Also foundational in the study of criminology is the importance placed on examining the activities of the social institutions that make up the criminal justice system: police, courts and the correctional institutions. In this holistic view, the criminologist will suggest that the measurements obtained and the hypotheses derived from these activities will impact the three member groups of the legal system. Some, in fact, may be affected to a greater degree than others.

Some criminologists adhering to the functional theory choose to focus on the important objectives these institutions carry out in the interest of society, such as ensuring the rights of individuals and service to and protection of the public. This group may draw upon the earlier work of Emile Durkheim and his successors. (Brown et al., 2007). Other criminologists who study the conflict theory may in response argue that the function of the law, police, courts, and correctional systems can more accurately be described as serving the interests of the upper class in an attempt to maintain the status quo. Their predecessors in this theory are Karl Marx and his successors. These theories will be discussed in more detail later in the chapter (Akers et al., 2020).