He developed a functionalist perspective of crime, claiming that it is actually necessary because criminal behavior promotes clarification of the moral boundaries that define society.

Functionalist theories have been proposed for just about everything: mental states, dispositions, moral properties, truth, causation, and much else. The time has come for a functionalist theory of ...

Martin Mahner, Mario Bunge, Function and Functionalism: A Synthetic Perspective, Philosophy of Science, Vol. 68, No. 1 (Mar., 2001), pp. 75-94 ...