In The Division of Labour Durkheim argued that we can see fairly easily and straightforwardly what kind of solidarity the penal law symbolizes: ‘[It] can be traced to a certain conformity of each individual consciousness to a common type, which is none other than the psychological type of society’ (1989, 60). However, when he came to write his ‘Two Laws of Penal Evolution’ essay (first published in 1901 in the Année Sociologique 4: 65-95), he had changed his mind about this matter and did not see these things quite so clearly as he did before.

Although there is much talk of ‘collective sentiments’ and even of the consciousness of society in this essay, there are in fact no explicit references at all in the essay to any such things as ‘the common or collective consciousness of society’ or any references at all to the concepts of mechanical and organic solidarity, and this makes it puzzling why criminologists so frequently refer to this essay when they are discussing the question of social solidarity. Crucially however, what we do get for the first time in Durkheim's sociology is the abandonment finally of the idea of any simple or straightforward equation of crime with punishment. No longer two halves of an inseparable pair, what we are presented with here is a much more nuanced and sophisticated discussion of punishment in particular and crime to a much lesser extent.