You say that there’s a kind of social necessity of crime, since “crime and its punishment are a basic part of the rituals that uphold any social structure”, that crime is useful to legitimate social rules and beliefs, that is rules and ideals legitimating the social hierarchy and the power of dominant groups. Can you explain in more depth your thought? And what could be, in your opinion, the role of fiction (movies, novels and so on) in this kind of “ideological process”?
Actually what is referred to here is Durkheim’s classic theory of crime. He perceived that punishing criminals is a ritual. It usually does very little to control criminals or deter crime, but ordinary citizens feel great satisfaction in punishments being carried out, and feel there is something morally scandalous when a criminal is not punished. 
There has been a lot of criminological research on punishment, and of course complexities have been discovered. But I think it is generally true that there is a strong ritualistic element in punishment. Also, Durkheim’s point about the social necessity of crime, was to say that society is always inventing new crimes, so that it can carry out these punishment rituals. Society always wants somebody to punish. We see this in various kinds of criminal prohibitions – at one time alcohol, now drugs, increasingly now with tobacco; and in some places, sex scandals such as those involving politicians and prostitutes in the Usa. Of course different countries differ in these respects, with different histories of repressiveness or liberalization. 
How does fiction play into this process? This question has not been much examined. My suggestion is that fiction is not so much vicarious experience but rather a socially framed situation of partaking in a reality that its consumers know is not part of everyday life. The very existence of the TV set, the movie screen, and the physical pages of the book are a basic frame of experience, which sets apart its content from what is outside along with ourselves in ordinary life. So crime and punishment [or lack of punishment, getting away with crime, etc.] is chiefly a dramatic action inside the fictional frame. For fiction to be entertaining, it must have some kind of plot tension, some dramatic action, and conflicts are the most dramatic form of action. On a low cultural level, it is simple physical action and violence – as I have said, extremely inaccurate compared to real violence; but then real violence would not be very entertaining if we actually have to watch it. On a higher cultural level, the drama shifts to conflicts on the level of emotions. In important respects, the differences among social classes are in the level of subtlety and sophistication of what kind of dramatic tension they like to consume.

One of the key aspects of your theory is the assumption of the ritual as the foundation of the solidarity and the unity of the different social groups. The general model of the social rituals assumes that the individuals in the group are assembled in the same place (a church, a political meeting, etc.), that they share the same single focus, a contagious emotion, emblems or symbolic objects. Every individual is charged with the energy and the symbols of the group and he takes them with him into his everyday life. How can this central position of the social ritual, that needs in its general model the physical presence of people, be reconciled with the actuality of a great part of our current experiences, that are “media experiences”, such as medias like TV or Internet produce specific ways of experience and collective participation even if people are distant or separated? Can the impact of medias, producing new social situations, change the formation of the groups, or does it just provide them with subsidiary experiences? And what is, in your opinion, the role of the different properties of the means of symbolic production, referring to the different medias such as the TV or the Internet, also in the making of power and stratification?
This is the aspect of my theory that has received considerable discussion from current researchers. We are living in a technological revolution just now which mediates experiences, away from direct physical contact. Richard Ling has just published a book, on Mediated Ritual Experience based on research on how young people use mobile phones. Ling concludes that ritual solidarity is possible through these media, although cell phone users also want to meet each other personally, and use their phones chiefly to arrange meetings. Thus the mediated and physically copresent forms of interaction tend to form a chain, each supporting the other. This research also tends to show that mediated rituals are not as intense as close physical interactions; it is a matter of degree, not an absolute difference. In one of my previous books, The Sociology of Philosophies (1998) I showed that important intellectuals, throughout world history, have always been closely connected to each other in social networks. And these network structures have not changed, from ancient times when intellectual life was personal debate, through the development of books and printing. I concluded that even with the rise of the Internet, intellectuals who are connected only by internet are at a disadvantage to those who also know each other personally. Personal interaction is a much stronger way of conveying emotion; and that has an effect on how individuals internalize ideas, since the ideas come across most strongly when they are carried by emotions. Famous teachers will continue to have famous students who hear them personally, even though many other persons could find out about their ideas over the internet.