Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 4.djvu/537

 CRIMINAL ANTHROPOLOGY AND JURISPRUDENCE 517

assigned reason being that the organ must be studied before the func- tion and the physical before the moral. It has continually sought to ally the criminal with animals and barbaric peoples. One of its prin- cipal assertions is that the criminal is a man of arrested development, and harmonizes with the civilization of previous decades rather than with the present one ; that modern civilization has so rapidly advanced that it exceeds the natural capacity of many individuals who live in its midst. With this anatomical or biological basis in view, an extended series of anthropometrical measurements and psychological experiments," e. g., of hearing, sight, touch, smell, sensibility to locality, pain, pressure, etc., have been taken, and a comparison has been made with similar measurements of and experiments upon normal persons. From the results of this laboratory work the school has announced what it defines as a criminal type, and asserts that all born criminals have characteristic anomalies either physical or mental. The former most frequently refer to the cranium and face, the latter to defective intelligence and absence of moral sensibilities. Criminals are divided into the two categories of " born " and " occasional," although the more accurate division into born, insane, occasional, and habitual criminals, and criminals by passion, is used by some criminal anthropologists.

The born criminal is asserted to possess the criminal type, or at least some of the specified anomalies. There is a tendency to allege that the occasional criminal may also possess them, although not to so great a degree. The effect of environment is not absolutely excluded, but is considered as of minor importance. Atavism is one of the pivots of the thought of this school. So strongly is the biological side emphasized that it is asserted that " the great under-class of criminals have defective organisms, especially in relation to the brain and ner- vous systems, and that they are all more or less deficient in moral sense. They are perversely wicked, ignorant, and have a bad heredity." Consequently not much stress is placed upon reform, but primarily upon prevention. These conclusions of the school are the result of the most elaborate and assiduous investigation, and are supported by the prestige of prominent scientific names.'

The French school is the result of a dissent from the Italian. While admitting the importance of the anatomical and physiological

'Cy. LoMBROSO, Female Offender; L Uomo Delinquente.

' The prominence given by this school to anatomy, physiognomy, etc., has been the cause of much misapprehension and misunderstanding, and has induced a belief in the existence of no small degree of nonsense in the new science. Many rash state-