Who was Emile Durkheim and how did he relate to the function of punishment?

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Sociologist Émile Durkheim (1858–1917) contended that punishment is functional for society in that the rituals of punishment reaffirm the justness of the social norms and allow citizens to express their moral outrage when others transgress those moral norms. Durkheim also recognized that we can temper punishment with sympathy. He observed that over the course of social evolution, humankind had moved from retributive justice (characterized by cruel and vengeful punishments) to restitutive justice (characterized by reparation–“making amends”). Retributive justice is driven by the natural passion for punitive revenge that “ceases only when exhausted . . . only after it has destroyed” (Durkheim, 1893/1964, p. 86). Restitutive justice is driven by simple deterrence and is more humanistic and tolerant, although it is still “at least in part, a work of vengeance.” (pp. 88–89). For Durkheim, restitutive responses to wrongdoers offer a balance between calming moral outrage on the one hand and exciting the emotions of empathy and sympathy on the other.