Cesare Lombroso e Criminologia

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Cesare Lombroso: Methodological ambiguities and brilliant intuitions
Uberto Gatti, Alfredo Verde ⁎
DISSAL, Section of Criminology and Forensic Psychiatry, University of Genoa, Italy
a b s t r a c ta r t i c l e i n f o
Available online 7 December 2011
Keywords:
Cesare Lombroso
History of criminology
Biological theories of crime
This paper on Cesare Lombroso aims to assess his contribution to the criminological sciences. Although much
praised worldwide, Lombroso was also the target of scathing criticism and unmitigated condemnation. Ex-
amination of Lombroso's method of data collection and analysis reveals his weakness. Indeed, his approach
was extremely naive, simplistic and uncritical, aimed at irrefutably demonstrating the hypotheses that he
championed, without exercising the methodological caution that was already beginning to characterize sci-
entific research in his day. However, we must acknowledge that his biological theories of crime are undergo-
ing new developments as a result of the recent success of biological psychiatry. On the other hand we should
recognize that his work was not limited to his biological central theory; rather, it covered a range of cues and
concepts, for the most part ignored, that demonstrate his interest in the economic, cultural and social factors
that impact on crime. For these reasons, Lombroso appears to have anticipated many modern conceptions re-
garding delinquent behavior and criminal justice, such as those of restorative justice, the so-called “situation-
al” theories of criminal behavior and white collar crime.
© 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
1. The recent reappraisal of Lombroso after a long oblivion
Lombroso was long denigrated and ridiculed, particularly in
American criminology, until his recent reappraisal. In our opinion,
his work deserves some degree of reassessment and a more balanced
evaluation for two principal reasons. First, his biological theories of
delinquency, which are central to Lombrosian theory, are undergoing
new developments as a result of the recent success of biological psy-
chiatry. Second, Lombroso's work was not limited to his central theo-
ry; rather, it covered a range of cues and concepts, for the most part
ignored, that demonstrate his interest in the economic, cultural and
social factors that impact on crime, and which were the precursors
of several modern scientific developments in the criminological field.
On the first point, it is a matter of fact that scientific approaches
that have been denigrated and relegated to the sphere of pseudosci-
ence have sometimes been reappraised. An example of this is
phrenology, which until quite recently was perceived as producing a
caricature-like view of man, and which has been revalued by some
neuroscientists as having established the principle of cerebral locali-
zations, so much so that a few eminent scientists claim that it was
the first science of rational man (Renneville, 2000).
In the same way, Lombroso's principal theory, which was based on
the link between physical anomalies and criminal behavior, has been
re-proposed by several modern studies. However, the present article
does not aim to provide an assessment of biological criminology, a
task which would require far greater space. Rather, our intention is
merely to highlight the reappearance of some intuitions that can be
traced back to Lombroso among the hypotheses currently subjected
to scientific testing.
Some of the strengths and the weaknesses of Lombroso's thinking
are exemplified by an episode from his life. In August 1897, he sud-
denly decided to attend the 12th International Medical Congress in
Moscow. As he was not a member of the official Italian delegation,
Lombroso had been somewhat hesitant to go. In Moscow, however,
he was acclaimed — and invited to the Kremlin by the Grand Duke
Sergei Alexandrovitch, who had found him lodging in a shabby little
hotel.
In reality, however, Lombroso had a secret plan; he intended to
meet Tolstoy, whom he regarded as the greatest living writer, in
order to test his theory on the relationship between genius and mad-
ness (Mazzarello, 2005). Indeed, Lombroso imagined Tolstoy as being
of “aspetto cretinoso o degenerato” [“cretinous or degenerate appear-
ance”] (like Socrates, Ibsen, Darwin and Dostoyevsky among others),
as illustrated by one of his portraits published in the 6th edition of The
Man of Genius (Lombroso, 1894a: 9). Max Nordau had also devoted a
chapter of his book Degeneration to Tolstoy, in which he described
the writer as a man who “speaks of science as a blind man of color”
(Nordau, 1993: 162). Moreover, in Nordau's terms, he was mentally
unstable, a sick man with nebulous and disjointed thoughts accompa-
nied by great emotionalism.
According to the reconstruction made by Mazzarello (2005), Lom-
broso's stubborn insistence enabled him to overcome the obstacles
thrown up by the police, and he was finally granted permission to
visit Tolstoy on his Yasnaya Polyana estate. Once there, the Italian
International Journal of Law and Psychiatry 35 (2012) 19–26
⁎ Corresponding author. Tel.: +39 0103537897; fax: +39 0103537577.
E-mail address: a.verde@unige.it (A. Verde).
0160-2527/$ – see front matter © 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.ijlp.2011.11.004
Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect
International Journal of Law and Psychiatry
Author's personal copy
criminologist began his naturalistic observation with a view to verify-
ing his theory first-hand. Indeed, he managed fully to confirm his hy-
pothesis of the relationship between genius and degeneration, in that,
in his view, Tolstoy proved to be affected by an “epileptoid psychosis”,
a sign of a hereditary mental illness that was detectable both in his
forebears and in some of his children. It was not a happy meeting.
On his part, Tolstoy reacted to Lombroso's visit by confiding to
his diary his contempt for Lombrosian theories (August 27, 1897:
“…Lombroso came. He is an ingenuous and limited old man”: cf.
Mazzarello, 2001: 983). Mazzarello (2005), who chronicles the visit
extraordinarily well, makes an important connection when he notes
that, in the days following Lombroso's visit, Tolstoy would write the
pages of his novel Resurrection, in which he depicts a public prosecu-
tor's harangue that is imbued with Lombrosian ideas; the President of
the Court rebukes the official for “going too far”, while another col-
league concludes that he is “a very stupid fellow”.
Lombroso's visit to Tolstoy reveals particular aspects of the scien-
tist's personality: on the one hand, his ability to work out interesting
hypotheses and his desire to test them empirically; on the other, his
methodological shortcomings and his hasty demonstrations. These
very characteristics may well have been at the root of his alternating
fortunes, an example of which can be found in the way his theories
were received in the United States. Indeed, the story of Lombroso's
acceptance by American criminology unfolded in stages: vociferous
rejection accompanied by covert adherence and followed by a (late)
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https://www.researchgate.net/publication/5384961_Understanding_development_and_prevention_of_chronic_physical_aggression_towards_experimental_epigenetic_studies?el=1_x_8&enrichId=rgreq-8e368d4856a3396f093f6245832b9a62-XXX&enrichSource=Y292ZXJQYWdlOzUxODY0NjgwO0FTOjE4MjkzOTY4NjAyMzE2OEAxNDIwNjI3NjI4NTQy
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/5384961_Understanding_development_and_prevention_of_chronic_physical_aggression_towards_experimental_epigenetic_studies?el=1_x_8&enrichId=rgreq-8e368d4856a3396f093f6245832b9a62-XXX&enrichSource=Y292ZXJQYWdlOzUxODY0NjgwO0FTOjE4MjkzOTY4NjAyMzE2OEAxNDIwNjI3NjI4NTQy
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/5384961_Understanding_development_and_prevention_of_chronic_physical_aggression_towards_experimental_epigenetic_studies?el=1_x_8&enrichId=rgreq-8e368d4856a3396f093f6245832b9a62-XXX&enrichSource=Y292ZXJQYWdlOzUxODY0NjgwO0FTOjE4MjkzOTY4NjAyMzE2OEAxNDIwNjI3NjI4NTQy
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/11335457_Maternal_Smoking_During_Pregnancy_and_Severe_Antisocial_Behavior_in_Offspring_A_Review?el=1_x_8&enrichId=rgreq-8e368d4856a3396f093f6245832b9a62-XXX&enrichSource=Y292ZXJQYWdlOzUxODY0NjgwO0FTOjE4MjkzOTY4NjAyMzE2OEAxNDIwNjI3NjI4NTQy
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/11335457_Maternal_Smoking_During_Pregnancy_and_Severe_Antisocial_Behavior_in_Offspring_A_Review?el=1_x_8&enrichId=rgreq-8e368d4856a3396f093f6245832b9a62-XXX&enrichSource=Y292ZXJQYWdlOzUxODY0NjgwO0FTOjE4MjkzOTY4NjAyMzE2OEAxNDIwNjI3NjI4NTQy
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/11335457_Maternal_Smoking_During_Pregnancy_and_Severe_Antisocial_Behavior_in_Offspring_A_Review?el=1_x_8&enrichId=rgreq-8e368d4856a3396f093f6245832b9a62-XXX&enrichSource=Y292ZXJQYWdlOzUxODY0NjgwO0FTOjE4MjkzOTY4NjAyMzE2OEAxNDIwNjI3NjI4NTQy
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/46722801_Development_and_prevention_of_behavior_problems_From_genes_to_social_policy?el=1_x_8&enrichId=rgreq-8e368d4856a3396f093f6245832b9a62-XXX&enrichSource=Y292ZXJQYWdlOzUxODY0NjgwO0FTOjE4MjkzOTY4NjAyMzE2OEAxNDIwNjI3NjI4NTQy
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/46722801_Development_and_prevention_of_behavior_problems_From_genes_to_social_policy?el=1_x_8&enrichId=rgreq-8e368d4856a3396f093f6245832b9a62-XXX&enrichSource=Y292ZXJQYWdlOzUxODY0NjgwO0FTOjE4MjkzOTY4NjAyMzE2OEAxNDIwNjI3NjI4NTQy
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https://www.researchgate.net/publication/51831307_Developmental_origins_of_chronic_physical_aggression_and_epigenetics?el=1_x_8&enrichId=rgreq-8e368d4856a3396f093f6245832b9a62-XXX&enrichSource=Y292ZXJQYWdlOzUxODY0NjgwO0FTOjE4MjkzOTY4NjAyMzE2OEAxNDIwNjI3NjI4NTQy
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/51831307_Developmental_origins_of_chronic_physical_aggression_and_epigenetics?el=1_x_8&enrichId=rgreq-8e368d4856a3396f093f6245832b9a62-XXX&enrichSource=Y292ZXJQYWdlOzUxODY0NjgwO0FTOjE4MjkzOTY4NjAyMzE2OEAxNDIwNjI3NjI4NTQy
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/301298598_Il_deviante_e_i_suoi_segni_Lombroso_e_la_nascita_dell'antropologia_criminale_Milano_Franco_Angeli_1985_pp_293?el=1_x_8&enrichId=rgreq-8e368d4856a3396f093f6245832b9a62-XXX&enrichSource=Y292ZXJQYWdlOzUxODY0NjgwO0FTOjE4MjkzOTY4NjAyMzE2OEAxNDIwNjI3NjI4NTQyhttps://www.researchgate.net/publication/301298598_Il_deviante_e_i_suoi_segni_Lombroso_e_la_nascita_dell'antropologia_criminale_Milano_Franco_Angeli_1985_pp_293?el=1_x_8&enrichId=rgreq-8e368d4856a3396f093f6245832b9a62-XXX&enrichSource=Y292ZXJQYWdlOzUxODY0NjgwO0FTOjE4MjkzOTY4NjAyMzE2OEAxNDIwNjI3NjI4NTQyof the Italian scholar and those of
his disciples.
The vociferous rejection came from Lindesmith and Levin (1937),
who discredited Lombroso as the founder of criminology, but without
discussing his theories in depth. In this case, however, their rejection
of Lombroso was not based on scientific grounds in the strict sense.
Rather, it constituted a “political” attempt to lay claim to the territory
of criminology on behalf of the nascent empirical sociology, which
was to bear so much fruit, starting from the contributions made by
the Chicago School, which were published contemporaneously with
those of the two American detractors. By contrast, the covert adher-
ence did not so much concern criminology as American psychology
and psychiatry. Indeed, for a long time these were based on the con-
struction of explanatory hypotheses that attributed to mental deficit a
fundamental role in the genesis of antisocial behavior, and which
therefore legitimized a range of practices of a eugenic nature, rather
similar to those developed in Nazi Germany (concerning the USA, cf.
Hahn Rafter, 1997; Carlson, 2001; for Germany, cf. Wetzell, 2000).
These two reactions – rejection and implicit acceptance – both led
to Lombroso's disappearance from criminology; by the end of the Sec-
ond World War, biological-eugenic theories had fallen into disgrace,
and Lombrosian theory became merely a stereotype to be quoted at
the beginning of manuals. That Lombroso was not simply the formu-
lator of a single theory – that of the born criminal –was gradually for-
gotten. In reality, he formulated a whole range of explanations and
modified his opinions throughout his life, even recognizing the role
that social factors play in crime. In short, it was no longer acknowl-
edged that Lombroso was an all-round criminologist who, if anything,
paid too much attention to the criticisms and fashions of the day
(Gibson, 2002).
Today, with the rebirth of biological theories (Ferguson & Beaver,
2009; Hodgins, Viding, & Plodowski, 2009; Rafter, 2008; Walsh &
Beaver, 2009) and the blossoming of studies on the interaction
between genes and the environment (Rutter, 2006), including epige-
netics (Tremblay & Szyf, 2010; Tremblay, van Aken, & Koops, 2009),
Lombroso's ideas have made a strong, perhaps even too strong, come-
back. But even a short time after Lindesmith and Levin's criticisms, fa-
mous criminological scholars, such as Sellin (1937) and Wolfgang
(1972), defended Lombroso's contributions. A series of American pa-
pers have reintroduced the figure of this Italian criminologist to
scholars, and have apologized publicly for the denigration of the
man and his work in English-speaking criminology; commentated
anthologies of his most famous works, The Delinquent Man and The
Delinquent Woman (Lombroso, 2006; Lombroso & Ferrero, 2004),
are being published; in short, the charm of his monumental, detailed
and (sometimes) incoherent work is being rediscovered. To quote a
well-known saying, as Lombroso himself liked to do, one should not
“throw out the baby with the bathwater”. This aptly describes what
has happened. First, in an attempt to get rid of the dirty water, the
baby was thrown out; now, however, the risk is that we might keep
the dirty water along with the baby. Indeed, the current wave of reap-
praisal appears, in our view, to overlook one simple fact: that Lom-
broso was not an absolute genius; while he was undoubtedly
capable of remarkable insights, his work also contains serious errors
and misunderstandings, and his often inspired ideas were frequently
shot through with amazing naivety.
Lombroso's fluctuating fortunes may well have depended on the
very nature of his work, which has often elicited great enthusiasm
or merciless criticism. Indeed, right from the outset, Lombroso was si-
multaneously praised to the skies and condemned without appeal. He
was praised by Freud in letters to his fiancée (Freud, 1961) and en-
thusiastically studied by Jung (Carotenuto, 1977). Even Durkheim,
who occasionally battled against Lombrosian criminal anthropology,
acknowledged the merits of this discipline, particularly that of having
upheld the importance of applying the methods of the positive sci-
ences to the study of actions of a moral nature (Baima Bollone,
2003). In the strictly medical field, Lombroso also proved to be an in-
novator; in 1862 he published a study on gunshot wounds from
which it emerged that he was one of the first in the world to use an-
tiseptics to treat war wounds and amputations, which at that time
carried extremely high mortality rates (up to 90%) as a result of infec-
tions (Lombroso, 1862).
A polyglot, Lombroso helped to open up Italian science to Europe-
an culture, and his conceptions had a considerable influence in many
countries. However, as we have said, his work aroused fierce criti-
cism. In some cases, the opposition came from radical quarters, as,
for example, the illuminated, vigorous and ruthless criticism of
some racist aspects of criminal anthropology brilliantly expressed
by Colajanni (1889), who demonstrated the falsity and irrationality
of the Lombrosian conviction that delinquency could be equated
with racial inferiority. But criticism also came from “the right”, from
the church and from idealist currents of opinion; we need only men-
tion the harsh, pitiless editorial/obituary penned by Father Agostino
Gemelli under the emblematic title “Cesare Lombroso. The funeral
of a man and of a doctrine” (Gemelli, 1911). Sometimes, however,
conflicts arose with regard to the emphasis placed on some particular
aspects rather than to the general groundwork of the theory, which
was largely endorsed even by Lombroso's opponents. Indeed, accord-
ing to Mucchielli (1995), the fierce wrangling with the French school
of criminology, for example, constituted a false antagonism which, in
reality, concealed a power struggle.
Though often associated with right-wing ideology, Lombroso was
actually oriented firmly toward progress and was a member of the
Socialist Party. Indeed, as would later be pointed out, criminal anthro-
pology was compatible with various ideologies and political agendas,
ranging from socialism through liberalism to fascism (Gibson, 2002).
His interests extended far beyond the field of medicine: to ethnol-
ogy, psychology and sociology. He was extremely curious, and strove
to apply a multidisciplinary method. He tenaciously pursued the
experimental method and the utilization of statistics, and tirelessly
sought to accumulate data and information, though his method of
data collection and analysis was, as we shall see, highly questionable.
An extremely (perhaps excessively) prolific writer, he wrote more
than 30 books and 1000 articles. Alongside his detractors and his un-
critical supporters, there are also scholars who have underlined the
man's contradictions: the simultaneous presence of light and shade.
A case in point is the interesting view expressed by Ferri. During the
20 U. Gatti, A. Verde / International Journal of Law and Psychiatry 35 (2012) 19–26
Author's personal copy
first few days of his stay in Rome, where he was studying at the
University's School of Penal Law, the famous criminologist Leon Rad-
zinowicz was approached by the great Enrico Ferri, the prestigious
director of the School. “What are you reading, young friend?” asked
Ferri. “Cesare Lombroso, L'uomo delinquente”, replied the young stu-
dent. “Very good. But always remember that Lombroso was a genius
who lacked talent”, Ferri flatly proclaimed (Radzinowicz, 1999: 1).
In this regard, the opinion which best sums up the assessment that
can be made of Lombroso is that of one of his followers, the psychia-
trist, criminologist, philosopher and reformer José Ingenieros, who
claimed: “Es un hombre genial, pero no es intelligente” [“He is a genius,
but not an intelligent man”] (Ingenieros, 1919). In our view, this judg-ment prompts critical reflection on Lombroso in the light of modern
epistemological theories in such a way as to reveal his great merits
and his considerable weaknesses.
According to a modern epistemological approach, introduced by
Peirce (1931) and taken up by Hanson (1958), scientific progress de-
pends on three successive phases that are linked together: the gener-
al formulation of the hypothesis (abduction), the logical derivation of
empirically verifiable statements (deduction), and the empirical con-
firmation of those statements (induction). The three kinds of reason-
ing become interlinked in the production and verification of new
scientific knowledge and are conceptualized as the three stages of en-
quiry: “Abduction is the process of forming an explanatory hypothe-
sis. It is the only logical operation which introduces any new ideas;
for induction does nothing but determine a value, and deduction
merely evolves the necessary consequences of a pure hypothesis”
(Peirce, 1931: p.5.171).
Abduction therefore manifests itself as a purely creative event;
when a scientific hypothesis is first formulated and is then empirical-
ly confirmed, it possesses the status of a true discovery: an irreducible
innovation which situates and fixes a new point of view on reality. In
our view, Lombroso's greatness depends on the creative and innova-
tive nature of his abductive processes, while the subsequent phases of
deduction and induction appear to be wanting, even in the light of the
methods of his time. We will document this claim by showing both
the greatness of his intuitions and the fragility and weirdness of his
methods. The former have often been re-proposed by the most recent
empirical research, while the latter are fraught with approximation,
uncritical superficiality and the accumulation of data that are not
filtered through sound evaluation.
2. Lombroso's methodological ambiguities
Why was Lombroso “not intelligent”? Our hypothesis is that, aside
from his creative abductions, which were often based on impressive
insights, what he lacked – for reasons that we would trace back to
what psychoanalysts define as “personal equation” (Ellenberger,
1970) – was the will or the ability to systematize and generalize (de-
duction) and to test his hypotheses in an appropriate empirical man-
ner (induction). Rather, Lombroso moved from creative abduction to
precocious generalization in a distinctly hasty fashion. The phase of
induction (experimental verification of hypotheses) seems to have
been replaced in his work by a feverish piling up of data. Of course,
there was no lack of quantitative elaboration. However, this con-
cerned only a few of his creative insights (e.g. the relationship be-
tween alcohol and crime), while many claims that were presented
as tried and tested were based merely on historical, literary or judicial
anecdotes; even the use of clinical data was often reduced to an anec-
dotal dimension. What is more, in his articles on politics and current
affairs, he was often drawn into taking up positions that were at var-
iance with the central core of his theory.
The intrinsic weakness of Lombroso's way of proceeding even ex-
tends to the biological basis of his theory, beginning with the cele-
brated “median occipital fossetta”, which was “discovered” in 1870
in the cranium of the Calabrian bandit Villella, and which was claimed
to contain a “third lobe of the cerebellum” characterized by hypertro-
phy of the cerebellar vermis. This “anomaly”was claimed to be absent
in higher primates, but present in Lemuridae. On investigating the or-
igin of the finding on which Lombroso's first abduction was based,
Villa (1985) discovered that Lombroso's account of the autopsy on
Villella was fraught with contradictions concerning the dates of his
contact with the bandit's cranium, the shape of the cranium itself
and the crimes committed by Villella. This arouses the suspicion
that Lombroso may, at least in part, have made up, or in any case
embellished, his account.
Lombroso's desire to demonstrate his hypotheses at all costs, and
without self-criticism, constitutes one of the chief weaknesses of his
method. Emile Zola, who was attentive to the scientific progress of
his time, was already aware of this. Although Zola admired Lombroso,
he declared in an interview for Tribuna: “Lo ritengo un uomo di
grande valore… ma, quantunque lo apprezzi come un grande e
potente ingegno, non accetto completamente le sue idee. Come tutti
gli uomini a tesi, egli fa affluire alla sua – che conchiude all'irrespon-
sabilità umana – tutti i fatti che le sono favorevoli, senza tenere
conto di quelli che le sono contrari” [“I think he is a man of great
worth… Nevertheless, however much I appreciate his great intellect,
I do not fully accept his ideas. Like all men with a thesis, he marshals
all the facts that support his own – which concludes for the non-
responsibility of man – while ignoring all those that conflict with
it”] (Zola, 1889). However, when Lombroso produced his statistics
(we are referring here to the fifth and final edition of his Delinquent
Man in 1896: Lombroso, 1896a), even the certainty of his basic hy-
pothesis was visibly shaken; indeed, the median occipital fossetta
was found in an average of 16.6% of the 277 “malefattori” [“malefac-
tors”] examined by Lombroso and his Italian and foreign disciples,
and in 18% of a sample of 44 “normal” subjects. The only anomalies
that distinguished the criminals from the normal subjects were facial
asymmetry (see below), plagiocephaly, a sloping forehead, bulging
eyebrow arches and frontal sinuses, frontal microcephaly and a set
of other minor features (Lombroso, 1896a). All of these findings
ought to have been carefully evaluated, since they clearly contradict
one another, as was noted by Tarde (1885). And yet, Lombroso car-
ried out ideal typing and based this on the very anomaly that had
originally been discovered. He concluded that such anomalies were
so-called evolutionary throwbacks beyond the higher primates to
the Lemuridae, and beyond these to an even more remote ancestry:
that of “the most ferocious carnivores and rodents” (Lombroso,
2006: 348). His blatant self-assuredness and his prophetic tone,
which were closer to religious belief than to empirical science, inevi-
tably aroused criticism. By way of example, we will mention just a
few of the many. In Italy, Andrea Verga (1872), the founder of Italian
psychiatry, criticized the importance attached to the fossetta. The de-
finitive judgment, however, came from Enrico Morselli. According to
Giacanelli (1995), Morselli, who in 1915 looked back at the birth of
Italian phreniatry, defined Lombroso as “alienista attivissimo” [“a
highly active alienist”] whose research was “troppo personale” [“too
personal”] and whose method, though “teoricamente ben ispirato”
[“theoretically well inspired”], was “non … abbastanza profondo e
non abbastanza esatto” [“not… sufficiently deep or sufficiently accu-
rate”] (Morselli, 1915: 37–8). Abroad, Lombroso's ideas came under
a barrage of criticism at the 2nd International Congress of Criminal
Anthropology held in Paris in 1889, and not only from the French an-
thropologists. Opposition was voiced by Manouvrier (Broca's pupil),
the anthropologist Topinard, the sociologist Tarde, the degeneration
theorist Magnan, and even Moritz Benedikt, the Austrian neurologist
and criminologist. Benedikt, while not above criticism himself in
that he claimed to have located an area of the brain connected
with moral judgment, and who inspired some aspects of Freud's
work (Ellenberger, 1970), exclaimed: “pourquoi ne pas dire que la
fossette moyenne indique une prédisposition aux hemorrhoides?
Savons nous en effet quelle est la signification du vermis?”
21U. Gatti, A. Verde / International Journal of Law and Psychiatry 35 (2012) 19–26
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/247838689_The_Discovey_of_the_Unconscious?el=1_x_8&enrichId=rgreq-8e368d4856a3396f093f6245832b9a62-XXX&enrichSource=Y292ZXJQYWdlOzUxODY0NjgwO0FTOjE4MjkzOTY4NjAyMzE2OEAxNDIwNjI3NjI4NTQyhttps://www.researchgate.net/publication/247838689_The_Discovey_of_the_Unconscious?el=1_x_8&enrichId=rgreq-8e368d4856a3396f093f6245832b9a62-XXX&enrichSource=Y292ZXJQYWdlOzUxODY0NjgwO0FTOjE4MjkzOTY4NjAyMzE2OEAxNDIwNjI3NjI4NTQy
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/247838689_The_Discovey_of_the_Unconscious?el=1_x_8&enrichId=rgreq-8e368d4856a3396f093f6245832b9a62-XXX&enrichSource=Y292ZXJQYWdlOzUxODY0NjgwO0FTOjE4MjkzOTY4NjAyMzE2OEAxNDIwNjI3NjI4NTQy
Author's personal copy
[“Why not say that the median fossa indicates a predisposition to
hemorrhoids? Do we really know what the significance of the vermis
is?”] (Frigessi, 2003: 119).
This sarcastic comment appears to be all the more definitive in
that it came from that same Germanic medical school which had, in
the wake of Helmholtz and Du Bois Raymond, theorized and practiced
the application of the positivist method to anatomo-physiology, and
in which Lombroso had trained during his years of study in Vienna.
The French attacks became ever more vehement, until Lombroso
finally exploded and replied angrily to his detractors. As Frigessi
puts it: “non avrebbe potuto, la scuola antropologica francese, legata
com'era a un ideale e a una pratica di scienza sperimentalmente
rigorosa che voleva tuttavia essere anche scienza generale, accettare
i procedimenti di Lombroso, le sue traballanti statistiche e i fulminei
accostamenti, un primitivismo che non riposava su basi scientifiche”
[“The French anthropological school, linked as it was to an ideal and
to a rigorously experimental practice of science which, nevertheless,
also wished to be general science, could not accept Lombroso's proce-
dures, his shaky statistics and lightning connections, a primitivism
bereft of scientific foundations”] (Frigessi, 2003: 219). Further criti-
cisms concern Lombroso's imprecise, and sometimes erroneous, quo-
tation of literature articles, as well as his craving for publication and
his squabbles over the attribution of some discoveries (e.g., his dis-
pute regarding the instrument for electrical algometry with the
German von Leyden and his friend Cesare Mantegazza, with whom
the alliance of the early years would break down) (Giacanelli,
1995). As Giacanelli (1995: 31–2) reports: “Non è l'unico infortunio
di questo genere per Lombroso: l'attivismo incalzante, la produzione
torrentizia per la quale utilizza materiali estremamente abbondanti
e di fonte eterogenea, la fretta di giungere a conclusione, le citazioni
spesso approssimative lo condurranno anche ad accuse di plagio,
spesso con conseguenze giudiziarie” [“It was not Lombroso's only
blow of this kind; pressing activism, torrential production for which
he utilized extremely abundant material from heterogeneous sources,
his hasty conclusions and his often imprecise quotations would lead
to accusations of plagiarism, often with legal consequences”].
Comparison with Darwin, whom Lombroso called his inspirer,
should have taught him something. But Lombroso confused atavism
with degeneration, developmental arrest with primitivism. In addi-
tion, traces of Lamarckian finalism peep through his evolutionist
stance, as in the entertaining account of his study of lipomatous tu-
mors on the backs of porters (Lombroso & Cougnet, 1879), caused
by the continuous pressure of load-bearing; he compared these to
the pads of adipose tissue seen in Hottentot women, who carry
their babies on their buttocks, and to the humps of camels, dromedar-
ies and zebus, the most markedly humped specimens of which would
have been of greatest use to man and therefore deliberately selected
and encouraged to mate (does this not suggest the inheritance of ac-
quired features?). On the basis of these assertions, one might expect
Lombroso to claim that, to paraphrase well-known popular ditties,
the children of porters are born with a hump. And indeed, as a result
of this way of constructing empirical “data” (weakness in the induc-
tion phase, as has been said), the prejudices and naivety of the age
crept into Lombroso's work, facilitated not least by the literary, anec-
dotal, pompous moralistic style, which was built on antinomy and
hyperbole, and which reveals precise ideological values (Verde &
Pastorelli, 1998).
A clear example of all of this is seen in the treatise on female delin-
quency written by Lombroso and his son-in-law Ferrero (Lombroso &
Ferrero, 1893; Engl. transl. 2004), which is an adaptation of the theo-
ry of the delinquent man. The woman who displays atavistic features
similar to those of the born criminal is the prostitute, not the female
criminal. However, the text does not miss the opportunity to describe
the normal woman, too, who is depicted as inferior and a slave to
man, less intelligent, crueler, in sum less evolved than the male;
vain, vindictive and selfish, sometimes she is depicted as a child,
sometimes as a savage, in general as more atavistic and less differen-
tiated. Her ineptitude is used to explain her inclination to piety and
maternal love: she is described by the authors as an “innocuous
semi-criminal”. The “natural” criminality of women being prostitu-
tion, the female born criminal is then defined as “doubly exceptional”,
“more terrible than any male counterpart” because “criminals are ex-
ceptions among civilized people and women are exceptions among
criminals, women's natural form of regression being prostitution,
not crime. Primitive woman was a prostitute rather than a criminal.
As a double exception, then, the criminal woman is a true monster.
Honest women are kept in line by factors such as maternity, piety
and weakness; when a woman commits a crime despite these re-
straints, this is a sign that her power of evil is immense” (Lombroso
& Ferrero, 2004: 184–5).
Clearly, in this complicated and sometimes obsessive game of def-
initions, the meticulousness that is proper to scientific investigation
(indeed, every researcher must have some degree of obsessiveness)
gets lost; it seems that the obsessive need to classify and understand
leads only to a series of explanations that are abductive, or at most
deductive, and that verification is totally lacking. This meticulousness
goes nowhere; thinking sometimes becomes muddled and the tone
gradually becomes literary, so much so that this text has been com-
pared to the serialized novels that were in vogue at the time (Verde
& Pastorelli, 1998). It is as if Lombroso had suddenly lost the ability
to stand aside and not to get emotionally involved; as if his passionate
nature had driven him to abandon reasoning and to embrace the ide-
ology and commonplaces of the day, a process which yielded banal
slogans rather than empirical results. All of this was heavily influ-
enced by the publicist vocation of Lombroso, who systematically con-
tributed hundreds of pages and articles to the periodicals and
newspapers of the day. To paraphrase the famous judgment passed
on the James brothers (William, the psychologist, has been called a
psychologist who wrote essays that read like novels; Henry has
been called a writer who wrote novels that read like psychology es-
says) and to apply it to the multifaceted Lombroso, we could say
that Lombroso wrote newspaper articles that read like essays for sci-
entific journals, and scientific papers that read like newspaper arti-
cles. Moreover, Lombroso frequently decanted material from one
context to the other, so much so that his main work is a veritable
patchwork of diverse materials. All of this produces further inconsis-
tency and confusion, particularly when it comes to (deductively) de-
riving proposals for criminal policy from the theories and from the
data. Thus, Lombroso, the theorist of the substantially pathological
nature of the born criminal, the promoter of the positive school and
of the principles of non-responsibility and therapy, claimed that
born criminals were not amenable to any form of treatment (and so
it does makesense after all to lock them up indefinitely, as proposed
by his pupil Enrico Ferri). Moreover, for those who repeatedly com-
mitted murder or Mafia crimes, he suggested the death penalty. In
the 5th edition of his main work, Lombroso argues that: “born crimi-
nals, programmed to do harm, are atavistic reproductions not only of
savage men but also of the most ferocious carnivores and rodents.
This discovery should not make us more compassionate toward
born criminals (as some claim), but rather should shield us from
pity, for these beings are members not of our species but the species
of bloodthirsty beasts” (Lombroso, 2006: 348).
By contrast, Lombroso's opinion as to what treatment should be
meted out to political terrorists is completely different, and contradic-
tory. In this regard, it should be pointed out that the comment made
by Ingenieros, which was quoted earlier, was inspired by the very
claims made by Lombroso himself at the International Congress of
Anthropology in Geneva in August 1886. On that occasion, the crimi-
nal anthropologist suggested exiling political criminals on top of a
high mountain, as they do in Ethiopia. Then again, two years earlier
Lombroso had published his work Gli anarchici [Anarchists], in
which he again displayed serious methodological weaknesses similar
22 U. Gatti, A. Verde / International Journal of Law and Psychiatry 35 (2012) 19–26
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/44327225_La_donna_delinquente_La_prostituta_e_la_donna_normale_Cesare_Lombroso?el=1_x_8&enrichId=rgreq-8e368d4856a3396f093f6245832b9a62-XXX&enrichSource=Y292ZXJQYWdlOzUxODY0NjgwO0FTOjE4MjkzOTY4NjAyMzE2OEAxNDIwNjI3NjI4NTQy
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/44327225_La_donna_delinquente_La_prostituta_e_la_donna_normale_Cesare_Lombroso?el=1_x_8&enrichId=rgreq-8e368d4856a3396f093f6245832b9a62-XXX&enrichSource=Y292ZXJQYWdlOzUxODY0NjgwO0FTOjE4MjkzOTY4NjAyMzE2OEAxNDIwNjI3NjI4NTQy
Author's personal copy
to those we have already mentioned (Lombroso, 1894b). Indeed, the
Italian sociologist Franco Ferrarotti, in his preface to the current edi-
tion, refers to Lombroso's rash deductive reasoning, which differs
very little from the commonplaces of the day (Ferrarotti, 1972). Anar-
chists are seen by Lombroso as responsible political criminals. We
would therefore expect them to fall into the punishable category.
But they do not. Their anthropological physiognomy is by no means
“tainted”; on the contrary, it is, in a sense, endowed with the most
noble “normality”. Moreover, they are often imbued with extraordi-
nary idealism and great altruism. Consequently, Lombroso holds
that they should be spared not only capital punishment, but also
harsh and ignominious punishments. Thus, for them the solution
seems to be the “high mountain”, while recidivist born criminals, as
we have seen, must go to the gallows.
At this point, one may wish to know the reason behind all of this.
In order to discover that, however, we would need to examine
Lombroso the man, in an attempt to compile his pathography. Such
an examination has been carried out by other scholars (Francia,
1984; Verde & Pastorelli, 1998), who have uncovered in his personal
history the reasons for his superficiality, and have linked these to his
narcissistic desire for honor and fame, and to a certain conceptual in-
flexibility in defending what we now regard not so much as findings
as simple intuitions, not all of which were sufficiently proved. Nor can
it be claimed that his limited methodological approach was merely a
byproduct of his era, which we now tend to criticize in the light of all
the subsequent acquisitions. Indeed, Darwin, that great scientist who
preceded him and from whom he drew inspiration, manifested a very
different critical (and self-critical) approach, as is revealed by several
extracts from his autobiography, in which he states, for example: “I
had previously read Zoonomia of my grandfather … at this time I ad-
mired greatly the Zoönomia; but on reading it a second time after an
interval of ten or fifteen years, I was much disappointed; the propor-
tion of speculation being so large to the facts given” (Darwin, 1876a:
38). In contrast with Lombroso's narcissistic grandiosity, the modesty
and critical awareness of the founder of evolutionism clearly emerge,
as is shown by the following statement: “I have as much difficulty as
ever in expressing myself clearly and concisely; and this difficulty has
caused me a very great loss of time; but it has had the compensating
advantage of forcing me to think long and intently about every sen-
tence, and thus I have been often led to see errors in reasoning and
in my own observations or those of others” (Darwin, 1876a: 99).
And again: “…I think it would be prudent to quote me with great cau-
tion, until my whole account is published, & then you (& others) can
judge how far there is foundation for such generalization – mind I do
not doubt its truth – but the extension of any view over such large
spaces from comparatively few facts must be received with much
caution …” (letter to C. Lyell, September 13, 1838) (Darwin, 1876b:
296–7). This passage reveals both the strength of the scientist's con-
victions and his caution; before claiming that a theory holds, he
seeks the certainty of empirical evidence. Darwin wrote these last
statements when he was 29 years old, and he was to wait another
21 years before publishing his theory of the origin of species. Unlike
Darwin, Lombroso, a man of brilliant intuitions, was too attached to
the world and too wrapped up in himself to be able to subject himself
and his own initial abductions to critical analysis. The risk here, how-
ever, is that of throwing out the baby with the bathwater. The criti-
cisms are well-founded and they regard the methodology, the
scientific basis, rather than the intuitions; but by casting doubt on
the former we inevitably lose the latter. In this way, we fail to grasp
an important aspect: the validity of some of Lombroso's hypotheses.
Indeed, if we study his works attentively and try to reach the core
of his ideas, we come across a whole series of intuitions that underlie
current empirical research in biological criminology. As we shall see,
some very recent findings that have been published in international
journals, and which respect the most rigorous current scientific pa-
rameters, exactly reproduce some of Lombroso's results. Moreover,
the theorization based on these findings does not differ greatly from
that of Lombroso. Nevertheless, he never gets quoted.
3. Lombroso's brilliant intuitions
As we have argued, some of the recent developments in the crim-
inological and psychiatric fields were anticipated by Lombroso's intu-
itions. The availability of new neuroimaging technologies has
prompted several researchers to seek connections between alter-
ations in the form or functioning of the brain and antisocial behavior.
For example, PET (positron emission tomography) enabled Raine,
Buchsbaum, and Lacasse (1997) to identify a set of cortical and sub-
cortical processes that appeared to predispose murderers to homicid-
al behavior. Moreover, a recent review of 48 articles on neuroimaging
and violent behavior (Wahlund & Kristiansson, 2009) found a fairly
strong consensus on the connection between dysfunctional parts of
the frontal and temporal lobes of the brain and violent antisocial
behavior.
In addition to neuroimaging techniques, advances in the field of
genetics have given great impetus to biological criminology. In the
past, the influence of heredity was studied indirectly through investi-
gations conducted on twins and through the examination of cases of
adoption. More recently, however, molecular biology has enabled re-
searchers to investigate the relationships between genes and antiso-
cial behavior directly. Thus, genetic polymorphisms linked to violent
behavior have been identified, i.e. variants of thegenes underlying
the altered metabolism of various neurotransmitters (serotonin, do-
pamine, MAOA, etc.), which in turn influence behavior (Ferguson &
Beaver, 2009).
A further step was constituted by the discovery by Caspi et al.
(2002) that a particular polymorphism of the gene encoding the
neurotransmitter-metabolizing enzyme MAOA is linked to antisocial
behavior only in minors who have been maltreated. The new frontier
in genetics is epigenetics, that is to say, the study of the processes that
affect gene expression at the phenotype level, and not the transmis-
sion of the genotype (Szyf, Weaver, Provencal, McGowan, Tremblay,
& Meaney, 2010).
Even the most caricature-like aspects of Lombroso's theories,
those concerning minor physical anomalies (e.g. low-set ears, facial
asymmetry and other various anomalies of the mouth and palate),
which Lombroso regarded as the stigmata of biologically determined
criminality, have been the subject of recent studies (Crowner, Jaeger,
Convit, Brizer, & Volavka, 1987). These anomalies have been regarded
as the expression of an imperfect neural development occurring to-
ward the end of the third month of pregnancy, and therefore as a
marker of anomalous brain development (Arseneault, Tremblay,
Boulerice, Seguin, & Saucier; 2000 Raine, 2002). Although these stud-
ies have been heavily criticized, their publication in the most presti-
gious scientific journals reveals that hypotheses reminiscent of
those of Lombroso once again occupy an important position in the
current debate on the causes of criminal behavior.
Moreover, the poor susceptibility to conditioning seen in chronic
offenders and the lower electrical conductivity of the epidermis, and
hence the lower reactivity, found by modern researchers in samples
of antisocial subjects (Gao, Raine, Venables, Dawson, & Mednick,
2010; McBurnett & Lahey, 1994) revive Lombroso's theory that
criminals are less reactive and less susceptible to pain than non-
criminals, and consequently that the criminal, like primitive man, is
less sensitive.
Other recent scientific findings that point in the same direction as
Lombroso's intuitions can be seen in the discoveries concerning the
development of physical aggressiveness. Until a few years ago, it
was held, in accordance with social learning theory (Bandura,
1973), that aggressiveness was learned through modeling experi-
ences transmitted by the family and the surrounding environment;
that the presence of models of aggressiveness facilitated the learning,
23U. Gatti, A. Verde / International Journal of Law and Psychiatry 35 (2012) 19–26
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/19509469_Minor_physical_anomalies_in_violent_adult_inpatients?el=1_x_8&enrichId=rgreq-8e368d4856a3396f093f6245832b9a62-XXX&enrichSource=Y292ZXJQYWdlOzUxODY0NjgwO0FTOjE4MjkzOTY4NjAyMzE2OEAxNDIwNjI3NjI4NTQy
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/19509469_Minor_physical_anomalies_in_violent_adult_inpatients?el=1_x_8&enrichId=rgreq-8e368d4856a3396f093f6245832b9a62-XXX&enrichSource=Y292ZXJQYWdlOzUxODY0NjgwO0FTOjE4MjkzOTY4NjAyMzE2OEAxNDIwNjI3NjI4NTQy
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/11224381_Role_of_Genotype_in_the_Cycle_of_Violence_in_Maltreated_Children?el=1_x_8&enrichId=rgreq-8e368d4856a3396f093f6245832b9a62-XXX&enrichSource=Y292ZXJQYWdlOzUxODY0NjgwO0FTOjE4MjkzOTY4NjAyMzE2OEAxNDIwNjI3NjI4NTQy
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/11224381_Role_of_Genotype_in_the_Cycle_of_Violence_in_Maltreated_Children?el=1_x_8&enrichId=rgreq-8e368d4856a3396f093f6245832b9a62-XXX&enrichSource=Y292ZXJQYWdlOzUxODY0NjgwO0FTOjE4MjkzOTY4NjAyMzE2OEAxNDIwNjI3NjI4NTQy
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/12487604_Minor_physical_anomalies_and_family_adversity_as_risk_factors_for_violent_delinquency_in_adolescence?el=1_x_8&enrichId=rgreq-8e368d4856a3396f093f6245832b9a62-XXX&enrichSource=Y292ZXJQYWdlOzUxODY0NjgwO0FTOjE4MjkzOTY4NjAyMzE2OEAxNDIwNjI3NjI4NTQy
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/12487604_Minor_physical_anomalies_and_family_adversity_as_risk_factors_for_violent_delinquency_in_adolescence?el=1_x_8&enrichId=rgreq-8e368d4856a3396f093f6245832b9a62-XXX&enrichSource=Y292ZXJQYWdlOzUxODY0NjgwO0FTOjE4MjkzOTY4NjAyMzE2OEAxNDIwNjI3NjI4NTQy
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/222538175_Natural_Born_Killers_The_Genetic_Origins_of_Extreme_Violence?el=1_x_8&enrichId=rgreq-8e368d4856a3396f093f6245832b9a62-XXX&enrichSource=Y292ZXJQYWdlOzUxODY0NjgwO0FTOjE4MjkzOTY4NjAyMzE2OEAxNDIwNjI3NjI4NTQy
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/222538175_Natural_Born_Killers_The_Genetic_Origins_of_Extreme_Violence?el=1_x_8&enrichId=rgreq-8e368d4856a3396f093f6245832b9a62-XXX&enrichSource=Y292ZXJQYWdlOzUxODY0NjgwO0FTOjE4MjkzOTY4NjAyMzE2OEAxNDIwNjI3NjI4NTQy
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/24396433_Aggression_psychopathy_and_brain_imaging_-_Review_and_future_recommendations?el=1_x_8&enrichId=rgreq-8e368d4856a3396f093f6245832b9a62-XXX&enrichSource=Y292ZXJQYWdlOzUxODY0NjgwO0FTOjE4MjkzOTY4NjAyMzE2OEAxNDIwNjI3NjI4NTQy
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/11269272_Biosocial_Studies_of_Antisocial_and_Violent_Behavior_in_Children_and_Adults_A_Review?el=1_x_8&enrichId=rgreq-8e368d4856a3396f093f6245832b9a62-XXX&enrichSource=Y292ZXJQYWdlOzUxODY0NjgwO0FTOjE4MjkzOTY4NjAyMzE2OEAxNDIwNjI3NjI4NTQy
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/38093443_Association_of_Poor_Childhood_Fear_Conditioning_and_Adult_Crime?el=1_x_8&enrichId=rgreq-8e368d4856a3396f093f6245832b9a62-XXX&enrichSource=Y292ZXJQYWdlOzUxODY0NjgwO0FTOjE4MjkzOTY4NjAyMzE2OEAxNDIwNjI3NjI4NTQy
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/38093443_Association_of_Poor_Childhood_Fear_Conditioning_and_Adult_Crime?el=1_x_8&enrichId=rgreq-8e368d4856a3396f093f6245832b9a62-XXX&enrichSource=Y292ZXJQYWdlOzUxODY0NjgwO0FTOjE4MjkzOTY4NjAyMzE2OEAxNDIwNjI3NjI4NTQy
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/232481593_Aggression_A_Social_Learning_Analysis?el=1_x_8&enrichId=rgreq-8e368d4856a3396f093f6245832b9a62-XXX&enrichSource=Y292ZXJQYWdlOzUxODY0NjgwO0FTOjE4MjkzOTY4NjAyMzE2OEAxNDIwNjI3NjI4NTQy
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/232481593_Aggression_A_Social_Learning_Analysis?el=1_x_8&enrichId=rgreq-8e368d4856a3396f093f6245832b9a62-XXX&enrichSource=Y292ZXJQYWdlOzUxODY0NjgwO0FTOjE4MjkzOTY4NjAyMzE2OEAxNDIwNjI3NjI4NTQy
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/15155452_Psychophysiological_and_neuroendocrine_correlates_of_conduct_disorder_and_antisocial_behavior_in_children_and_adolescents?el=1_x_8&enrichId=rgreq-8e368d4856a3396f093f6245832b9a62-XXX&enrichSource=Y292ZXJQYWdlOzUxODY0NjgwO0FTOjE4MjkzOTY4NjAyMzE2OEAxNDIwNjI3NjI4NTQy
Author's personal copy
enactment and maintenance of violent behaviors that had been
gradually assimilated during psychosocial development. Recent
longitudinal studies, however, have shown that the peak of physical
aggressiveness is reached at a very early age, about two years, and
that aggressiveness subsequently tends to diminish as a result of
the process of socialization. This suggests that violent adolescents,
youths and adults are aggressive children in whom the process of so-
cialization has failed, rather than relatively normal children who have
learned to be physically aggressive (Tremblay, 2008; Tremblay et al.,
1999). Indeed, recent investigations have focused on the patterns of
physical aggressiveness manifested by thousands of subjects followed
up from childhood to adulthood, as observed and directly measured
(not reconstructed a posteriori) by parents, teachers, peers, and the
individuals themselves through self-reporting techniques. These
studies have demonstrated that there are no aggressive adolescents
who were not aggressive children first, while many aggressive
children subsequently learn to control their aggressiveness (Brame,
Nagin, & Tremblay, 2001).
Recent research has also considered the hypothesis which Lom-
broso worked out in the later stages of his career, when he main-
tained that the concept of atavism was inadequate and concluded
that it was necessary to introduce the concept ofdegeneration. First
developed by the French psychiatrist Morel (1857), this hypothesis
held that certain environmental factors, such as malnutrition, alcohol
abuse and venereal disease, could compromise fetal development and
predispose the individual to delinquency. Modern longitudinal stud-
ies have stressed both the importance of the quality of a woman's
pregnancy and the fact that the children of mothers who engage in
substance abuse during pregnancy are more likely to display antiso-
cial behavior. Specifically, it has been suggested that fetal exposure
to alcohol and nicotine can impair the development of the brain,
thereby increasing the likelihood of cognitive difficulties, problems
of adaptation, and impulsiveness and aggressiveness in the child,
leading to serious repercussions in adolescence and adulthood
(Jacobson & Jacobson, 2001; Steinhausen & Spohr, 1998; Wakschlag,
Pickett, Cook, Benowitz, & Leventhal, 2002).
All of these examples concern physical aggressiveness rather than
delinquency in general, a juridical construction that may be mani-
fested in many different forms. However, Lombroso was also fully
aware of the distinctions among various types of crime. Indeed, as
Martucci (2002) points out in an interesting essay on the Lombrosian
school's view of the serious political–financial scandals that were un-
covered at the end of the 19th century, Lombroso had already claimed
in the fourth edition of L'Uomo Delinquente (Lombroso, 1889) that
most non-violent crimes were committed by normal individuals
who were often respectable members of society.
Lombroso's core theory is well known to all scholars and has for
years been regarded as mistaken and useless. However, his creative
imagination can also be discerned in other parts of his work, which
have sunk into oblivion. This is the case of the conceptions of crime,
which he elaborated in the wake of the great banking scandals that
shook Italy at the end of the 19th century. Under the influence of
his pupils, particularly Ferri, Lombroso adopted a decidedly progres-
sive stance, acknowledging and underlining the role of social and eco-
nomic factors and denouncing the crimes of the powerful (Martucci,
2002). In his essay “La funzione sociale del delitto” [“The Social Func-
tion of Crime”], Lombroso introduced assessments and concepts that
were similar to those utilized by modern criminologists, who have
formalized the category of white-collar crime (Lombroso, 1896b). In
this essay, Lombroso proposed a broader analysis of the influence of
social factors than in L'uomo delinquente, and worked out an interpre-
tation of society and crime that extended to public life and the polit-
ical sphere, in which new branches of fraud, political intrigue or
embezzlement grow ever more vigorously as civilization advances.
Lombroso opposed the prevailing stereotypes and challenged current
opinions by proposing a vision of crime that referred directly to the
unlawful conduct of high financiers, politicians and government
representatives, an attitude which today might be ascribed to a criti-
cal criminologist. Referring to an infamous Italian brigand of the
past, Lombroso wrote some years later: “nato ai nostri tempi, forse
Gasparone non sarebbe riuscito un masnadiere, forse sarebbe stato
uno di quei faccendieri politici, che, egualmente dannosi alla giustizia
e alla patria, pure non hanno a che fare col Codice penale. Tutt'altro!”
[“had he been born today, Gasparone might not have become an
outlaw; he might have become one of those political schemers
who inflict damage on both the justice system and their country,
though they have no dealings with the penal code. Far from it!”]
(Lombroso, 1902: 73).
Likewise, assertions that seem to evoke the modern concept of
“differential immunity” (Chapman, 1968) frequently emerge from
Lombroso's work. For instance, he claims that "in carcere non giun-
gono con eguale facilità tutti coloro che offendono le leggi sociali,
perché a favore del ricco stanno l'influenza delle sue ricchezze, le
aderenze di famiglia, le relazioni sociali e l'elevata cultura mentale,
le quali spesso riescono a salvarlo dalla prigione" [“imprisonment is
not inflicted equally… indeed the rich are favored by the influence
of their wealth, their family background, their social connections,
which are often able to save them from prison”, and that "la giustizia
è adoperata dal ricco come stromento di potere e di dominazione con-
tro il povero" “the justice system is used by the rich as an instrument
of power and domination against the poor”] (Lombroso, 1897: 170).
Moreover, in his essay “Il ciclismo nel delitto” [“Cycling and
Crime”] (Lombroso, 1900), Lombroso seems to have anticipated situ-
ational criminology when he prophesied that the bicycle, owing to its
great popularity, relatively high value and easy transportability,
would readily become both a tool and a target of crime, as people
are tempted by easy opportunities.
Even his use of statistical methods sometimes appears sound from
the point of view of a modern criminological approach, such as when,
for example, he compared crime figures with the annual trend in
bread prices and found a correlation between the two (Bulferetti,
1973: 485), or when he produced a graph showing a correlation (neg-
ative) between the price of wine and the number of murders
(Lombroso, 1896a: iii, 111). Lombroso was also aware of the inaccura-
cy and partiality of crime statistics, which he rightly saw as being con-
ditioned by data-collection methods, and by the dark number of
crime: in his words, "il delitto è estesissimo e l'onestà pura è una sin-
golare eccezione; fate la somma di tutti i bottegai che frodano sul pre-
zzo, sul peso; dei professionisti che simulano o dissimulano col cliente
(truffa) per proprio vantaggio; dei professori che mentono sciente-
mente; degli impiegati che chiudono un occhio per favoritismo;
degli uomini di Governo che abusano del potere e della giustizia:
abbiamo una somma di reati tale, che è superiore a quella dei rei uffi-
ciali" [“crime is extremely widespread and pure honesty is a signal
exception; add up the shopkeepers who cheat on prices or weights;
professional people who deceive (defraud) their clients to their own
advantage; teachers who lie knowingly; clerks who close one eye
out of favoritism; men of government who abuse their power and
the justice system: the sum total of crimes is far greater than that of
the official crime statistics”] (Lombroso, 1889: 390).
But Lombroso's commitment, as clearly revealed by Frigessi
(2003), was also directly political. From this point of view, he can
be regarded as a reformer, in spite of all his contradictions. Through
science, he strove to modernize Italy, which at that time was some-
what backward, by acting as a conduit for the most important scien-
tific currents in Europe and by adopting a rational approach to the
problems of poverty, mental illness, and diseases caused by depriva-
tion and poverty, particularly in the southern regions of Italy. This
he did by joining the Socialist Party, by introducing sociological con-
siderations into his biology-based analysis and by embracing the sug-
gestions made by his own disciples. He even anticipated, albeit
briefly, the principles of restorative justice, advocating the measures
24 U. Gatti, A. Verde / International Journal of Law and Psychiatry 35 (2012) 19–26
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/229690351_The_search_for_the_age_of_'onset'_of_physical_aggression_Rousseau_and_Bandura_revisited?el=1_x_8&enrichId=rgreq-8e368d4856a3396f093f6245832b9a62-XXX&enrichSource=Y292ZXJQYWdlOzUxODY0NjgwO0FTOjE4MjkzOTY4NjAyMzE2OEAxNDIwNjI3NjI4NTQy
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https://www.researchgate.net/publication/44504048_L'uomo_delinquente_in_rapporto_all'antropologia_alla_giusrisprudenza_ed_alle_discipline_carcerarie_Cesare_Lombroso?el=1_x_8&enrichId=rgreq-8e368d4856a3396f093f6245832b9a62-XXX&enrichSource=Y292ZXJQYWdlOzUxODY0NjgwO0FTOjE4MjkzOTY4NjAyMzE2OEAxNDIwNjI3NjI4NTQy
Author's personal copy
aimed at compensating the victims of criminals at the expense of
these latter, and complaining that the society that has suffered their
crimes must suffer again by paying for their detention, in obedience
to a theoretical principle according to which imprisonment should
be a sort of washing away of all guilt (Lombroso, 1910). Lombroso
therefore opposed the abstractly retributive conception of penal
law, which he saw as underpinning punishments that were of no
use to either society or the criminal. Aware of the uselessness of pris-
on as a means of therapy, he proposed new solutions, which have
only recently been introduced in many countries.
Finally, it should be borne in mind that important additions to
Lombroso's primitive theory were made by his pupils in the last few
years of the 19th century in response to the numerous criticisms
leveled at their master, who was judged (erroneously, as we have
seen) to be interested only in studying and exalting biological factors.
To conclude, Lombroso can be regarded, notwithstanding his
weaknesses, as an outstanding thinker in the sphere of positivism in
the second half of the 19th century. Indeed, it is no accident that,
worldwide, he was the best-known Italian scholar of his day. He
had several eminent followers, such as Enrico Ferri, who further de-
veloped the sociological approach, Raffaele Garofalo, who first coined
the term “criminology” and applied the theories of criminal anthro-
pology to the juridical perspective, and Raffaele Ottolenghi, the crea-
tor of forensic science (Gibson, 2002). Lombroso also recruited the
young Camillo Golgi, whose degree thesis on the causes of mental
illness he supervised, and who would go on to win a Nobel Prize for
his studies on neurons.
However, Lombroso's greatest merit was probably the fact that he
contributed significantly to shifting the discussion of crime from the
philosophical and religious sphere to the scientific field (Hollin,
1989). As we have seen, there were a great many gaps in his investi-
gative method, and for this reason Lombroso cannot be numbered
among the great scientists. Nevertheless, some of his abductions
have been re-proposed not only by scholars working in the biological
and neuroscientific fields, but also by modern sociologists and criti-
cally oriented scholars. In sum, we must agree with Thorsten Sellin
when, in his apology of Lombroso in the American Journal of Sociology
in 1937, he wrote: “Any scholar who succeeds in driving hundreds of
fellow students to search for the truth, and whose ideas after half a
century possess vitality, merits an honorable place in the history of
thought” (Sellin, 1937: 898–899). After more than a century, Lombro-
so's abductions are still vital.
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