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Cesare Lombroso Theorist Paper Karl M. Snyder Email: [email protected] CCJ5606, Florida State University
Cesare Lombroso 2 Part I Historical Context of Cesare Lombrosos Theory Those who came before him such as Compte, Becarria, Quetelet, and Darwin shaped Cesare Lombrosos criminological perspective. Their theories, statistical analysis, and triumphs laid the foundation for Lombroso to become influential worldwide. The advent of the sociology is a relatively young specialty within the scientific community, and more specifically criminology, when one considers that crime has been a germane part of society for tens of thousands of years. While no individual is accredited with the discovery of criminology, it was Italian theorist Cesare Lombroso (1835-1909) who was at the forefront of and perpetuated criminology, the study of crime and criminal behavior, into mainstream academia. From the early 1600s, different schools of thought in respect to societal crime have evolved. Some of these were replaced later on by concepts that are more contemporary and many elements of historical theories have reappeared at least in part, in criminological and penological theories by various criminologists. In this manner, criminology just as any other science builds upon the knowledge learned in the past. Lombroso built his theories upon these same methods of historical science. In the late 1700s, a young Italian named Cesare Beccaria (1738-1794) helped define a process of thought that targeted the criminal justice systems adjudication of criminals called the classical school. His essay On Crimes and Punishments in 1764 focused on the causes of crime and addressed the need for improved criminal justice policies. His stance on the causes of crime stood out to some as a choice of free will (Sutherland, 1966, p. 55), however, his argument as to the causes of crime was deemed too deterministic to those who held spiritualistic explanations of crime. He reasoned that behavior was predictable and controllable by means of punishments that
Cesare Lombroso 3 were public, prompt, minimal, and proportionate and that criminal justice polices that followed this path would deter others from committing crime (Vold and Snipes, 1998, p. 25). The classical school was dominant for almost 100 years but what it was missing was a scientific metric to establish whether the implementation of Beccarias adjudication policies affected the rate of crime. It was not until 1833 that a well-documented book on criminal statistics was published. The author of Essai sur la statistique morale de la France was Frenchman Andre-Michel Guerre (1802-1866). His book included not only statistical data but also shaded ecological maps to depict differing crime rates in relation to various social factors (Sutherland, 1966, p. 28). He did not stop at simple maps though. He extrapolated the data from his studies to associate it with the causes of crime and he is known by many as the one person who first started scientific criminology (Vold and Snipes, 1998, p. 28). Following Guerres works on crime rates, Belgian mathematician Adolphe Quetelet (17961874) used Guerres data collected between 1826 and 1829 to find that young males, the poor, the less educated, and those without employment had a greater propensity to be convicted of committing crimes. However, he deduced that those with higher education were more prone to violent crimes such as rape and murder. Further, he concentrated his study and found the two most compelling factors as to the cause of crime were age and sex. The criminal was most prone to commit a crime between the ages of 21 to 25 and males are four times more likely to commit crime (Beirne, 1987, p. 1153-1157). In his search for the causes of crime, Quetelet identified three possible elements under which a crime occurred. First, a crime could be labeled accidental under the auspices of war, famine, or national disaster. Second, there could be a variable cause for crime. This, for
Cesare Lombroso 4 example, would include free will (classical school) and the personality of an individual. The last possible cause was considered a constant cause which would include age, sex, occupation, etc. Sutherland (1966, p. 55) considered the efforts of Guerre and Quetelet to fall under a school called cartographic which emphasized the distribution of crime rates. The school was popular between 1830 and 1880 and was a significant factor in societal transition from the classical to a positivistic/deterministic school because it proved that Beccarias theories had not actually reduced crime. Although Guerre and Quetelets analyses began to marginalize the classical school, Charles Darwin (1809-1882) had a major impact in gaining societal support for the school of positivism and Lombrosos theories in criminal anthropology. One of the most popular scientific studies, which are considered the beginning of the end of the classical school, was the revolution of biological positivism. In 1859, Darwin published The Origin of Species and in 1871, he published The Descent of Man. Between these two books, he ignited the scientific communitys arousal for a new method of researching the cause of crime. Prior to Darwins Theory of Evolution, the most widely accepted idea about man was that humans were quite far removed from the animals and had free will to choose their own course of action. However, contrary to popular thought, Darwin suggested that man evolved naturally from animals (natural selection) and that the laws of nature rather than free will govern the course of human action. Specifically in the case of criminology, his theory suggested that we look for the cause of criminal behavior within the hereditary and biological element of humans (Gottfredson and Hirshi, 1990, p. 47, 48), and adding that the black sheep (antisocialism personality) of families were revisions to earlier, primitive human beings (Vold and Snipes, 1998, p. 66).
Cesare Lombroso 5 A clear historical timeline has been manifested in the previous paragraphs that describe the developmental steps taken to ascribe to what is known as criminology. Becarria began to open up societal thought to the requirements of not just punishing criminals, but trying to put policies in place to prevent crime. Guerre and Quetelet utilized mathematics to compile the first every historical crime rates and develop theories for the causes of crime based on data. Then Darwin completed research in the area of natural sciences and promoted a new thought process that involved biological heredity as a cause for human action, not of ones own free will. However, sociology, which contains criminology as an element, was not an easy concept to establish for worldwide acceptance. The first use of the word sociology was made by Auguste Comte (1798-1857) in his Philosophie Positive in 1839, but was not readily accepted until 1873 when Herbert Spencer (1820-1903) published The Study of Sociology (Branford, 1903, p. 149). Even then, through out Lombrosos life, the Italians highly espoused sociology in their sciences while other European countries, such as Germany, did not widely recognize the science of sociology and went so far as to hide the fact that any of their books were sociological in nature (Michels and Hartsough, 1930, p. 22). Cesare Lombroso is considered one of the founding fathers of criminology. His ideas though were not entirely new. Instead, his theories were based upon an aggregate selection of science learned from Beccaria, Guerre, Quetelet, Darwin, Marx, and others not prominently mentioned in any historical text. His career path as a doctor and psychiatrist also contributed significantly to his controversial theories that are known as born criminal, or atavism theories. His research has also borrowed from previous studies conducted in physiognomy and phrenology and while his initial theories were justly criticized, not just for being deterministic, but also for the utter lack of proof, he eventually revised his theory to include a variety of environment conditions.
Cesare Lombroso 6 Part II Cesare Lombrosos Theory Cesare Lombrosos innovative theory based on biological determinism was cultivated over a 20-year period from a singular proposition into a complex, multifaceted cause of criminality. His theory of the born criminal or atavistic human, a biological concept, was perpetuated by years of medical education and practice. He studied medicine at the Universities of Padua, Vienna, and Pavia, graduating the last in 1858 (Gibson, 2002, p. 19). In 1859, he volunteered for service as a doctor in the Italian army. While in service, he became infatuated with the study of a problem called the Southern question. It alleged that Southerners (within the Italian army) were inferior beings, lazy, incapable, criminal and barbaric (Vold & Snipes, 1998, p. 43). It focuses most on the willingness to follow rules. He began to study the soldiers behavioral patterns and experimented with techniques learned from the deterministic sciences of phrenology and physiognomy, measuring all sorts of external human features, but extending this to the whole body, where phrenology and physiognomy stopped below the head and face. After his tour in the army, his interest in psychiatry led him to several directorships of asylums between 1863 and 1872. This path ultimately led him to gain great notoriety in criminology (Gibson, 2002, p. 19). In December 1871, Lombroso was conducting a postmortem exam at the asylum in Pavia of a brigand name Giuseppe Villella. Upon examination of the skull area, he noticed a depression instead of a spine on the occiput and named it the median occipital mosa. Recognizing this as a condition normally found in lower apes, rodents and birds, Lombroso was prompted with an epiphany that atavism was the cause of crime within individuals (Sylvester, 1972, p. 63). However, Renzo Villa, who wrote a biography on Lombroso states, Lombrosos earliest reports of this autopsy were contradictory in terms of dates, the specific features of the skull, and even the
Cesare Lombroso 7 crimes committed by Villella. It appears Lombroso embellished this story to fashion a dramatic event for his new discipline of criminal anthropology (Gibson, 2002, p. 20). Lombroso began to create a criminological theory based on atavism, a term that describes a person as a throwback to an earlier stage of evolution. He posited atavism as a characteristic found in savages and colored races as well as delinquent individuals. The commonalities of this characteristic were thinning hair, lack of strength and weight, low cranial capacity, receding forehead, highly developed frontal sinuses and thickness of cranial bone (Sylvester, 1972, p. 71). His original theory began from a deduction from physical anomalies with hereditary origins that distinguish those with a greater propensity to commit crime (Gottfredson & Hirshi, 1990, p. 41). Lombroso moved to Turin University in 1876 and produced the start of his best-known works in that same year, Criminal Man, a five edition series that would span from 1876 to 1897 and come to cement his position as the founder of modern criminology (Carra & Barale, 2004, p. 1). His books would see his theory evolve from a purely biological one to one that included significant environmental components. The first edition promoted biological, pathological, and atavistic characteristics as accounting for crime (Kellor, 1899, p. 516). His original premise was based on the fact that his findings showed that 70 percent of criminals were programmed from birth to commit crime and that outward signs or stigmata would identify these individuals to a trained observer (Davie, 1976, p. 3). He spent a great deal of time preparing for his first addition by analyzing the criminal behavior of animals, as a way of comparing to human atavistic traits. For example, he witnessed an ant driven by rage to kill and dismember an aphid and an adulterous stork that killed her lovers mate (Gould, 1996, p.154). The physical stigmata that Lombroso felt most appropriately fit the atavistic characteristic identified earlier were not the singular proof factor in his theory. He also felt there were social and
Cesare Lombroso 8 behavioral stigmata associated with atavism. The first was the argot of criminals, or the particular language with which they communicate. He likened this to the specialized speech that savages or children often utilize. The second social stigmata were tattoos. This was because it reflected the insensitivity of criminals to pain. According to Gould (1996, p. 162), Lombroso only considered 40 percent of criminals to have a specific atavistic stigmata, and others acted out of passion, rage, or desperation which accounted for the remaining 30 percent. This appears inconsistent with Lombrosos theory; however, he includes them in his theory by indicating concerning crime, a man with stigmata performs them by innate nature, a man without stigmata by force of circumstances. Throughout his subsequent editions, Lombroso fell under extensive criticism for his biological theories of the cause of crime, but instead of abandoning his theory, he merely extended the range of causes to include factors that his contemporaries were also studying (Gould, 1996, p. 164). Those ranges of factors, which Lombroso ended his theory with, were not accounted for in his first edition, nor were some other Lombrosian characteristics. In his first edition, the now infamous term born criminal was not used. Enrico Ferri coined the term four years later. Instead, the term Lombroso used was criminals in general. Criminals in general were qualified by the following set of characteristics: small and deformed skulls, greater height and weight, light beards, crooked noses, sloped foreheads, dark skin, eyes and hair, large ears, protruding jaws less muscular strength, and little sensitivity to pain (Gibson, 2002, p. 22-26). In his second addition, what were termed criminals in general were now called habitual criminals, and he added two new categories: insane criminals and criminals by passion. Criminals deemed insane, according to Lombroso, deserved specific treatment different from the sane. Criminals by passion where identified to have led reputable lives prior to the crime and have
Cesare Lombroso 9 repented immediately after the crime, characteristics not found in the habitual criminal. By the time Lombroso wrote his third edition, he had admitted that the concept of atavism was inadequate as a solitary theory. He included degeneration of individuals within his theory to compensate for those that did not meet his hereditary determinism. Instead, degenerates suffered from some sort of physical or psychological malformation caused by a traumatic event that prevented them from recapitulating all stages of human evolution. Additionally, he added another category called morally insane. The morally insane cannot distinguish between good and bad behavior and their behavior is identical to atavistic behavior in their compulsion to harm others without remorse. It is becoming clearer the transformation Lombroso was making from a biological to environment theory. Within the fourth edition, he included the category of epilepsy; proposing that both outright epileptic fits and hidden epilepsy accounted for deviant behavior. By the time the fifth edition was published, Lombroso had combined traits from of atavism, moral insanity, and epilepsy so that a person with some of each trait could still be labeled a born criminal (Gibson, 2002, p. 22-26). Two years after Lombroso died in 1909, his last book, Crime, Its Causes and Remedies, was published. In an almost complete revolution of his theory, the book was written from the standpoint of environment and sociological causes for crime. The topics in the book are broad and varied. They include climate, geography, race, population size, alcoholism, prostitution, prisons, civil statutes, education, penal issues, and many others. Lombrosos critics, including his colleagues, forced him to make changes and adapt to ideas that were more contemporary (Lombroso, 1968). His overall theory contained one more component that warrants mention, that of punishment. The first edition of Criminal Man took 252 pages to explain the aspects of his
Cesare Lombroso 10 original theory and little was written concerning punishment other than the thought that the death penalty did not serve as a deterrent to crime because of the criminals insensitivity to pain. By the time Lombroso published his fifth edition, it contained over 1900 pages, 300 of which discussed the kinds of punishment appropriate for particular offender and crime (Gibson, 2002, p. 26).
Cesare Lombroso 11 Part III Contributions and Criticisms Cesare Lombrosos fame within the lore of criminology is not only due to his advancement of the study of the causes of crime, but has merit as one of the great theories that inspired scholars to advance research that focused on the criminal rather than the crime (Carra & Barale, 2004, p. 1) . Many scholars were innately motivated to conduct research to criticize Lombrosian theory while others advocated and advanced it. Criticism of Lombrosos theory began from his first publication of Criminal Man and lasted well past his final edition 21 years later. Prompted by continued pressure from his colleagues, Lombroso revised his theory throughout five editions of work to accommodate broader perspectives but garnered considerable rhetoric from leaders in the criminological field worldwide. One of his earliest critics was Gabriel Tarde (1843-1904), who contended Lombrosos theories were contradictory on two main points. The first was that women with criminal stigmata should have a proportional crime rate to that of males; yet female crime rates were considerably lower. The second of Tardes contentions were that if stigmata were to determine a propensity for crime, it should follow in theory that if one were to examine the features of judges, advocates, musicians, and laborers that you could find born judges, advocates, musicians and laborers, however, that was simply not the case either (Schafer, 1969, p. 218). One of the most popular critics of Lombroso came after his death. Charles Goring (18701919), an English penal medical officer, attacked not just Lombrosos theory but also his methodology in his book The English Convict. His main criticisms were Lombrosos rather unscientific use of statistical calculations and research methods. Specifically, Goring questioned Lombrosos use of ill-defined measurements, unwarranted deductions, and inadequate control
Cesare Lombroso 12 groups. Goring was quoted as saying, since this belief of Lombrosos was arrived at, not by methods of disinterested investigation, but, rather by a leap of the imaginationLombrosian doctrine, judged by the standards of science, is fundamentally unsound (Wolfgang, 1961, 377381). Many other criminologists agreed and criticized Lombrosos failure to critically examine the sources of his data and lack of control groups in his methodology (Schafer, 1969, p. 128). While criticism abounded, Lombroso was not without supporters. His most prominent supporter was Earnest Hooton (1887-1954), a Harvard Anthropologist. Hootons goal was to validate Lombrosos idea that criminality somehow marked an offenders body. He did not believe in all aspects of Lombrosos theory and questioned much of his methodology, just as Goring had. Even so, he studied traits learned from Lombrosian theory that were considered biologically inferior within outward characteristics such as inferior height, facial asymmetry, and nose breadth. In spite of this, Hooton was guided away from the basic principles of the born criminal and grounded his theories more deeply on eugenics, a concept in criminology by which hereditary degenerates could be controlled through sterilization, euthanasia and welfare reform, or more appropriately, lack of welfare support. During Hootons time however, he was in a minority pool of American scientists that still considered biological criminality a valid approach to the study of criminals. The advent of sociology had made its mark, at least in America, and started to become the dominant force concerning criminological thought (Rafter, 2004, p. ). In contrast to the paradigm shift occurring in American, Lombrosos theory took on more fervor in places such as Italy, where his influence was more concentrated. Similarly in Germany, crimino-biologists such as Ernst Kretschmer studied typologies such as leptosome, characterized by thin limbs, narrow shoulders, and under-developed musculatures; athletic types, defined as opposites of leptosomes; and pyknics, friendly and social with small, round body types
Cesare Lombroso 13 (Mannheim, 1965, p. 237). Likewise, South American countries such as Buenos Aires, Petrograd, and Rio do Janeiro formed Anthropological Societies based in part on Lombrosos theories (Wolfgang, 1961, p. 387). It is easy to see that Lombrosos compassion for the advancement of his theories, albeit incorrect, have spread throughout the world to compel others to advance the breadth of criminological research. Despite his overzealous imagination, lack of sound scientific methodology and failure to prove any of his own theories, Lombroso has been recognized as making significant contributions to the study of criminology. On one scientific level, Wolfgang (1961, p. 381) noted that he manifested imaginative insight, good intuitive judgment, intellectual honesty, awareness of some of his limitations, attempts to use control groups, and a desire to have his theories tested impartially. Many researchers of today fair little better than this. Wolfgangs quote goes a long way to indicate the ethical professionalism Lombroso pursued despite his faulty methods. More significantly, Lombrosos theory has ignited scientific research in hereditary exploration, endocrinology, psychology, and forensic psychology based on his principle that it is the criminal and not the crime we should study and consider (Wolfgang, 1961, p. 387, 390). Many theories since Lombrosos time have evolved with implicit biological perspectives as to the causes of crime. Technological advancements such as DNA typing, chromosome and gene identification, and improved understanding of the physical and psychological thought process have proliferated. Theories as to the causation of crime have come from criminal typologies, general inferiority, sex chromosomes, and the study of twins, mental degeneration, and psychosis (Schafer, 1969, p. xv). While most of these are not direct descendents of Lombrosos theory, they are biological in nature and that is a door that was opened by Lombroso in one of the worlds first quests to find the causation of crime within the criminal, vice the study of crime itself.
Cesare Lombroso 14 Part IV Current Theories Related to the Lombrosian Perspective The legacy of Cesare Lombrosos theory of the born criminal survives in current criminological theory in the context that considerable research has been conducted concerning hereditary or biological characteristics to find the causes of crime within the criminal. While not considered mainstream criminology, the study of hereditary or gene-bases evolutionary theories have sustained since Lombrosos imaginative perspective over 120 years ago. Categories of turn of the century biological studies, which have shared Lombrosos concepts, include genes associated with behavioral traits, delinquency associated with IQ, body types, and tattooing status. Evolutionary theories are undoubtedly in contrast to todays mainstream environmental theories. One survey suggests that only 20 percent of criminologists are receptive to the notion of hereditary or genetic influences on criminal behavior (Ellis & Walsh, 1997, p. 230). According to Walsh (2000, p. 1076), those not regarded to be criminologists, but rather psychologists, psychiatrists, and biologists tend to author most biologically associated or behaviorally based criminal theories. Nonetheless, this is the area most affected by the contributions of Lombroso. One of the most popular perspectives today associated with Lombrosian thought is the concept of the hereditary criminal. Lee Ellis and Anthony Walsh (1997, p. 255) explain in their essay Gene-Based Evolutionary Theories in Criminology, all of modern theories share only a faint resemblance to the first evolutionary theory in criminology proposed over a century ago by Lombrosohe knew nothing of the concept of genetics. The advancements over the last century in biological and social research have allowed an aggregate scientific knowledge to develop evolutionary principles applicable to criminology not previously available. Several of these new developments include a criminal specific theory, cheater theory, and the r/K theory.
Cesare Lombroso 15 Gene-based, criminal specific theories address the crimes of rape, spousal assault, and child abuse. The premise of evolutionary rape theory is that males for several reasons naturally exhibit sexual aggression. First, they may have genes that promote pushiness, that is, the need to copulate often and with multiple partners; second, males have the perception that they require little intervention with offspring thus little risk is involved, an opposite reaction typically found with females; finally, males may feel the need to forcibly copulate when the prospect of getting caught is low. Spousal assault is thought to be a reaction to feeling that the relationship is in jeopardy and exclusive copulation will be lost. The response is usually direct physical violence. The evolutionary theory of child abuse stems from at least three factors: first, there are more offspring than the parents feel they can rear; second, when on parent shirks avoids their responsibility, the other tends to follow; and third, when the genetic relationship between parent and child is in question, abuse is more probable (Ellis & Walsh, 1997, p. 255-256). Two other genetically based theories are general in nature. One is called the cheater theory and the other r/K theory. The cheater theory states that males do not have as high a stake in offspring investment as women and that they opportunistically seek numerous sex partners. r/K theory states that the behavior characteristic of this criminal is at the other end of the evolutionary continuum in terms of how they approach reproduction. The K type of person wants to proliferate their genes and care for offspring, while the r type of person wants to proliferate but invest little time in the offspring (Ellis & Walsh, 1997, p. 256-157). There are other studies in regards to biological criminality. Those studies include the XYY chromosome, twins and separation of twins at birth, adoption and a significant amount of psychological research as more about the brain is learned.
Cesare Lombroso 16 Another trait Lombroso pursued but did not sufficiently develop was a theory that those with genius were really degenerates whose madness, was a form of evolutionary compensation from excessive intellectual development (Carra & Barale, 2004, p. 624). Current theorists have taken his queue on IQ and researched its association with delinquency, with the latest research conducted by Ward and Tittle in 1994. Their IQ-delinquency relationship research cited at least four conclusions. First, the effect of IQ on delinquent behavior is indirect only; second, low IQ inhibits formation of prosocial bonds that may limit delinquency; third, low IQ leads to low selfcontrol; and lastly, a link was made between IQ and delinquency through the indirect pathway of deviant peer pressure (McGloin, Pratt & Maahs, 2004, p. 603-605). One of largest proponents of current biocriminal theory, largely within behavioral studies, is Diana Fishbein. More in line with current perspectives than any other biocriminologists, she readily accepts that genetics is not a singular cause for crime but a relevant and crucial part of a multidisciplinary study that must be studied. In her article, Prospects for the Application of Genetic Findings to Crime and Violence Prevention, (1996, p. 92), she states three reasons its study is imperative and what needs to be answered. Genetic research may eventually answer such questions as 1) why don't all children who are abused become victimizers?, 2) why don't most inner city residents engage in crime?, and 3) why do some from protective, middle-class homes engage in crime? Her zealous study within behavioral traits has brought to the surface a consideration for which I have not read from any other theorist, that is the place in which so called hereditary behavior has within criminality. She states, as a rule, what is inherited is not a behavior; rather, it is the way in which an individual responds to the environment. It provides an orientation, predisposition, or tendency to behave in a certain fashion. In addition, genetic influences on human behavior are polygenic no single gene effect can be identified for most
Cesare Lombroso 17 behaviors (1990, p. 42). What Fishbein does for criminology, regardless of her individual biological perspective, is to open the eyes of the criminal justice system that clinical care and primary prevention programs are viable applications for the care of those with identified behavioral or genetic faults. Genetic research may determine what clinical treatments would be effective in the future, however, she points out that currently it is only the most economically and opportunistically privileged who have access to clinical settings while those not so privileged are processed more commonly within the criminal justice system. Finally, her commitment to the biological factors of criminality are summed in her statement, genetic research is crucial if we are ever to provide needed services and treatments for individuals with compelling genetic disadvantages (1996, p. 92-94). While the majority of modern biological studies into the criminal have been genetic or psychological in nature, a few studies have been conducted on the external body, which was Lombrosos primary area of research. One research project studied the size and shape of children beginning at age three to determine if there were early mechanisms for the recognition of childhood aggression that were indicative of criminals. The longitudinal study suggested that three indicators: body size, stimulation-seeking, and fearlessness were potential traits of children with a higher propensity to commit crimes. More specifically, their study proposed that juvenile delinquents tended to be more mesomorphic-enodomorphic (muscular and fat), and less ectomorphic (slight and trim). However, the study does concede that these indicators are in no way independent of social factors (Rain, A., Reynolds, C., Venables, P., Midnick, S., & Farrington, P., 1998, p. 745). Another Lombrosian characteristic that might seem sensibly out of date as a predictor for crime or delinquency was that of tattooing. However, Aldis Putnins (2002, p. 69) wrote in an
Cesare Lombroso 18 article that while tattooed status is currently, a very weak indicator of increased offending, there needs to be a more detailed study of tattoos and recidivism. He continued to state, tattoo status alone is not a consistent predictor of recidivism, but other tattoo variables such as size, location, number, visibility, and design type might have predictive validity. Putnins suggests that the best solution with current empirical data is to influence juveniles to have their tattoos that tend to show removed in an effort to help prevent recidivism. Criminological theories that parallel Lombroso do not currently abound in mainstream criminology. To assess current popular theory, the American Society of Criminologys webpage of conferences scheduled for November 2004 was researched. It does not include discussion directly relating to Lombrosian thought. The mainstream criminological theories that will be showcased include anomie, strain, Gottfredson and Hirschis general theory, labeling theory, and critical perspectives. Topics for the conference are not specifically spelled out in terms of content but two of those may have remnants of Lombrosian thought included. Those are Control, Propensity, and Forms of Abusive Behavior and Exploring the Promise of Biosocial Approaches to Offending. Other than that, it appears that Lombrosos theory has been considerably lost within mainstream theories. One other method was used to provide a small measure of the use of Lombrosian thought. A search on the Social Sciences Citation Index for the name Lombroso C provided 301 citations. Most of the publications noted were written in the late 1800s. However, I discovered that as late as this year, two articles were published in his name on the topic of criminal women. There were also two publications in 1995; one on female offenders and one entitled Man Genius. His theories have been long devalued but not forgotten. Cesare Lombrosos achievement is not specifically within the context of his own theories, but opening up avenues of research to discover the causes of crime within the individual. No
Cesare Lombroso 19 modern theory is singularly descendent from Lombrosian theory; however, his ingenuity helped spark new criminological thought that has lasted over a century. The advent of modern technology and continued growth in scientific knowledge has helped to advance those theories Lombroso developed but for which he did not have scientific reference to prove.
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