ABSTRACT
Durkheim’s essay, ‘Two laws of penal evolution’,1 was first published in 1900, when he was forty-two. Written at a crucial phase in his intellectual development, it remains of importance to sociologists for several reasons. In the first place, it sheds new light on Durkheim’s thought in a number of areas. As an indication of his increased theoretical sophistication, it is instructive to compare the account he here gives of the evolution of punishment with the rather crude and vulnerable one he gives of the same subject in The Division of Labor. It provides us with one of Durkheim’s few extended discussions of the impact of the political sphere on the rest of society, most notable for his insistence on its importance as an independent variable having a potentially powerful influence on centrally important aspects of society. Additionally, it provides us with an illuminating account of what he saw as the differing nature and role of the conscience collective in primitive and advanced societies. And as a pioneering attempt to study crime in a comparative perspective and to relate changes in the treatment of deviants to long run changes in the social structure, the essay remains an important and instructive contribution to social theory.
