historically, physically, psychically, and socially, with a view to their analysis and the determination of the causes of crime ; while the third embraces a consideration of methods and institutions for the repression and prevention of crime. Criminologists thus become those who study crime with reference to its origin, propagation, prevention, and punishment.
The origin of criminal anthropology[1] under this title may be said to have been in 1885, when the First International Congress of Criminal Anthropology was held at Rome. Its antecedents were the investigations of and published results in Morel's Traité des dégénérescences physiques, intellectuelles, et morales de l'espèce humaine, et des causes qui produisent ces varietés maladives, in 1857; Darwin's Origin of Species, in 1859; Spencer's First Principles, in 1862; Despine's Psychologie naturelle, in 1868 ; Maudsley's Responsibility in Mental Disease, in 1872. The precursor in associations was the establishment by Broca in Paris, in 1859, of an anthropological society having a branch of criminal anthropology. The needed impulse for a centralization of these studies was given by the publishing of Lombroso's works, the first, L'Uomo Delinquente, appearing in 1876. Lombroso and his associated school of criminal anthropologists, including Italian scientists and jurists, may thus be called the innovators of the science, although it existed in fragments previous to their work.
It is, perhaps, unfortunate that at the beginning of the science two opposing schools should have arisen, Lombroso and the Italians leading the one, the French the other. It will be necessary to examine the beliefs and methods of each, for the lines of reform suggested are different, and if either predominates, the recommended changes in law and procedure will vary, and the future of the science accordingly change.
The Italian school emphasizes the biological, pathological, and atavistic side, and would account for the presence of crime and distinguishing characteristics of criminals upon these bases. In this belief, the investigations have been principally along anatomic lines,[2] the
- ↑ Cf. Ferri, Criminal Sociology; Smithsonian Report, 1893 (section on "Criminal Anthropology") ; MacDonald, Criminology.
- ↑ This in itself has induced much hostile criticism of the Italian school, by the general public, and it has been charged by those who would consider only more conspicuous data that criminal anthropology narrows crime down to the mere results of conformation of skull and convolutions of the brain. These in themselves are merely morphological observations and but preliminary steps, although not generally so regarded by critics of the school.
