Criminal Sociology | Page 9

aspects of crime, and upon statistical data for the
influences of physical and social environment, instead of contenting
himself with mere abstract legal syllogisms.
On the other hand it is clear that sundry questions which have a direct
bearing upon criminal anthropology--as, for instance, in regard to some
particular biological characteristic, or to its evolutionary
significance--have no immediate obligation or value for criminal
sociology, which employs only the fundamental and most indubitable
data of criminal anthropology. So that it is but a clumsy way of
propounding the question to ask, as it is too frequently asked: ``What
connection can there be between the cephalic index, or the transverse
measurement of a murderer's jaw, and his responsibility for the crime
which he has committed?'' The scientific function of the
anthropological data is a very different thing, and the only legitimate
question which sociology can put to anthropology is this:--``Is the
criminal, and in what respects is he, a normal or an abnormal man? And
if he is, or when he is abnormal, whence is the abnormality derived? Is

it congenital or contracted, capable or incapable of rectification?''
This is all; and yet it is sufficient to enable the student of crime to
arrive at positive conclusions concerning the measures which society
can take in order to defend itself against crime; whilst he can draw
other conclusions from criminal statistics.
As for the principal data hitherto established by criminal anthropology,
whilst we must refer the reader for detailed information to the works of
specialists, we may repeat that this new science studies the criminal in
his organic and in his psychical constitution, for these are the two
inseparable aspects of human existence.
A beginning has naturally been made with the organic study of the
criminal, both anatomical and physiological, since we must study the
organ before the function, and the physical before the moral. This,
however, has given rise to a host of misconceptions and one- sided
criticisms, which have not yet ceased; for criminal anthropology has
been charged, by such as consider only the most conspicuous data with
narrowing crime down to the mere result of conformations of the skull
or convolutions of the brain. The fact is that purely morphological
observations are but preliminary steps to the histological and
physiological study of the brain, and of the body as a whole.
As for craniology, especially in regard to the two distinct and
characteristic types of criminals--murderers and thieves, an
incontestable inferiority has been noted in the shape of the head, by
comparison with normal men, together with a greater frequency of
hereditary and pathological departures from the normal type. Similarly
an examination of the brains of criminals, whilst it reveals in them an
inferiority of form and histological type, gives also, in a great majority
of cases, indications of disease which were frequently undetected in
their lifetime. Thus M. Dally, who for twenty years past has displayed
exceptional acumen in problems of this kind, said that ``all the
criminals who had been subjected to autopsy (after execution) gave
evidence of cerebral injury.''[3]
[3] In a discussion at the Medico-Psychological Society of Paris;

``Proceedings'' for 1881, i. 93, 266, 280, 483.
Observations of the physiognomy of criminals, which no one will
undervalue who has studied criminals in their lifetime, with adequate
knowledge, as well as other physical inquiries, external and internal,
have shown the existence of remarkable types, from the greater
frequency of the tattooed man to exceptionally abnormal conditions of
the frame and the organs, dating from birth, together with many forms
of contracted disease.
Finally, inquiries of a physiological nature into the reflex action of the
body, and especially into general and specific sensibility, and
sensibility to pain, and into reflex action under external agencies,
conducted with the aid of instruments which record the results, have
shown abnormal conditions, all tending to physical insensibility,
deep-seated and more or less absolute, but incontestably different in
kind from that which obtains amongst the average men of the same
social classes.
These are organic conditions, it must be at once affirmed, which
account as nothing else can for the undeniable fact of the hereditary
transmission of tendencies to crime, as well as of predisposition to
insanity, to suicide, and to other forms of degeneration.
The second division of criminal anthropology, which is by far the more
important, with a more direct influence upon criminal sociology, is the
psychological study of the criminal. This recognition of its greater
importance does not prevent our critics from concentrating their attack
upon the organic characterisation of criminals, in oblivion of the
psychological characterisation, which even in Lombroso's book
occupies the larger part of the text.[4]
[4] A recent example of this infatuation amongst one-sided, and
therefore ineffectual critics is the work of Colajanni, ``Socialism and
Criminal Sociology,'' Catania,