Lombroso, Cesare
Lombroso, Cesare
Born of Jewish parents in Verona, Cesare Lombroso (1835–1909), the Italian criminologist, was educated by the Jesuits; he received a degree in medicine from the University of Pavia in 1858 and a degree in surgery from the University of Genoa in 1859. At various times he was an army physician and in charge of the insane at several hospitals, but his major positions, all at the University of Turin, were those of professor of legal medicine and public hygiene, 1876; professor of psychiatry and clinical psychiatry, 1896; and professor of criminal anthropology, 1906. Although he wrote extensively about such diverse subjects as pellagra, the nervous system, and genius, he came into prominence with his major work,L’uomo delinquents, first published in 1876. The book went through five editions in Italy and was translated into various European languages, although never into English.
Lombroso was influenced by French positivism, German materialism, and English evolutionism. In particular, he was influenced by Auguste Comte; Charles Darwin; Bénédict Morel, the French alienist who developed a theory of degeneracy; Bartolomeo Panizza, the Pavian comparative anatomist; Carl Rokitanski, the Viennese pathologist; and Enrico Ferri, his principal younger colleague, who suggested to him the term “the born criminal.”
Although Lombroso was aware of the importance of social and psychological factors in the causation of crime, his primary emphasis was on the concept of the atavistic criminal. He believed the atavistic criminal to be a biological throwback to an earlier stage of evolution, since inborn delinquency was not natural to contemporary mankind but peculiar to primitive races. The atavistic criminal could be identified by various anatomical, physiological, and psychic stigmata, different kinds of inborn delinquency being identifiable by different patterns of stigmata.
Lombroso later modified his ideas about criminal typology. Because in the first edition of L’uomo delinquente he had focused his attention so exclusively on such anatomical and anthropometric data as skull measurements and facial asymmetries, he had been led to an excessive emphasis on one type of criminal and one theory of criminal causation, atavistic criminality. In later editions he expanded his investigations and consequently his theory, adding degeneracy as a cause of criminality and considering atavism to be a form of degeneracy. Although his theoretical linking of atavism and degeneracy was challenged by biologists, it did widen his original narrow concept of the born criminal, which had been the primary point of attack of his critics. Lombroso’s investigations also revealed that the born criminal had pathological symptoms in common with the moral imbecile and the epileptic, and this led him to expand his typology to include the insane criminal and the epileptic criminal. The insane criminal type includes the alcoholic, the mattoid, and the hysterical criminal. Further additions to the typology include the criminaloid—a criminal qualitatively similar to the born criminal but differing quantitatively from him —who had become a criminal more from precipitating external factors than from predisposing internal ones; the pseudocriminal; the habitual criminal; and the person who commits a crime of passion.
Although Lombroso did not believe that all criminal behavior is of organic origin, there is no doubt that he never completely relinquished his belief in the existence of the born criminal type. However, in the fifth and last edition of L’uomo delinquente in 1896–1897 reduced his estimate of the proportion of this type to 40 per cent of the total criminal population, and in his introduction to his daughter Gina’s summary of his work,Criminal Man (1911), he reduced it still further. In response to suggestions by friends and attacks by critics he also came to give more attention to factors in the physical and social environment of the offender. For example, in Crime: Its Causes and Remedies (1899) he not only revised the estimate of the born criminal to 33 percent of the criminal population but also discussed social circumstances which might be partially responsible for encouraging a variety of transmissible biological anomalies that in turn would function within and affect the social structure.
Lombroso was not entirely opposed to the death penalty but believed it should be used only as a last resort. He favored attempts to readjust the criminal and suggested a doctrine of symbiosis of crime, whereby society would make use of the labor arid aptitudes of offenders. Included in this doctrine is the idea of the compensation of the victims of crime from the proceeds of work done by prisoners.
Lombroso’s work influenced criminologica] thinking principally by redirecting emphasis from a legalistic concern for crime to a scientific study of the criminal. His approach is most evident in the clinical criminology of Benigno Di Tullio and his associates in Italy.
Marvin E. Wolfgang
[see alsoCriminology; Delinquency, article onPsychological Aspects; Penology; Psychology, article onConstitutional Psychology; andPsychopathicPersonality.]
WORKS BY LOMBROSO
(1876) 1896–1897 L’uomo delinquente in rapporto all’-antropologia, alia giurisprudenza ed alle discipline carcerarie. 5th ed., 3 vols. Turin (Italy): Bocca.
(1893) 1927 LOMBROSO, CESARE; and FERRERO, GUGLIELMO La donna delinquente, la prostituta e la donnanormale. 5th ed. Turin (Italy): Bocca. ? Partly translated as The Female Offender and published in 1958 by Philosophical Library.
(1897) 1907 Genio e degenerazione: Nuovi studie nuove battaglie. Palermo (Italy): Sandron.
(1899) 1911 Crime: Its Causes and Remedies. Boston: Little. ? First published in Italian. A bibliography of the writings of Lombroso on criminal anthropology appears on pages 453-464.
SUPPLEMENTARY BIBLIOGRAPHY
Di Tullio, Benigno 1959 Cesare Lombroso e la politica criminale moderna.La scuola positiva Series 4th 1:495–508.
Kurella, Hans G. (1910) 1911 Cesare Lombroso: A Modern Man of Science. London: Rebman. ? First published in German.
Lombroso-Ferrero, Gina 1911 Criminal Man According to the Classification of Cesare Lombroso. New York and London: Putnam.
Lombroso-Ferrero, Gina (1915) 1921 Cesare Lombroso: Storia della vita e delle opere. 2d ed. Bologna (Italy): Zanichelli. ? A short biography and a bibliography appear on pages 447-476.
Mannheim, Hermann 1936 Lombroso and His Place in Modern Criminology.Sociological Review 28:31-49.
Wolfgang, Marvin E. 1960 Cesare Lombroso. Pages 168–227 in Hermann Mannheim (editor),Pioneers in Criminology. London: Stevens.