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Rationality and Society
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The Normalcy of Crime

From Durkheim to Evolutionary Ecology

LAWRENCE E. COHEN

University of California, Davis

RICHARD MACHALEK

University of Wyoming

A troublesome but generally ignored paradox characterizes contemporary sociological explanations of crime causation. Although many sociologists interpret crime as if it were pathological or aberrant and thus "abnormal" behavior, most simultaneously embrace Durkheim's famous dictum of crime as "normal" behavior. A review of Durkheim's theory of crime causation reveals that it is burdened by several serious logical flaws. And ironically, despite his reputation for propagating a purely sociological explanation of crime, Durkheim resorts ultimately to individual characteristics, rather than social facts, in order to identify the root causes of crime. Contemporary evolutionary game theory affords an alternative explanation of the normalcy of much crime without suffering the deficiencies of the classical Durkheimian approach. The authors' evolutionary ecological-based theory explains the incidence of "expropriative" crime as a by-product of normal patterns of social organization and processes of social interaction. Furthermore, this alternative perspective successfully explains, within one theoretical frame-work, the link between key macro-and microlevel forces responsible for patterns of expropriative crime.

Rationality and Society, Vol. 6, No. 2, 286-308 (1994)
DOI: 10.1177/1043463194006002007
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