This is a two-part blog on embracing some of the criminological theory origin stories in the Western hemisphere.  Is crime the product of bad genes or bad society?  Are we born or made criminal? 

In this week we shall be exploring our understanding of biological theories originating back in the 19^th century with the “born criminal”.  The following week we will look at the role of the environment. 

The born criminal. 

In 1871 Cesare Lombroso became the director at the Pesaro Mental Health Hospital (asylum) that housed the clinically insane.  In that environment he examined the anatomical anomalies of residents in laboratory conditions.  The era of the scientific exploration of deviance had begun.  These meticulous explorations of bodily features and skulls formed the basis for his later thesis on The Born Criminal.  The basis of his criminal population were residents of the asylum. His control group (i.e. those deemed non-criminal) were soldiers.  Later, these were combined with the population of inmate prison population Lombroso and his associates visited.  As he assumed an academic role in one of the finest Italian universities the world read his seminal publication of L’uomo delinquente {The Born Criminal] .Which in 1876 became one of the publications that influence the work of its contemporaries.  In later years studied in exactly the same way. criminality in women using sex workers and prisoners as his research population cumulating into the 1893 publication of La Donna Delinquente: La prostituta e la donna normale [The Criminal Woman: The Prostitute and the Normal Woman.

His theoretical reach transcended borders and became widely read in the English-speaking world.  This is an origin story according to numerous textbooks about the biological understanding of criminality.  When embellished with some of the original quotes this becomes a theory of crime that explains different criminalities and makes the most significant leap that combines scientific rationale with crime.  The methodology of anthropometry is a careful measuring of human features, prominently skulls!  The main theoretical “innovation” was the recognition of a state of atavism; a regression onto a prior evolutionary stage for those engaged in crime.          

A theory of crime on the born criminal seemed as a logical step at a time hailed as an era of discovery and exploration.  A time that social and political movements in Europe asked profound questions about self and society.  This narrative of course largely overlooks that whilst West European and US philosophers are posing these questions their elites and establishment are preoccupied with colonialism and dominance.  In fact, it is the time European conflict around the world for dominance intensified.  By the late 19^th century, the European powers will try to manage their dominance in other continents by carving the world according to their own interests.  The Berlin conference of 1884-85 is the culmination of such European competition and led to the split of Africa into zones of colonial influence.

In what way is The Born Criminal related with colonialism?

The theory of the “born criminal” breaks down humanity into two; the “normals” and the “atavists” which conveniently separates us from them.  The criminal becomes the outcome of a lack of civilisation that can be seen in their physical features.  There is history in separating people for the sake of exploitation, subjugation and even genocide.  In this context of using civilisation (solely European) as the feature of separation is something previously seen in the colonisation of the Americas. When the European explorers landed in a new (for their map’s) continent the question of whom it belongs to was answered using religious decree.  Several popes described the native population of these “discovered lands” as uncivilised and unworthy of human rights.  It was the papal “Doctrine of Discovery” that denied the indigenous people rights to their land because uncivilised, faithless people (calling it terra nullus or empty land) do not count. Therefore, this separation for discrimination is not new, but Lombroso brought some scientific veneer to it. 

It is important to remind all that “the born criminal” theory was widely discredited already in the early 20^th century, when data analysis found no support for atavism and the biological features seemingly associated with criminality.  Yet still this approach seems to capture even today some interest in the collective criminological imagination.  Can you tell the prospective criminality reflected in someone’s gaze?  It is a question that people still wonder, despite any lack of empirical or scientific data.  The line of separating criminals from non-criminal provides an arbitrary differentiation that offers some clarity of how criminals should look, in a similar fashion to separating the “civilised” from the “savages”.  In this overreaching correlation crime becomes the act of the uncivilised.  It can also be flipped over and the uncivilised are the criminals contributing to the continuous fear of those who see the foreigner with suspicion.

A theory about the biological origins on crime that has offered us an explanation of the born criminal that has no scientific evidence but carries populist imagination because we take comfort in differentiating people. Next week we shall be exploring a theory that explores of the environmental factors of crime.