Cesare Lombroso was an Italian criminologist, considered the founding father of the modern school of criminology.
Background
Lombroso came from a family of rabbis and Hebrew scholars. His parents belonged to the Jewish aristocracy of Cheri and Verona and, Lombroso was born in Verona at a time when his family enjoyed its highest economic standing. In fact, he was born and lived for the first years of his life at the Palazzo del Greco in Verona.
Education
Growing up in a period of political unrest that led to the unification of Italy. Lombroso was an acute observer of his changing environment. By the age of fifteen, he had already published two essays on Roman history.
He went on to study literature, linguistics, and archaeology, devoting particular attention to Hebrew, Arabic, and Chinese. Pursuing his intecest in medicine, Lombroso obtained his doctorate from the University of Turin and studied at the universities of Padua, Paris, and Vienna. During his studies, Lombroso became increasily interested in the study of insanity.
Career
While Cesare Lombroso was in charge of the insane at hospitals in Pavia, Pesaro, and Reggio Emilia (1863 - 1872), his interest in physiognomical characteristics of the mentally disturbed increased.
He postulated that criminals represented a reversion to a primitive or subhuman type of man characterized by physical features reminiscent of apes, lower primates, and early man and to some extent preserved, he said, in modern "savages. "
Specific criminals, such as thieves, rapists, and murderers, could be distinguished by specific characteristics, he believed.
Besides the "born criminal, " Lombroso also described "criminaloids, " or occasional criminals, criminals by passion, moral imbeciles, and criminal epileptics.
Adequate control groups, which he lacked, might have altered his general conclusions.
Although he gave some recognition in his later years to psychological and sociological factors in the etiology of crime, he remained convinced of, and identified with, criminal anthropometry.
Lombroso's theories were influential throughout Europe, especially in schools of medicine, but not in the United States, where sociological studies of crime and the criminal predominated.
Views
Originally arousing violent opposition, Lombroso’s ideas on the causes of criminal behavior came to change the whole focus of the study ol crime from that of the criminal act to that of the criminal. Stressing inborn, biological factors, Lombroso held that criminals are born with a criminal instinct. They belong to a degenerate class ol human beings that is characterized by certain anatomical features and represents a regression to a primitive form of the human species.
The criminal falls into several categories of abnormal types that can be either defective or excessive; the atavism of this biological regression results in the development of criminals or idiots, while the evolution allows for artists and poets. Lombroso advocated the rehabilitation of certain types ol criminals lor whom education would create a safe outlet for their criminal instinct, so that they would be able to fit into society with a minimal chance of breaking the law. He favored severe limitations on the application of the death penalty. Lombroso’s ideas on crime and its humane treatment were incorporated in the 1931 Italian penal code and, more importantly, marked the beginning of a new scientific discipline — criminology.