Are criminals born criminals or are they bred into criminal ways and that they resemble the earliest kind of mankind characteristics. Can you really identify a person as a criminal by their physical characteristics. This paper demonstrates the findings of Cesare Lombroso through his life work. With this in mind, the concept of criminal atavism, atavism and the five types of criminals will be explored, along with some insight on the history of Cesare Lombroso. The evidence shows that Lombroso made an excellent discovery opening the door to criminology.
Criminology is an area of sociology that focuses on the study of crimes and their causes, effects, and social impact. “The responsibilities of a criminologist’s job involves analyzing data to …show more content…
He was born into a wealthy family, his father was Aronne Lombroso a tradesman and his mother was Zefori. Coming from a long line of Jewish descent Cesare studied literature,linguistics, and archaeology at the Universities of Padua, Vienna, and Paris. While in the midst of his studies, he changed his career path towards medicine, earning his degree from the University of Turin and became a neuro-psychiatrist. During the Second War for Italian Independence better known as the Austro-Italian war of 1859 Lombroso served as an army physician. Lombroso was appointed as the professor of diseases of the human mind at Pavia in 1862. A few years later Lombroso had the chance to oversee the insane asylum at Pesaro in which he accepted the offer. He then eventually acquired the position of professor of medical law and psychiatry at Turin where he conducted anthropometric studies on cadavers in detail to focus on the shape of the skull as an indicator of abnormality. A few years later Lombroso married the love of his life Nina De Benedetti on April 10, 1870; then had five children. On October 19, 1909 in Turin, Italy at the age of seventy-three Cesare Lombroso died. During his Life, Lombroso tried to recognize a relationship between criminal psychopathology, the physical and or constitutional defects. His main argument was the existence of a hereditary, atavistic, criminal classes to affect biological …show more content…
Atavism is the reappearance of an ancestral characteristic in an organism after several generations of absence. Lombroso indicates that criminals are distinguished from non-offenders by various anomalies physically. The term atavism was used by Lombroso to define a person who is not fully evolved. Lombroso considered people who had an abnormality in the skull, brain, muscles, organs, and other parts of the skeleton as “throwbacks” the earlier forms of humans and primates. Anomalies, named as ‘stigmata’ by Lombroso, could be expressed in terms of abnormal forms or dimensions of the “skull and jaw, asymmetries in the face, etc, but also of other parts of the body” (Sabbatini). Lombroso also throughout his medical career made a list of specific characteristics: “slope of forehead, ears an unusual size, excessive reach with the arms, strongly developed cheeks and jaw, left handedness, a decreased weight of the brain, and also physiological defects for example a third nipple” (Origins). He also identified that they must have at least five abnormalities to be considered a criminal. These associations were later shown to be highly inconsistent or plainly inexistent, and theories based on the environmental causation of criminality became dominant. Lombroso’s theories were very powerful in Europe for a short amount of time, the intensity he had about the hereditary causes of crime were heavily abandoned and was more in favor of the factors
Criminology is an area of sociology that focuses on the study of crimes and their causes, effects, and social impact. “The responsibilities of a criminologist’s job involves analyzing data to …show more content…
He was born into a wealthy family, his father was Aronne Lombroso a tradesman and his mother was Zefori. Coming from a long line of Jewish descent Cesare studied literature,linguistics, and archaeology at the Universities of Padua, Vienna, and Paris. While in the midst of his studies, he changed his career path towards medicine, earning his degree from the University of Turin and became a neuro-psychiatrist. During the Second War for Italian Independence better known as the Austro-Italian war of 1859 Lombroso served as an army physician. Lombroso was appointed as the professor of diseases of the human mind at Pavia in 1862. A few years later Lombroso had the chance to oversee the insane asylum at Pesaro in which he accepted the offer. He then eventually acquired the position of professor of medical law and psychiatry at Turin where he conducted anthropometric studies on cadavers in detail to focus on the shape of the skull as an indicator of abnormality. A few years later Lombroso married the love of his life Nina De Benedetti on April 10, 1870; then had five children. On October 19, 1909 in Turin, Italy at the age of seventy-three Cesare Lombroso died. During his Life, Lombroso tried to recognize a relationship between criminal psychopathology, the physical and or constitutional defects. His main argument was the existence of a hereditary, atavistic, criminal classes to affect biological …show more content…
Atavism is the reappearance of an ancestral characteristic in an organism after several generations of absence. Lombroso indicates that criminals are distinguished from non-offenders by various anomalies physically. The term atavism was used by Lombroso to define a person who is not fully evolved. Lombroso considered people who had an abnormality in the skull, brain, muscles, organs, and other parts of the skeleton as “throwbacks” the earlier forms of humans and primates. Anomalies, named as ‘stigmata’ by Lombroso, could be expressed in terms of abnormal forms or dimensions of the “skull and jaw, asymmetries in the face, etc, but also of other parts of the body” (Sabbatini). Lombroso also throughout his medical career made a list of specific characteristics: “slope of forehead, ears an unusual size, excessive reach with the arms, strongly developed cheeks and jaw, left handedness, a decreased weight of the brain, and also physiological defects for example a third nipple” (Origins). He also identified that they must have at least five abnormalities to be considered a criminal. These associations were later shown to be highly inconsistent or plainly inexistent, and theories based on the environmental causation of criminality became dominant. Lombroso’s theories were very powerful in Europe for a short amount of time, the intensity he had about the hereditary causes of crime were heavily abandoned and was more in favor of the factors