Cesare Lombroso is known today as the father of modern criminology. He is most known for his founding of the positive school and his theories associating physical appearances and how that could associate with crime. Lombroso compared his personal criminological theories of Darwin 's Evolutionary Theory, stating that people are born with a savage instinct and a motive to commit crimes because of this primal genetics. One must keep in mind that Lombroso was living in 1835 and came up with his theories till 1909. Times have obviously changed, modern medicine was a thing of imagination back then, so one must take his theories lightly, and he was the first person to try to link crime with something such a biology, which gave him the label of
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He grew up here and ended up studying at the Universities of Verona, Padua, and Paris. He was practicing his studies from the year 1862 to 1876 in which he got his degree in medicine and surgery. In the year 1871, Lombroso had the privilege to be the director of an asylum in Pesaro. This is the place of dreams for a Psychologist! This is where he began studying psychology, on those admitted to the asylum. A large portion of these people were soldiers, admitted with issues of PTSD and psychological issues (Mason). But this is not what got Lombroso Interested in criminal activity, it all happened when Lombroso met Giuseppe Viella, a notorious criminal of his time for arson and theft. Lombroso was examining Viella, in which he noticed that Viella had a “median occipital depression,” which is a small dip in the back of the cranium that should have a projection rather than a depression. Lombroso was astonished about this in which he logged, “[...] like a large plain beneath an infinite horizon, the problem of the nature of the delinquent was illuminated which reproduced in our time the characteristics of primitive man right down to the carnivores.” You can see in this quote, Lombroso was beginning to compare criminals with primitive beings who cannot control themselves. He compares Viella to a primitive man, or even a carnivore (caveman). This is when Lombroso to …show more content…
They practically stereotype criminals when in reality, mostly what influences a criminal to commit a crime is much deeper than just the physical aspects. People commit crimes for hundreds of reasons whether it be that they have no money and need to feed their family, the commit a crime out of passion or revenge, or they even commit a crime because they were raised in a neighborhood that crime was accepted as normal. This list can go on and on for pages as to why people commit crimes. So logically, especially with the theories and understanding of criminology that we have today. We know today most of the reasons that a person might commit a crime, we aren’t as narrow-minded as they were in the times that Lombroso studied criminology. This is why you must take what Lombroso says with a grain of salt because he did live more than 100 years ago. We can not criticize Lombroso for his theories because he was the first person to really study criminals in which he established the physical school of Criminology. He was the first to criticize the original thoughts of why people commit crimes in the Classical School of thought, which thought that people were rational beings and just decided to commit
He grew up here and ended up studying at the Universities of Verona, Padua, and Paris. He was practicing his studies from the year 1862 to 1876 in which he got his degree in medicine and surgery. In the year 1871, Lombroso had the privilege to be the director of an asylum in Pesaro. This is the place of dreams for a Psychologist! This is where he began studying psychology, on those admitted to the asylum. A large portion of these people were soldiers, admitted with issues of PTSD and psychological issues (Mason). But this is not what got Lombroso Interested in criminal activity, it all happened when Lombroso met Giuseppe Viella, a notorious criminal of his time for arson and theft. Lombroso was examining Viella, in which he noticed that Viella had a “median occipital depression,” which is a small dip in the back of the cranium that should have a projection rather than a depression. Lombroso was astonished about this in which he logged, “[...] like a large plain beneath an infinite horizon, the problem of the nature of the delinquent was illuminated which reproduced in our time the characteristics of primitive man right down to the carnivores.” You can see in this quote, Lombroso was beginning to compare criminals with primitive beings who cannot control themselves. He compares Viella to a primitive man, or even a carnivore (caveman). This is when Lombroso to …show more content…
They practically stereotype criminals when in reality, mostly what influences a criminal to commit a crime is much deeper than just the physical aspects. People commit crimes for hundreds of reasons whether it be that they have no money and need to feed their family, the commit a crime out of passion or revenge, or they even commit a crime because they were raised in a neighborhood that crime was accepted as normal. This list can go on and on for pages as to why people commit crimes. So logically, especially with the theories and understanding of criminology that we have today. We know today most of the reasons that a person might commit a crime, we aren’t as narrow-minded as they were in the times that Lombroso studied criminology. This is why you must take what Lombroso says with a grain of salt because he did live more than 100 years ago. We can not criticize Lombroso for his theories because he was the first person to really study criminals in which he established the physical school of Criminology. He was the first to criticize the original thoughts of why people commit crimes in the Classical School of thought, which thought that people were rational beings and just decided to commit