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International Congress of Criminal Anthropology a Review

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Journal of Criminal Law and CriminologyVolume 1 | Issue 4 Article 61911International Congress of Criminal Anthropology aReviewEdward LindseyFollow this and additional works at: https://scholarlycommons.law.northwestern.edu/jclcPart of the Criminal Law Commons, Criminology Commons, and the Criminology and CriminalJustice CommonsThis Article is brought to you for free and open access by Northwestern University School of Law Scholarly Commons. It has been accepted forinclusion in Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology by an authorized editor of Northwestern University School of Law Scholarly Commons.Recommended CitationEdward Lindsey, International Congress of Criminal Anthropology a Review, 1 J. Am. Inst. Crim. L. & Criminology 578 (May 1910 toMarch 1911)THE INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS OF CRIMINALANTHROPOLOGY: A REVIEW.EDWAiD LMnDsEY.The Congr~s International d'Anthr6pologie Criminelle, whichhas held six meetings, was organized largely through the initiativeof the late Professor Lombroso, the leader of the so-called Italianschool of criminologists. The first congress met at Rome on Novem-ber 16, 1885, at the same time as the International Penal Congress.A program for the congress had been prepared by a committee com-posed of Lombroso, Ferri, Garofalo, Sciamanna, Morselli, Lacas-sagne, Kraeplen, Tarde, Albrecht, Drill, Frigerio, Pasquali, Sergi,Romiti, Pieglia and Porto, and the questions to be studied weregrouped into two sections, a biological and a sociological section.The organization of the first congress was as follows: Presidents,Lombroso and Ferri; Vice-Presidents, Sergi, Sciamanna, Garofaloand Pugliese; General Secretaries, Mayor and Porto, and ScientificSecretaries, Couette and Fioretti.Lombroso detailed before the first congress his theories of thephysical anomalies of criminals and his classification of criminals as"born criminals," criminals by occasion and mattoids. Ferri ex-pressed his view of crime as a degeneration more profound than in-sanity, for in most insane persons the primitive moral sense has sur-vived the wreck of their intelligence. Along similar lines were theremarks of Benedickt, Sergi and Marro. On the other hand, Al.Anguilli called attention to the importance of the influenice of thesocial environment upon crime. Professor Lacassagne thought thatthe atavistic and degenerative theories as held .by the Italian schoolwere exaggerations and false interpretations of the facts, and thatthe important factor was the social environment.This radical divergence in 'the views of the Italian and theFrench schools was reflected in the proceedings of the second con-gress, held at Paris, August 10-17, 1889, during the French Exposi-tion. Professor Lombroso summarized the results of the observationsof the positive school since the last congress, laying stress uponepilepsy in connection with his theory of the "born criminal." Pro-fessor Manouvrier characterized Lombroso's theory as nothing butthe exploded science of phrenology. The anomalies observed byEDWARD LINDSEY.Lombroso were met with in honest men as well as criminals, Man-ouvrier claimed, and there is no physical difference between them.Garofalo, Drill, Lacassagne and Benedikt opposed Lombroso's the-ories in whole or in part. Pugliese found the cause of crime in thefailure of the criminal to adapt himself to his social surroundings, andBenedikt, with whom Tarde agreed, held that .physical defects werenot marks of the criminal qua criminal.Conditional liberation was the subject of a report by Dr. Semal,director of the insane asylum at Mons, Belgium, in which he advo-cated the system as affording a means for the reformation of thecriminal. M. Drill remarked that the system of conditional liberationrequired the exercise of two functions: that of the judgment of thecourt in passing upon the guilt of the criminal, and that of the sub-sequent treatment of the criminal, and that these are entirely differentand ought to be separated. The first belongs to the court, the latterto the administration of the penitentiary, in which should be invokedthe aid of scientific experts. M. Bertillon begged the congress not toforget that the important end to be kept in -view is the safety ofsociety and that the reform of the criminal is but a secondary aim.Anthropometry in connection with the identification of criminals wasalso considered and the moral perversions of infants were treated ofin a paper by Dr. Magan of the asylum of St. Anne at Paris. Acommunication on Criminal Statistics in the United States was pre-sented by Thomas Wilson, delegate from the Smithsonian Institution.- The second congress, upon motion of Baron Garofalo, appointeda committee of seven to make comparative observations on a series ofone hundred living criminals and on one of the same number of honestmen. The committee made no effort to make such observations, butat the third congress, held at Brussels from the 7th to the 14th ofAugust, 1892, Manouvrier presented a report in his own name show-.ing the difficulty, indeed, the practical impossibility, of carrying outsuch a scheme of observations. An able and convincing report on thequestion, "Does there exist an anatomically determined criminaltype?" was presented by Dr. Emile Houze and Dr. Leo Warnots ofthe University of Brussels. They concluded that the proposed typedesignated by Lombroso as the born criminal was not a real type;that the division of individuals into criminals and non-criminals waspurely arbitrary and not a scientific classification, and that a certainnumber of criminals present pathological and degenerative charac-teristics but that these do not constitute a special category of degen-erates. The discussion of these reports developed so complete anCONGRESS OF CRIMINAL ANTHROPOLOGY.opposition to the theories of the so-called Italian school that M. A.Bournet, Editor of the Archives d'Anthropologie Criminelle, in hissummary of the work of the congress, stated as the first of its fourprincipal achievements "the complete dissipation of the criminal typeand of the born criminal of Lombroso2' The other three he statedto be a preliminary effort to construct a theory based solely on theexperimental method; the approach toward a common meeting pointof "free will" and "determinism," of law and biology, of the magis-trate and the physician; and lastly, the closer association of criminallaw with the problems of criminal anthropology in order to facilitatethe reform of criminal legislation and of prison administration. Oneother report of the first importance presented to the third congressshould be mentioned, that of Professor E. Gauckler on the respectiveimportance. of the social and anthropological elements in the de-termination of punishment. Professor Gauckler gave as the final re-sults of his discussion the points: First, that the essential functionof criminal law is the prevention of crime by intimidation and thisfunction is conditioned exclusively by the social elements; second,that a secondary but cbnsiderable function is to ensure the futureharmlessness of the criminal and this is conditioned by the anthropo-logical factors; thirdly, that to a less degree reparation to the victimof the crime should be an end, and finally, that the pursuit of thisthreefold end would satisfy the social sentiments of justicei of hatredand of pity, which nmanifest themsel ves in connection with every crime.An increasing attention to practical applications characterizedthe work of the fourth congress, held at Geneva in 1896, and of thefifth congress, held at Amsterdam from the 9th to the 14th of Sep-tember, 1901. At the Amsterdam congress, in particular, much at-tention was paid to the social causes of crime, and the subject ofsexual inversion and perversion was also prominent in the papers anddiscussions. Among the reports presented was one by Dr. Clark Bell,Editor of the Medico-Legal JournaL, on the indeterminate sentencein New York Among other subjects considered were: The notionof crime, criminality of the insane, degeneration and criminality, thejuvenile delinquent and the etiology of crime. Miss Louise Rabin-ovitch was the official delegate from the United States to this con-gress.The controversy over the theories of Lombroso, which the thirdcongress, at which none of the Italian school were present, thoughtit had settled, was revived when the congress met again in Italy. ,The sixth congress was held at Turin, April 28-May 3, 1906,EDWARD LINDSEY.the proceedings of the congress being issued in a volume of 675 pagesin 1908. An interesting summary of the work of the congress fromthe standpoint of the actual state of criminal anthropology as ascience was published by Dr. G. Papillault in the Revue de l'Ecoled'Anthropologie de Paris for-January, 1909. He classifies the vari-ous communications presented to the congress under the four headsof Somatology, Ethology, Sociology and Economics. Somaticstudies of criminals, seemed to occupy the most important place in theproceedings of the sixth congress, as was, perhaps, natural on thehome ground of the Italian school. Lombroso, in defense of his the-ory of the born criminal, drew an ingenious parallel between thehomosexual individual and the criminal. Specialists, he said, distin-guished the occasional and the insane homosexual, and, finally, thoseborn inverted, who, from their earliest years experience an attractiontoward persons of the same sex and often exhibit special character-istics. He thought it strange that authorities such as Nacke, Lacas-sagne, Gross and Krafft-Ebing should refuse to credit the existenceof born criminals and yet affirm the congenital character and conse-quent irresponsibility of the born homosexual. Dr. Papillault re-marks that while he considers the term "born criminal" unsatisfac-tory, he believes there are among criminals a certain number who ap-proach what might be called the half-civilized type, who are less able,than normal persons to adapt themselves to the exigencies of modernsocial life. M. Enrico Ferri proposed to distinguish among the borncriminals those who are inferior, having preserved through atavisinancestral characteristics, and those on the contrary (some politicalcriminals, for example), who are in advance of their time. Dr. Papil-lault wittily observes that he would have no objection to such a cap-tivating theory if M. Ferri would point out the means of diagnosingthe atavistic from the eugenic criminal; but that, perhaps, Mr. Gal-ton and his Eugenics'Society may yet provide a method of recogniz-ing and cultivating the latter. Dr. Audenino drew another distinc-tion among the born criminals, namely, between those who representan accumulation of degenerate characteristics who constitute thetrue type, and those who have acquired- the type through morbidheredity simply, or through arrested development during the periodof gestation. The latter he would call the "congenital-acquired crim-inals."Leaving now the subject of "born criminals," so peculiarly thecreation of the Lombroson school, several of the most interestingpapers on general morphology are noted. M. Minovici reported aCONGRESS OF CRIMINAL ANTHROPOLOGY.study of 150 prostitutes and 50 female criminals in Roumania, com-pared with a series of 50 normal women. The anthropometric meas-urements, including shape, width and circumference of chest, size ofears, facial angle and cephalic index disclosed no marked differencesbetween the three classes. M. Minovici found in 400 prostitutes, 40cases of rachitis, 13 cases only of dysmenorrhea and four cases oftribadism. "En somme," says Papillault, "on ne peut que feliciter lesprostitutes roumaines de leur tenue physique et morale." Dr. Marropresented a study of some uncommon cranial anomalies, principallyof the middle occipital fossea. He claimed that his results accordedwith the theories of the Lombroson school. In another paper, Dr.Marro thought that the cerebral condition accompanying homicidemight be described as a "psychic hyperesthesia," which he defined asan excitation of the cerebral cortex, setting up a motor irritationwhich the individual is unable to control. The most important pre-disposing causes he considered to be chronic alcoholism, climatic con-ditions, such as periods of extreme heat, and the disturbances of theperiod of puberty. Brain anomalies were treated of in two communi-cations, one by M. Lattes on the convolutions of the brains of femalecriminals, the other by M. Roncoroni on anomalies in the brains of 33epileptics and 16 "born criminals." Neither, however, included anycomparison with normal brains.A number of interesting papers under the heads of ethology,sociology and economics are summarized by Dr. Papillault. ThebAnds of criminals, so common in Italy, was one point of attention.M. Prins stated that crimes committed by such bands were on the in-crease.- Dr. Angiolella spoke of the societies of brigands, noting thepersistence of the Camorra in the province of Bari under the name ofMalavita, and the organization of a new band in Calabria under thename of Piccioteria. The professional criminal as recruited from theservant class was the subject of a communication by M. Raymond deRyckere, and the same type as recruited from soldiers was treatedby Drs. F. di Cavallerleone and Consiglio llacido. Dr. Slingenbergexamined the influence on crime of the competition between the classes,concluding that there is a direct relation between criminality and classconflicts in the sense that in times of more violent class conflictscrime increases. A study of crime among Austrian laborers was pre-sented by M. Hugo Herz. He believed that modern industrial con-ditions which more and more take the woman away from the homeresult in an increase of crime; the most noticeable effects of this pro-gressive dissolution of the family being upon the children.582EDWIARD LINDSEY.The general tendencies of the discussions so far as they relate topractical action might be summarized in two propositions: First, toapply to convicts such rational treatment as will reform those whoare not beyond reformation; second, to arrest the formation of acriminal class by a preventive social hygiene. The last propositionwas particularly dealt with by M. M. Albanel, Van Hamel, Kahn,Magnaud and Mine. Gina Lombroso. To these ends studies by exactand scientific methods, both of criminals and of the organic and socialfactors of crime, must continue to be made just as in medicine pathol-ogy necessarily precedes therapeutics.The seventh congress was to have been held at Cologne duringAugust of this year, but has been postponed to October, 1911.The proceedings of each congress have been published under thetitle "Actes du Congres International d'Anthropologie Criminelle."Full accounts of the various congresses and summaries of the pro-ceedings have appeared in the ".Archives d'Anthropologie Criminelle"and also in the "Revue Scientifique." A very complete repprt of theproceedings of the second congress by Thomas Wilson appeared inthe Annual Report of the Smithsonian Institution for 1890, and thereis an account of the third congress in "Abnormal Man," by Dr.Arthur MacDonald.

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International Congress of Criminal Anthropology a Review

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