Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 10.pdf/418

 Criminal Anthropology in Italy.

385

It is noteworthy and also significant that appreciated. Had they lived in the world a almost all thoughtful Italians who have dedi sufficient number of generations ago, the cated themselves to the studies of anthro strongest of them might have been chiefs of pology in general and criminal anthropology a tribe. As Colajanni has said : " How in particular are socialists in politics. As many of Homer's heroes would to-day be siduous, dispassionate observation of man in convict prisons or at all events despised kind would seem to have brought them to as unjust and violent!" He has strenu this conclusion. A leader in the Italian Par ously combated Lombroso's indiscriminate liament in this sense, as well as a gifted method of collecting facts, and compares criminal anthropologist, is Napoleone Cola- it to Charles IX's famous order on St. janni, by original profession a doctor, but Bartholomew's Eve : " Kill them all! God now too absorbed in his political duties to will know his own."

practice. Colojanni, is And now it is time we by birth a Sicilian, and should speak of Garofolo, has much of the quick, the Neapolitan lawyer fiery temperament of who, accepting generally these islanders, in whose the conclusions reached veins the blood courses by Lombroso and Ferri, hotly. A facile orator, has become the most his speeches always com distinguished jurist of the mand attention in Parlia moment, the pioneer of ment, while his rigid, in the reform of the law corruptible honesty through the method of makes him esteemed in a natural science. His milieu of unscrupulous "Criminology" is marked politicians and wire by luminous suggestions pullers. As philanthrop of wise reform. Like Morselli, Garofolo does ist, as politician, he was not blindly follow where early attracted to study his compeers lead. His the problems of misery latest volume, entitled and crime, whence re "Socialistic Supersti sulted his great work on tions," has excited much "Criminal Sociology." SCIFIO SlOIILLE. wrath and astonishment Like Ferri and all the other thoughtful students of the criminal, in socialistic and anthropological camps, he has seen the direct bearing on criminality and was severely combated, especially by of what he himself well calls " social hy- Ferri, who wrote a pamphlet on purpose geine." He points out how we may neglect to confute the publication. R. Garofolo was the problems of social organization, but must born in Naples, in 1852, of an old patrician do so at our peril. In many respects he is family, hence perhaps by atavism he is debarred from being a socialist. He holds opposed to Lombroso. He holds, for ex ample, that Lombroso has too much accentu the position of professor of law and penal ated the atavistic element in the criminal. procedure in his native city, and was in He agrees with those who deem that of a trusted by the Government in 1892 to drawgreat number of modern habitual criminals up a scheme for the revision of the penal it may be said that they have the misfortune code. Garofolo has occupied himself chiefly, to live in an age when their merits are not nay, entirely with the legal side of criminal