Durkheim and Weber see the role of

Durkheim and Weber see the role of law and punishment as being important for the cohesion of society as a whole; another tradition, that of Marxist sociology, sees punishment and criminal law as being in service of the needs of capital, and as repressing those who do not accept capitalist discipline. This analytic tradition comes from looking at changes in the nature of punishments in relation to changes in economic organization and other social characteristics, and noticing that there does seem to be signifi¬cant correlation between developments in penality and in other social spheres.