Criminal Man, According to the Classification of Cesare LombrosoLombroso, Gina
Science
Criminal Man, According to the Classification of Cesare Lombroso
Lombroso, Gina
Criminal anthropology; Criminology
The "Open Door," an institution on similar lines, was founded by
Professor Cabred for the insane of the Province of Buenos Ayres, and
judging from what I was able to observe during my short visit, it
fulfils its purpose admirably. It consists of a large village populated
by some ten or twelve thousand lunatics. With the exception of the price
of the land and the cost of erecting the first buildings, this colony
does not cost the community anything; on the contrary, the colonists are
able to make large profits.
The ultimate plan of the village with streets and edifices has already
been mapped out, and the patients are continually occupied in erecting
new buildings, etc. There is a brick-kiln, a carpenter shop, and a
smithy, which produce all the materials used in building and furnishing
the dwellings. Only the less dangerous patients are employed in these
operations: those of weaker mind make brushes and wicker articles.
The colony is situated in the midst of a vast stretch of land in the
Province of Buenos Ayres, on which fruit and vegetables are grown by a
number of the patients. Others are occupied in raising fowls and pigs,
which supply the colony with eggs and meat and yield a large profit when
sold outside.
Professor Cabred wisely prefers agriculture of this kind to the raising
of large crops of wheat or maize, because it simplifies the task of
supervision necessary in any colony, and gives the colonists, whose toil
is compulsory, a continual and regular occupation of an almost unvarying
character. (This applies equally to the case of a penal colony.)
Workmen, foremen, engineers, builders, mechanics, gardeners,--all are
patients, with the exception of the Director, the doctor, and about a
hundred mounted warders, who pass rapidly from one part to another and
are able to intervene in suicidal or homicidal outbreaks.
A colony on these lines would be suitable for the large mass of habitual
criminals, who, although unable to resist the temptations of ordinary
life, are capable of useful work under supervision, and under such
conditions may prove beneficial to themselves and to the community.
INSTITUTIONS FOR BORN CRIMINALS AND THE MORALLY INSANE
_Asylums for Criminal Insane._ We have still to consider born criminals,
epileptics, and the morally insane, whose crimes spring from inherited
perverse instincts. These unfortunate beings cannot be consigned to
ordinary prisons, since, owing to their state of mental alienation, they
do not possess even the modesty of the vicious--hypocrisy--and they
never fail to pervert those criminaloids with whom they come in contact.
Malcontents by nature, they distrust everybody and everything, and as
they see an enemy in every warder and official, they are the centres of
constant mutinies.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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