The work of Lombroso set out with two original faults: the mistake
of having given undue importance, at any rate apparently, to the
data of craniology and anthropometry, rather than to those of
psychology; and, secondly, that of having mixed up, in the first
two editions, all criminals in a single class. In later editions
these defects were eliminated, Lombroso having adopted the
observation which I made in the first instance, as to the various
anthropological categories of criminals. This does not prevent
certain critics of criminal anthropology from repeating, with a
strange monotony, the venerable objections as to the
``impossibility of distinguishing a criminal from an honest man by
the shape of his skull,'' or of <p 4>``measuring human
responsibility in accordance with different craniological
types.''[2]
[2] Vol. ii. of the fourth edition of ``The Criminal'' (1889) is
specially concerned with the epileptic and idiotic criminal
(referred to alcoholism, hysteria, mattoidism) whether occasional
or subject to violent impulse; whilst vol. i. is concerned only
with congenital criminality and moral insanity.
But these original faults in no way obscure the two following
noteworthy facts--that within a few years after the publication of
``The Criminal'' there were published, in Italy and elsewhere, a
whole library of studies in criminal anthropology, and that a new
school has been established, having a distinct method and
scientific developments, which are no longer to be looked for in
the classical school of criminal law.
I.
What, then, is criminal anthropology? And of what nature are its
fundamental data, which lead us up to the general conclusions of
criminal sociology?
If general anthropology is, according to the definition of M. de
Quatrefages, the natural history of man, as zoology is the natural
history of animals, criminal anthropology is but the study of a
single variety of mankind. In other words, it is the natural
history of the criminal man.
Criminal anthropology studies the criminal man in his organic and
psychical constitution, and in his life as related to his physical
and social environment--just as anthropology has done for man in
general, and for the various races of mankind. So that, as
already said, whilst the classical observers of crime study
<p 5>various offences in their abstract character, on the
assumption that the criminal, apart from particular cases which
are evident and appreciable, is a man of the ordinary type, under
normal conditions of intelligence and feeling, the anthropological
observers of crime, on the other hand, study the criminal first of
all by means of direct observations, in anatomical and
physiological laboratories, in prisons and madhouses, organically
and physically, comparing him with the typical characteristics of
the normal man, as well as with those of the mad and the
degenerate.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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