to guide changing relationships adequately. In The Division of Labour in Society (1893), he examined an anomic division of labour, including disruption in economic relationships where appropriate regulation had not developed. Original text, book III, chapter I.

This connects crime to social change in a different way from moral reform. Rapid change may disturb established expectations before effective new arrangements form. Where responsibilities become uncertain and regulation loses authority, some opportunities for rule-breaking may expand. The explanation concerns a social condition, rather than a claim that every distressed individual lacks morals.

Imagine a fictional trading platform expanding quickly across several communities. Buyers, sellers and platform managers have inconsistent expectations about refunds and responsibility for false claims. If clear, trusted arrangements fail to develop, disputes and deceptive practices may become easier to sustain. This is an illustrative application of inadequate regulation, not a report about a real company or proof that digital growth necessarily causes crime. To test the explanation, a researcher would need evidence of the regulatory weakness and its link to the particular offending.

Normal deviance and anomie must therefore remain distinct. A society with effective rules can still contain some rule-breaking. Anomie concerns a weakness in the regulation of social relationships that may help explain excessive or changing deviance. It does not follow that every offence is evidence of social breakdown.

Merton develops a related but more specific problem next: people can be taught very clear ambitions while access to approved ways of fulfilling them remains unequal. That is not simply uncertainty about what society expects.

Strain between goals and means

Merton links some deviance to the tension between culturally encouraged success and unequal access to approved opportunities.

Robert K. Merton's Social Structure and Anomie (1938) distinguishes cultural goals, such as monetary success, from institutionalised means, the socially approved ways of pursuing them. Structural strain arises when a society strongly promotes success but its opportunity structure restricts people's access to those means. Heavy emphasis on the result can weaken commitment to the rules governing how it is achieved. His paper develops a theoretical argument, illustrated with existing material, rather than reporting a new representative survey or experiment. Merton's original article.

The following fictional example works through the mechanism. A community repeatedly presents a high income as proof of personal worth. Its young adults are told that qualifications and paid employment are the proper route. Some can afford training and use family contacts; others face high training costs and few suitable jobs. A person in the latter position may continue to want the approved result but turn to selling stolen goods as an alternative route.