Term Paper on "Durkheim: Modern Society and Punishment Emile"

Term Paper 6 pages (1784 words) Sources: 5 Style: Harvard

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Durkheim: Modern Society and Punishment

Emile Durkheim is well-known for his work on suicide related issues. However Durkheim is not exclusive to the area of suicide, he had ample experience and expertise in other areas of sociological interest and one prominent field is crime and punishment. Why do societies punish offenders? This is a question that has been deeply explored by many sociologists including Binding who felt that a society's "right to punishment...was nothing but the right to obedience of the law, which has been transformed by the offender's disobedience." The main objective of punishment thus was "the inmate's subjugation under the power of law for the sake of maintaining the authority of the laws violated." Thus, punishment was meant to "represent the holiness and inviolability of the duties to which it is attached."

Durkheim assigns the power of punishment to the state for the purpose of restoring and maintaining social and collective conscience. He felt that crimes shatter societal solidarity and when there is a right to punishment, and then society can restore its faith in each other by punishing the offender. However Durkheim contends that in complex modern societies, collective feelings of revenge have been somewhat replaced by Anomie. And this anomie has weakened punishment which leads to more crimes and offences against the society.

Durkheim argues that people are shaped by their social experiences and it follows that if the collective conscience is weakened by, for example, too much criminal behavior, the moral ties that bind people together are also weakened. When this happens, the concept used by Durkheim to express this weakening of moral ties was that of Anomie.

For Durkheim, anomie occurred when traditional norms of behavior were undermined without being replaced by new norms. In the absence of clear moral guide-lines for their behavior, people experience feelings of anxiety, aimlessness, purposelessness, disorientation and so forth. Anomie, therefore, was seen by Durkheim to be a very dangerous phenomenon, mainly because when people no-longer believe in their obligations to others, they revert to self-interest. In effect, they attempt to look after themselves without bothering too much about how this may affect the lives of others.

How has this changed occurred if at all? Does the criminal justice system really lenient in modern societies than it used to be? This is the question that forms the basis for Durkheim's entire premise on the subject of criminal justice in modern society. The fact that there is a close connection between Durkheim's concept of anomie and changes in criminal justice system cannot be denied. One of his sternest critics acknowledged that "there is also an underlying validity in the importance that Durkheim attaches to the law for any understanding of society" [9] p. 36. Certainly the phenomenon of law was of crucial importance in Durkheim's sociological model because it was an external indicator of a level of social life at which moral forces became crystallized and institutionalized to a degree where they were formalized and backed by sanctions.

Durkheim could see the difference between the law prevailing in traditional and modern societies. Though he went slightly overboard with his divisions, it is a fact that Durkheim was among the first few to highlight the differences that had led to a shift in punishment from corporal punishment to institutionalized revenge. One a milder note, Durkheim said, "The duty of the statesman is no longer to propel societies violently towards an ideal which appears attractive to him. His role is rather that of the doctor: he forestalls the outbreak of sickness by maintaining good hygiene, or when it does break out, seeks to cure it. (Durkheim, 1982: 104)

Let us now study the differences in more detail. What was the primary difference? According to Durkheim the difference lied in the intensity of punishment. In traditional societies, punishment was more corporal in nature; it focused on the body of the offender. In modern societies, things have become more complex and focus has shifted to institutionalization. This institutionalized has led to a lenient form of punishment. And a lot of this can be attributed to breakdown of social cohesiveness.

The modern society is different from what you would expect a traditional society to be. Modern society is usually more "progressive," "industrial" but at the same time materialistic. This aspect of the society makes it highly individualistic too. The individualism factor leads to the creation of what you would call a self-centered culture. In this self-centered zone, people are more concerned about their own welfare than the welfare of the society on the whole. Durkheim blames this individualistic streak for the breakdown of social cohesiveness and collective conscience that is the primary cause of social decay as well as lenient punishment.

I agree with Durkheim that punishment today is lenient. It does focus on revenge but there is a greater focus on rehabilitation of offenders which gives the whole picture a compassionate view thus resulting in leniency which is not often desired. Leniency is not desirable in all cases and in traditional societies or old world societies when punishment was stricter, crime rate was lower and recidivism was almost negligible.

There is another important concept which should be instilled here. Conformity is what Durkheim would want in a social system today but this conformity factor has been missing since people want to have their own individualistic streak. They do not want to conform. But for a society to care about each other's welfare and to build cohesiveness, conformity is desirable. Moral and values can often take a backseat or they lose their intensity when there are too many groups and each has its own view. (Giddens, 103).

When there is lack of conformity, there is also an increased risk of conflict and this can endanger the greater interest of the society. Durkheim feels that lack of conformity is one of the main reasons for growth of conflict and for further division of interest and for this reason, he suggests that conformity should exist. He also suggests the use of restitutive law as a possible solution bringing and maintaining law in a modern organic society.

Durkheim's view of modern society's law and lenient punishment emerges from his views on anomic division of labor. According to this concept division of labor of anomic type takes place when norms regulating activities break down or fail to emerge. One source of this anomie has been the rapid growth in economic conditions which gave rise to new "interests in conflict (which) have not yet had time to be equilibrated" p. 370. Another major source was the discrepancies that existed between a group's expectations and their achievements. In such an air of "relative deprivation," rules that previously governed the means to goal attainment break down, and anomie and increased disorder could result. Some sociologists have sought to make international comparisons, maintaining that, on the basis of this theory, it should be possible to predict that in countries with an advanced division of labor, greater inequality and/or deprivation and/or rapid rate of change would be important predictors of higher levels of political instability and conflict.

One general consequence is that the absence of regulation can lead to unspecified desires, and the other is that for the individual specialist worker, work itself can lose its meaning. With regard to the forced division of labor, the possible consequences are, firstly, a resentment of exploitation and an attempt to meet force with force (resistance or revolution); secondly, there is the response of fatalistic acceptance of domination. In a society where anomie and forced division of labor are combined, the unlimited desires/resentment and meaninglessness/fatalism pairs reinforce each other. Some critics (Horton) have sought to contrast Durkheim's concept of anomie with Marx's concept of alienation, but the contrast only holds up if anomie is kept separate from the forced division of labor; whereas in practice, as Durkheim perceived, they are frequently combined. There can be absence of regulation (anomie) at one level and coercive regulation at another level (forced division of labor), as exemplified by unrestricted competition and lack of agreement over the regulation of prices and incomes, on the one hand, and inequality of opportunities on the other. However, in Durkheim's view, spontaneous attachment to norms (as distinct from coerced attachment deriving from an imposed ideology) could only occur when the forced division of labor was mitigated.

Durkheim drew a sharp contrast between two systems of law: one dominated by repressive sanctions and corresponding to mechanical solidarity, and the other characterized by a predominance of restitutive principles corresponding to organic solidarity. Critics pointed out that the contrast was overdrawn, and also that many of the societies he used as examples of mechanical solidarity and repressive penal systems were in fact not simple tribal or clan societies, but already possessed the rudiments of central state organization, as in the case of the ancient Jewish and Roman societies.

The most important additions or modifications to his original thesis were concerned with his classification of crimes, and with… READ MORE

How to Reference "Durkheim: Modern Society and Punishment Emile" Term Paper in a Bibliography

Related Term Papers:

Society How Does Durkheim Term Paper

Society

How does Durkheim Address the Question: "How is Society Possible?"

Emile Durkheim was a nineteenth century French sociologist who believed that the common practices of society were regulated by… read more

Term Paper 4 pages (1679 words) Sources: 8 Topic: Sociology / Society

---

Anomie: A Sense of Alienation From Society Term Paper

Anomie: A sense of alienation from society, popularized by Durkheim's social theories. Ex. The sociologist Durkheim suggested that modern man or woman was in a perpetual state of anomie, because… read more

Term Paper 5 pages (2332 words) Sources: 0 Topic: Crime / Police / Criminal Justice

---

Social Control Theory Term Paper

Social Control Theory

All control theories play on the theme that deviance is mainly a function of the kinds of constraints to which people are exposed. The most well-known specific… read more

Term Paper 12 pages (3849 words) Sources: 1+ Topic: Sociology / Society

---

Sociology Families, Delinquency and Crime Term Paper

Sociology

Families, Delinquency and Crime

The purpose of this paper is to introduce and analyze the topic of delinquency and crime. Specifically, it will compare and contrast two sociological theories… read more

Term Paper 4 pages (1380 words) Sources: 3 Style: APA Topic: Sociology / Society

---

Organized Crime Is Becoming Indistinguishable From Capitalist Term Paper

Organized crime is becoming indistinguishable from capitalist business while capitalist organizations are behaving more like organized crime groups.

In the midst of the biggest financial rip-off in history of this… read more

Term Paper 6 pages (1726 words) Sources: 6 Style: Harvard Topic: Crime / Police / Criminal Justice

---

View 100+ more related papers  >>