Typecasting by Stuart Ewen

Author:Stuart Ewen [Ewen, Stuart]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Seven Stories Press
Published: 2010-05-14T04:00:00+00:00

Following this initial breakthrough, Lombroso feverishly studied and, whenever possible, dissected a succession of criminal bodies, elaborating further on his anatomy of evil. He routinely compared the bones of criminals with ethnographic specimens found in natural history collections, noting “the singular coincidence between the abnormalities found in criminal men and those observed in the normal skulls of the colored or inferior races.” Criminals, he concluded, were “savages living in the middle of flourishing European civilization.”13

While differing with Bertillon in his general approach to criminology, Lombroso was an admirer and made considerable use of the Frenchman’s anthropometric tools and photographic techniques to add precision in his delineation of criminal physiognomy.14 His first major work on the topic, L’Uomo delinquente [Criminal Man], which enjoyed five editions between 1876 and 1897, made heavy use of Bertillon’s methods in laying a case for a diagnostic criminal type, which he termed “the born criminal.”

This was a phrase borrowed from his disciple Enrico Ferri, who also encouraged Lombroso to acknowledge that some “normal” people were capable of committing criminal acts. These were defined as “occasional criminals” and “criminals by passion.” Yet within Lombroso’s forensic cosmology, these were the exceptions. For the most part, he saw criminal activity as the byproduct of innate atavism, something that could be detected through close physical examination.

The criminal by nature has a feeble cranial capacity, a heavy and developed jaw, a large orbital capacity . . . an abnormal and asymmetrical cranium, a scanty beard or none, but abundant hair, projecting ears, frequently a crooked or flat nose.15

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