Two other Italians must be mentioned with Lombroso. Enrico Ferri,
Professor of Penal Law at Rome and a Deputy in the Italian Parliament,
while doing valuable work as a criminal anthropologist, has at the same
time studied the social bearings of criminality in his best-known book,
_Nuovi Orizzonti del Diritto_. He has occupied himself less with the
instinctive than with the occasional criminal, and his clear and
philosophic spirit has placed him at the head of criminal sociologists.
Garofalo, a Neapolitan lawyer, accepting generally the conclusions reached
by Lombroso and Ferri, has become the most distinguished jurist of the
movement, the pioneer in that reform of law through the methods of natural
science which must eventually become so fruitful. His _Criminologie_ (the
new and enlarged edition is written in French) is marked by luminous yet
careful generalisation, and it contains many suggestions of wise reform.
Garofalo has brought into clear relief the inadequacy of legal maxims
founded on antiquated and unscientific conceptions, and he has shown that
not the nature of the crime, but the dangerousness (_temibilità_) of the
criminal constitutes the only reasonable legal criterion to guide the
inevitable social reaction against the criminal. This position is now
generally accepted as the legitimate outcome of the scientific study of
the criminal.
Among Italian workers in the department of criminal anthropology proper, a
very high place belongs to Dr. Antonio Marro, formerly surgeon to the
prison at Turin. _I Caratteri dei Delinquenti_ (1887) contains the results
of a carefully-detailed and methodic examination of more than five hundred
prisoners, men and women, and of over one hundred normal persons together
with an investigation into their ancestry and habits. All the data are
presented in tabular form, and his excellent methods and judicious
moderation in drawing conclusions impart great value to his work. His
exactness and impartiality have been admired even by those whose instincts
and training have led them to dread the invasions of this department of
science. Dr. Marro has made interesting contributions to the
differentiation of various criminal types, and he has brought out very
clearly the disastrous tendency to degeneration among the children of
parents who have passed middle age. Other Italian studies, among many that
might be mentioned, are Virgilio’s, dating from 1874, Dr. P. Penta’s
elaborate studies, the various works of Zuccarelli, the energetic
Neapolitan professor and editor of _L’Anomalo_, V. Rossi’s work, _Studio
sopra una Centuria di Criminali_, Salsotto’s on women delinquents, and
Ottolenghi’s investigations into the senses of criminals. The _Archivio di
Psichiatria_, a rich storehouse of elaborate observations, founded in
1880, directed by Lombroso, Ferri, Garofalo, and Morselli, edited by Rossi
and Ottolenghi, remains at the head of journals of criminal anthropology.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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