Mechanical Solidarity through Likeness.

Durkheim proposed that the

link of social solidarity to which repressive law corresponds is the “one whose break

constitutes a crime”. Therefore, the center of the investigation would be the “cause of

punishment, or, more precisely, to inquire what crime essentially consists of”. The

constant characteristic of repressive sanction found in this solidarity is in social relation,

that being harmful to the society. In mechanical society, the characteristic of all crimes

are those acts that are universally disapproved by the members of each society. That

crimes committed shocks sentiments, which is socially founded on a healthy conscience.

In this regards crime is also an offense to collective sentiments. On the other hand, the

sentiments which are incarnate in penal rules are determined; they have a much

greater uniformity.

Moreover, crime is also an act which is contrary to a strong and defined state of

the common conscience. This means solidarity penal law system is based from common

conscience. Sanction of this type is expresses in social likeness. Solidarity then is

conformity “of all particular conscience to a common type, the psychic type of society”.

In general, this would mean that “there exists a social solidarity in which comes from a

certain number of states of conscience which are common to all the members of the same

society”.