Crime Is Necessary: Durkheim’s Theory of Crime

Crime can not be removed completely from society because it will always be the necessary unacceptable norm that can be located in all forms of societies around the world. Crime is regarded, by many people such as politicians and other people of everyday society, as horrid and unnecessary. Emile Durkheim believes that crime is normal and it isn't possible for it to not exist. If crime is everywhere and in no area has crime ever been successfully eradicated then we should assume it is there for a reason. According to many books written by Emile Durkheim, such as Suicide, and The Division of Labor, society plays a large role in our actions and Durkheim explains that reasons to which why crime is executable. Experts in the Department of Sociology have given their own words and critiques toward Durkheim’s theory. there are many theories of crime out there, but the most agreeable one is Emile Durkheim’s Theory of crime. The french sociologist states in his book Suicide that:
“Now there is no society known where a more or less developed criminality is found under different forms. No people exist whose morality is not daily infringed upon. We must therefore call crime necessary and declare that it cannot be non-existent, that fundamental conditions of social organization, as they are understood, logically imply it. “(Durkheim 362)
Inferring the frequent occurrence of crime, Durkheim explains that crime “is normal”. Since our society standards are the conditions of todays world, they demand crime to occur and that demand is what drives the “inevitable imperfections of human nature.” (Durkheim 362) You can never have a utopia without a dystopia thrown into the mix. Progress that frequently occurs in society should be enough to stop crime if it were even possible. According to John Hamlin, a professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology says “because crime is found in all healthy societies it must be performing some necessary, positive function or else it would