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52 J. Crim. L. Criminology & Police Sci. 361 (1961)
Pioneers in Criminology: Cesare Lombroso (1825-1909)

handle is hein.journals/jclc52 and id is 369 raw text is: The Journal of CRIMINAL LAW, CRIMINOLOGY, AND POLICE SCIENCE Vol. 52 NOVEMBER-DECEMBER 1961 No. 4 PIONEERS IN CRIMINOLOGY: CESARE LOMBROSO (1835-1909) MARVIN E. WOLFGANG The author is Associate Professor of Sociology in the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. He is the author of Patterns in Criminal Homicide, for which he received the August Vollmer Research Award last year, and is president of the Pennsylvania Prison Society. As a former Guggenheim Fellow in Italy, Dr. Wolfgang collected material for an historical analysis of crime and punishment in the Renaissance. Presently he is engaged in a basic research project entitled, The Measurement of De- linquency. Some fifty years have passed since the death of Cesare Lombroso, and there are several important reasons why a reexamination and evaluation of Lombroso's life and contributions to criminology are now propitious. Lombroso's influence upon continental criminology, which still lays significant em- phasis upon biological influences, is marked. His work has been rather widely discredited in the United States, however, and in this article Professor Wolfgang assesses as the reason a misunder- standing of Lombroso's contributions. The author here reviews Lombroso's life, his works, the modifications of his ideas as his studies progressed, and the directions post-Lombrosian criminology has taken. Although Dr. Wolfgang is critical of the born criminal conceptions of Lombroso, as well as of certain aspects of Lombroso's research methods, he feels that Lombroso deserves recognition for redirecting emphasis from the crime to the criminal, for his progressive ideas concerning punishment and correction, and for stimulating new interest, controversy, and study in the field of criminology. -EDiOR. Homo sum; nihil humani alienum a me puto.-Terence. In the history of criminology probably no name has been eulogized or attacked so much as that of Cesare Lombroso. By the time of his death in 1909 his ideas had gained wide attention among critics and friends engaged in the study of criminal be- havior both in Europe and in America. More has been written by and about Lombroso than any other criminologist, a fact that makes doubly difficult the task of summarizing the life, work, and influence of one who has been called the father of modem criminology. The depth and breadth of his investigations permit a post-lombrosian contemporary approach to the etiology of crime to proceed in Europe without suffering from a unilateral perspective. On the other hand, his emphasis on certain biological traits of criminal identification has provided sufficient fuel for con- tinuous attacks from many critics who no longer take the time to read his works. The biological orientation in Europe and the predominant en- vironmental approach in America represent not only two different perspectives on the same funda- mental problem of the scientific analysis of the regularities, uniformities, and patterns of causa- tive factors in criminal behavior, but reflect as well two different historical results of Lombroso's writings. As we shall see, the spirit of Lombroso is very much alive in some European contemporary research, especially in Italy, while in America generally, Lombroso has been used as a straw man for attack on biological analyses of criminal be- havior. It is important, therefore, that a half century after his death we pause to re-examine the life and contributions of Cesare Lombroso and his position in contemporary criminology. THE MAN, His WORKS, A\D INFLUENCE OF OTHERS' On November 6, 1835, the second of five children was born to Aron and Zefira Levi Lombroso.2 As I The author wishes to express his gratitude to Professor Richard Snodgrasse of Temple University for ideas he contributed to this section; to Klaus Lithner and Thomas Dow, graduate students at the University of Pennsylvania, for their reviews of the Congresses of

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