Italian school of criminology

The Italian school of criminology was founded at the end of the 19th century by Cesare Lombroso (1835–1909) and two of his Italian disciples, Enrico Ferri (1856–1929) and Raffaele Garofalo (1851–1934).

The central idea of Lombroso's work came to him as he autopsied the body of a notorious Italian criminal named Giuseppe Villela. As he contemplated Villela's skull, he noted that certain characteristics of it (specifically, a depression on the occiput that he named the median occipital fossa) reminded him of the skulls of "inferior races" and "the lower types of apes, rodents, and birds". The term Lombroso used to describe the appearance of organisms resembling ancestral (prehuman) forms of life is atavism. Born criminals were thus viewed by Lombroso in his earliest writings as a form of human sub-species (in his later writings he came to view them less as evolutionary throwbacks and more in terms of arrested development and degeneracy). Lombroso believed that atavism could be identified by a number of measurable physical stigmata, which included protruding jaw, drooping eyes, large ears, twisted and flattish nose, long arms relative to the lower limbs, sloping shoulders, and a coccyx that resembled "the stump of a tail." The concept of atavism was glaringly wrong, but like so many others of his time, Lombroso sought to understand behavioral phenomena with reference to the principles of evolution as they were understood at the time. If humankind was just at one end of the continuum of animal life, it made sense to many people that criminals — who acted "beastly" and who lacked reasoned conscience — were biologically inferior beings. Thus understood, atavism became a popular concept, used for instance by the novelist Émile Zola in the Rougon-Macquart.

In addition to the "atavistic born criminal", Lombroso identified two other types: the "insane criminal", and the "criminaloid". Although insane criminals bore some stigmata, they were not "born criminals"; rather they become criminal as a result "of an alteration of the brain, which completely upsets their moral nature." Among the ranks of "insane criminals" were alcoholics, kleptomaniacs, nymphomaniacs, and child molesters. "Criminaloids" had none of the physical peculiarities of the "born" or "insane criminal", became involved in crime later in life, and tended to commit less serious crimes. "Criminaloids" were further categorized as "habitual criminals", who become so by contact with other criminals, the abuse of alcohol, or other "distressing circumstances." This category included "juridical criminals", who fall afoul of the law by accident; and the "criminal by passion", hot-headed and impulsive persons who commit violent acts when provoked.

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