Durkheim and the Functions of Crime

Crime and Deviance:

It seems obvious to most people that crime and social order are opposites.

But more than a century ago French sociologist Emile Durkheim suggested that it wasn’t that simple.

This film looks at the introduction of Zero Tolerance Policing in New York, the imprisonment of Dr Jack Kevorkian for assisting terminally-ill patients to die and the tragic murder in the UK of Jamie Bulger, to illustrate Durkheim’s three key functions of crime.

The film concludes by looking at how the legacy of these ideas has been so influential in the development of criminology.