A sistemic aproach to crime and deviance

Luhmann does not seem to have handled the issue of crime directly, but left clues. Following this line, we can relate it to at least three interrelated factors: functional differentiation into subsystems, evolution and inclusion / exclusion.

With the differentiation into subsystems, what is functional to a specific subsystem, may not be for others. For example, is not functional for the development of a market economy when competition problems are resolved with violence, but is functional to explore the environment, people and commit illegalities as tax evasion, because from this economic point of view, the laws are irrational and illegitimate. "False" theories about the crime can be used by the economy and create an entire industry of security; politics can scandalize to lead to changes in laws; mass media can focus on capital crimes and thus increase the sensation of insecurity. The resolution of problems of a subsystem can lead to violations in other subsystems.

We can focuses on the evolution and understand crime as “variation”. So, could explain why crime is not directly linked to poverty and inequality, but to change processes, such as impoverishment. Environmental changes stimulate new selections, occurring in all spheres of life, regardless of the level occupied in the economic hierarchy , politics, etc.

Each subsystem has its own criteria for inclusion and exclusion, but this criterion may appear in the most general level of society. Inclusion and exclusion appears in Luhmann as “supercode”. So, be excluded from a system is being deleted from the others. To have no residency makes impossible to enroll children in school. Thus, begins to create networks of favors and benefits contacts that begin to operate parasitically, generating their own mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion, sometimes resorting to illegality, being joint ventures between politics and crime.