Cesare Lombroso

Cesare Lombroso was an Italian physician and criminologist who founded the Italian school of positivist criminology. He argued that criminal behavior was biologically determined and associated with inherited physical traits.

Positivist criminology: An approach to criminology that explains crime through observable factors and scientific methods. Lombroso helped establish this approach by treating criminality as a measurable condition.
Born criminal: Lombroso’s proposed offender type, supposedly identifiable by inherited physical and psychological traits. It is the clearest expression of his claim that some people are innately criminal.
Enrico Ferri: An Italian criminologist and sociologist who developed positivist explanations of crime alongside Lombroso. Ferri extended Lombroso’s school by emphasizing social and environmental causes as well as biology.
The Criminal Man: Lombroso’s book presenting his theories of criminal types, physical traits, and atavism. This work organized and publicized the arguments that made Lombroso influential.
Atavism: The reappearance of ancestral traits in a descendant, often framed historically as evolutionary reversion. Lombroso interpreted supposed criminal traits as signs of evolutionary reversion.
Stigmata of degeneration: Physical or behavioral signs once believed to indicate inherited biological degeneration. Lombroso treated features such as asymmetry and unusual ears as signs of criminal degeneration.
Raffaele Garofalo: An Italian jurist who helped establish positivist criminology and developed a theory of natural crime. Garofalo was a central collaborator in the Italian positivist school Lombroso founded.
Criminal anthropology museum: A museum in Turin displaying materials from Lombroso’s collections on crime and human remains. Its preserved collection shows how Lombroso’s measurements and classifications became institutional practice.
Phrenology: A discredited theory that linked mental faculties and character to the shape of the skull. Its claim that bodily features disclose character echoed Lombroso’s search for visible criminal signs.
Criminal atavism: Lombroso’s hypothesis that some offenders embodied traits from an earlier stage of human evolution. It supplied the evolutionary mechanism behind his born-criminal category.

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