Criminal Sanctions
The quality and quantity of normative sanctions have been viewed as a reflection of the nature of social solidarity (Durkheim 1964; Black 1976). In simple societies where the level of willing conformity is high, normative sanctions tend to be informal in nature, substantive in application, and limited in use. In complex societies where levels of willing conformity are lower, normative sanctions are more likely to be formal in nature, procedural in application, and frequent in use (Michalowski 1985). The increasing stratification, morphology, and bureaucracy of modern society have given rise to the predominance of formal justice in the form of criminal law and criminal sanctions (Black 1976). Consequently, the nature of crime has been transformed from an offense committed by one individual against another in the context of community to an offense committed against the society as a whole (Christie 1977). Behaviors considered harmful to the moral, political, economic, or social well-being of society are defined as criminal and thereby worthy of formal state sanctions (Walker 1980). Criminal behaviors include transgressions of both the prohibitions and obligations that define a particular society. Behaviors come to be defined as crimes through the process of criminalization, which includes the calculation of proportional sanctions for each crime.
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