Dr Matthew Bacon joins us from Lombroso’s Museum of Criminal Anthropology at the University of Turin, Italy, to talk about the early history of the science of criminology, the problematic legacy of Lombroso’s theories and the influence of his ideas on research today.
In 1876, Cesare Lombroso published On Criminal Man in which he posited that criminals represent a particular type, distinct from non-criminals.
Lombroso’s legacy has been profound for knowledge, culture and for criminology. Ideas of biology as stigma led to racism, prejudice, ill-treatment and eugenics. Despite this legacy, his methods were part of a turn to positivistic research in criminology which remains deeply influential today. The positivist approach to crime looks for measurable characteristics of crime and criminals: biological, psychological, environmental or sociological, which can then be managed to alleviate the problem of crime.
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