Appendix: On Paying a Debt to Society

Summary

We cannot leave this discussion of Durkheim's views on the subject of the common or collective consciousness of society without considering one other very important question. Whatever else we might say about Durkheim's views on the question of crime and punishment his sociological perspective does seem to have the considerable merit that it can explain one very puzzling question that other perspectives cannot; namely, why it is when we punish the offender we commonly do so in the name of society as a whole rather than on behalf of the individual victims of crime. In other words it is usually, we say, for offences against society, or sometimes against the authority of the state, rather than offences against the actual victim of crime, that we claim to punish the offender.

One can easily imagine the young Durkheim, perhaps while he was a student in Germany in 1886 (Fournier 2012, 75-8) and before he wrote his doctoral dissertation, seizing on this otherwise quite inexplicable claim. In fact – although there does not appear to be any evidence to support this view – I do not think that it would be any exaggeration to say that this peculiar fact of social life might well have been the inspiration for Durkheim's entire sociological perspective. But the question I want to consider here is this: why do quite so many societies, as it seems, routinely claim to punish the offender in the name of society rather than in the name of the victim of crime?