Cesare Lombroso Crimes

Cesare Lombroso (1836-1909)
The first attempt to understand the personality of offenders in physical terms was made by Lombroso of the
Italian School of criminological thought, who is regarded as the originator of modern criminology. He was
a doctor and a specialist in psychiatry. He worked in military for sometime handling the mentally afflicted
soldiers but later he was associated with the University of Turin. His first published work was L‘Umo
Delequente which meant ―the Criminal Man‖ (1876). He was the first to employ scientific methods in
explaining criminal behavior and shifted the emphasis from crime to criminal.
Lombroso adopted an objective and empirical approach to the study of criminals through his
anthropological experiments. After an intensive study of physical characteristics of his patients and later on
of criminals, he came to a definite conclusion that criminals were physically inferior in the standard of
growth and therefore, developed a tendency for inferior acts. He further generalized that criminals are less
sensitive to pain and therefore they have little regard for the sufferings of others. Thus through his
biological and anthropological researches on criminals Lombroso justified the involvement of Darwin‘s
theory of biological determinism in criminal behavior. He classified criminals into three main categories:
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1. The Atavists or Hereditary Criminals Lombroso also termed them as born-criminals. In his opinion born-
criminals were of a distinct type who could not refrain from indulging in criminality and environment had
no relevance whatsoever to the crimes committed by the Atavists. He, therefore, considered these criminals
as incorrigibles, i.e., beyond reformation. In his view, the criminal reflected a reversion to an early and
more primitive being that was both mentally and physically inferior. He resembled those of apes and had
ape-like characteristics. Lombroso‘s theory used physical characteristics as indicators of criminality. He
enumerated as many as sixteen physical abnormalities of a criminal some of which were peculiar size and
shape of head, eye, enlarged jaw and cheek bones, fleshy lips, abnormal teeth, long or flat chin, retreating
forehead, dark skin, twisted nose and so on. Though he moderated his theory of physical anomaly in later
years but his emphasis throughout his work was on human physical traits which also included biology,
psychology and environment. He revised his theory of atavism in 1906 and held that only one-third of
criminals were born criminals and not all the criminals. Finally, he conceded that his theory of atavism was
ill-founded and held that they were in fact occasional criminals.
Enrico Ferri subsequently challenged Lombroso‘s theory of atavism and demonstrated that it was
erroneous to think that criminals were incorrigibles. He believed that just as non-criminals could commit
crimes if placed in conducive circumstances so also the criminals could refrain from criminality in healthy
surroundings.
2. Insane Criminals: The second category of criminals according to Lombroso consisted of insane
criminals who resorted to criminality on account of certain mental depravity or disorder.
3. Criminoids: The third category of criminals, according to him, was those of criminoids who were
physical criminal type and had a tendency to commit crime in order to overcome their inferiority in order
to meet the needs of survival.
Lombroso was the first criminologist who made an attempt to understand the personality of offenders in
physical terms. He employed scientific methods in explaining criminal 31
behavior and shifted the emphasis from crime to criminal. His theory was that criminals were physically
different from normal persons and possessed few physical characteristics of inferior animal world. The
contribution of Lombroso to the development of the science of criminology may briefly be summed up in
the following points:
1. Lombroso laid consistent emphasis over the individual personality of the criminal in the incidence of
crime. This view gained favour in subsequent years and modern criminological measures are devised to
attain the aim of individualization in the treatment of criminals. It has been rightly commented that the
sociologists‘ emphasis on the external factors, psychologists on the internal factors, while Lombroso held
that both had a common denominator__ the ―individual‖.
2. While analyzing causes of crime, Lombroso laid greater emphasis on the biological nature of human
behavior and thus indirectly drew attention of criminologists to the impact of environment on crime
causation.
3. At a later stage Lombroso himself was convinced about the futility of his theory of atavism and therefore
extended his theory of determinism to social as well as economic situations of criminals. Thus he was
positive in method and objective in approach which subsequently paved way to formulation of multiple-
causation theory of crime by the propounders of sociological school of criminology.

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Cesare Lombroso (1836-1909)

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