The famous Italian forensic psychiatrist and criminologist of the 19th century, Cesare Lombroso, called for types with "non-photogenic" faces to be executed or isolated: they say that a person's criminal addictions are written on his face. His theories have long been recognized as erroneous, but many of his developments are valuable today. For example, a method of fixing anthropological data of a person.

Mikhail Vinogradov: psychics in the service of special services

Lombroso, born in 1836 in Verona, went down in history as one of the most famous criminologists of the century before last - he created the criminal anthropological direction in the science of criminal law. It is believed that he made a great contribution to the development of legal psychology. True, there is little practical benefit from his research today: often the most terrible maniac-criminals in person were no more terrible and no more beautiful than average citizens.

At the age of 19, while studying at the medical faculty of the University of Pavia, Lombroso published his first articles on psychiatry - on the problem of cretinism, which attracted the attention of specialists. He independently mastered such disciplines as ethnolinguistics, social hygiene.

In 1862, he was already a professor of mental illness, then director of a mental illness clinic, professor of legal psychiatry and criminal anthropology. In 1896, Lombroso received the chair of psychiatry at the University of Turin.

As a military doctor back in the early 1860s, Lombroso had a chance to take part in campaigns to combat banditry in the south of the country - then he undertook his first research on anthropometry. Summarizing them, he came to the conclusion that the hardships of life in poor southern Italy led to the fact that there appeared an "anomalous" type of people with various anatomical and mental abnormalities. He attributed them to a special anthropological variety - "criminal man."

Cesare Lombroso strictly recorded the anthropometric data of lawbreakers, using a special device for this - a craniograph, with which he measured the dimensions of parts of the face and head. He published his findings in the book Anthropometry of 400 Offenders, which became something of a textbook for many of the then detectives.

According to Lombroso's "born criminal" theory, offenders are not made, but born: criminals are degenerates. Therefore, it is impossible to re-educate them - it is better to preventively deprive them of their freedom or even life.

How to determine criminal inclinations in appearance? This is the hallmarks - "stigmata": a combination of psychological and physical characteristics. For example, a flattened nose, a low forehead, massive jaws - all of them, from the scientist's point of view, are characteristic of "primitive man and animals."

However, Lombroso also had critics. Already many of his contemporaries noted that his theory overlooks the social factors of crime. Therefore, as early as the end of the 19th century, the theory of anthropological crime was generally recognized as erroneous.

It is worth mentioning the curious work of Lombroso - "Genius and insanity" (1895). In it, the scientist put forward the thesis that genius is the result of abnormal brain activity on the verge of epileptoid psychosis. He wrote that the resemblance of brilliant people to the physiologically crazy is simply amazing. Well, many agreed with him then - they agree now: after all, often people of genius are really "out of this world."

By the way, it was Lombroso who was the first in the world to apply knowledge of physiology to detect deception, that is, he used a kind of lie detector. In 1895, he first published the results of the use of primitive laboratory instruments in the interrogation of criminals.

Cesare Lombroso died on October 19, 1909 in Turin, despite all his mistakes and delusions, remaining in the memory of posterity as an outstanding scientist, one of the pioneers of introducing objective methods into legal science. His works played an important role in the development of criminology and legal psychology.

In the contribution of Cesare Lombroso to the business of criminology to Pravda.Ru, a forensic psychiatrist, doctor of medical sciences, professor of psychiatry, founder and head of the Center for Legal and Psychological Assistance in Extreme Situations Mikhail ViktorovichVinogradov:

"Cesare Lombroso laid the foundation for modern psychiatric criminology. But at that time he did not have the opportunity to conduct a clear mathematical analysis of the signs that he identified. With what a person has written on his face, in gestures, in gait, facial expressions, all this reflects its essence, but Lombroso shifted the concepts of man in a special way, because man is, as it were, a twofold being: social and biological.

Within the framework of positivism, deviantological thought developed in three main directions: biological (anthropological), psychological and sociological. Unlike many other branches of sociological knowledge, in the analysis of deviant behavior, none of the theories has become dominant, and deviantology is still largely characterized by a pluralism of theoretical developments.

The first scientific attempts to explain deviant behavior (especially crimes) were predominantly biological in nature, based on which the cause of deviant behavior was sought in the innate properties of a person. This direction draws attention to the so-called natural, anthropological, physical factor, people's predisposition to various forms of deviant behavior (these can be facial features, physique, genetic measurement, etc.).

Most scientists nominate C. Lombroso (1836-1909), a prison doctor from the city of Turin, as the founder of the anthropological trend. It is worth noting that the decisive role in the intellectual formation of Lombroso was played by the philosophy of positivism, which affirmed the priority of scientific knowledge obtained experimentally. He conducted his first anthropometric studies as a military doctor back in the 1860s. during the campaign against bandit formations in southern Italy. Lombroso, with the help of statistics, managed to collect a lot of material that concerned social hygiene and criminal anthropology. On the basis of the collected material, Lombroso concludes that the backward socio-economic conditions of life in southern Italy led to the reproduction there of an anatomically and mentally abnormal type of people, an anthropological variety, which found its expression in a criminal personality - a “criminal man”.

In addition to research in the field of criminal anthropology, Lombroso is also known for his studies of political crime - "Political Crime and Revolution" (1890), "Anarchists. Criminal-psychological and sociological essay "(1895), "Genius and insanity" (1897).

Lombroso's ideas on criminal anthropology have gained wide popularity in Russia. They are represented by numerous both lifetime and posthumous Russian editions of his scientific writings, and in 1897 Lombroso, who participated in the congress of Russian doctors, was given an enthusiastic reception in Russia. However, in the legal science of Soviet Russia, the term "Lombrosianism" was criticized, especially Lombroso's doctrine of a born criminal. According to Soviet lawyers, it contradicted the principle of legality in the fight against crime, had an anti-people and reactionary orientation, since it condemned the revolutionary actions of the exploited masses.

In total, during his many years of practice as a prison doctor, Lombroso examined over eleven thousand prisoners. Using anthropological methods, he measured various parameters of the structure of the skull of numerous prisoners, their weight, height, length of arms, legs, torso, structure of ears and noses, and during the autopsy of the dead, the structure and weight of internal organs. C. Lombroso describes his main discovery quite poetically: “Suddenly, one morning on a gloomy December day, I discovered on the skull of a convict a whole series of atavistic abnormalities, ... similar to those found in lower animals. At the sight of these strange abnormalities - as if a clear light illuminated the dark plain to the very horizon - I realized that the problem of the nature and origin of criminals was solved for me.

The results of research and conclusions about the "born" criminal, who differs from other people in the features of "degeneration", were reflected in the work of C. Lombroso "Criminal Man" (1876). He viewed the criminal as an atavistic being who reproduces in his personality the violent instincts of primitive humanity and lower animals. The "criminal atavism" theory suggests that criminals have physical anomalies that make them physically similar to our distant ancestors. These remnants of the early stages of human evolution are expressed in the physical features of congenital criminals, so a congenital criminal is easy to distinguish from other people in appearance: he has large jaws, large fangs, a flattened nose and extra teeth (double rows, like snakes), attached earlobes . Moreover, Lombroso believed that such anomalies of the body are inherited and, therefore, crime is also inherited, because crime is a reflection of the defects of the body.

He created a whole series of "portraits" of various criminals - murderers, robbers, thieves, rapists, arsonists, etc. The classification of criminals he developed included five types: born, mentally ill, by passion (including political maniacs), random, habitual. Born criminals have highly developed vanity, cynicism, lack of guilt and the ability to repent, remorse, there is aggressiveness, vindictiveness, a tendency to cruelty and violence. To this day, in the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Rome, one can see a long gallery of ugly offenders, placed there at one time to illustrate the theories of Lombroso.

According to Lombroso, criminals have not reached their full development as human beings, and their actions usually do not correspond to the rules of human society. Lombroso and his followers believed that born criminals make up 40% of the total number of criminals (the rest are random criminals). He acknowledged that social conditions can influence the development of criminal behavior, but considered most criminals to be biologically degenerate and mentally retarded. Thus, born criminality was originally explained as an atavism: the criminal was understood as a savage who cannot adapt to the rules and norms of a civilized community.

The researcher proposed practical measures to combat crime, which included the timely detection, using tables developed by him, of the external signs of all "inborn" criminals before they commit a crime, and the immediate treatment of those who are treatable, as well as life imprisonment or the physical destruction of those who do not succumb to it. Such a position meant a rejection of the rule of law in the fight against crime, and this, above all, is the reactionary nature of the anthropological school.

However, further examinations of criminals, including in Russia, did not confirm Lombroso's conclusions. The very first checks of Lombroso's tables showed, however, that the presence of special physical features in criminals that distinguish them from all other modern people and bring them closer to primitive man is nothing more than a myth. So, back in 1913, the English criminologist C. Goring carried out a comparative study of three thousand people - prisoners (main group) and students of Oxford, Cambridge, colleges, military personnel (control group). The results showed no significant differences between the groups and were published in the book Prisoner in England. V. Healy came to similar conclusions in 1915. Pathologist D.N. Zernov, on the basis of specially conducted verification studies, also came to the conclusion that a born criminal does not exist, this could not be confirmed by qualified research in the field of anatomy.

With a wealth of factual material, Lombroso revealed that some crimes were seasonal and suggested that homosexuality was a contributing factor to the commission of the crime, which was later refuted.

Purely biological reasons explained Lombroso and his supporters and prostitution. So, in the work “A woman a criminal and a prostitute”, after an excursion into the history of prostitution and an analysis of its historical types (guest, courtier, civil, etc.), C. Lombroso and G. Ferrero classified prostitutes into congenital and accidental. Congenital prostitutes possessed "degenerative and atavistic signs", the so-called "moral insanity". As in the case of a born criminal, scientists have compiled a kind of portrait of born fallen women: they have large heads, body weight is not proportional to height, and in general, the body structure of prostitutes as a whole has a greater number of inconsistencies (male larynx, strongly developed jaws and cheekbones, features dental anomalies).

The anthropological theory also defines the characterological features of a prostitute and her inherent pathological personality traits: they do not have a developed sense of love, attachment to parents and close relatives, but inherent jealousy and vindictiveness.

By analogy with a born criminal, Lombroso also describes the accidental reasons for the fall of girls. To them, he, in particular, attributed deceit and rape, poverty and bad examples. Speaking of the paucity of such examples, Lombroso refers to the research of Paran-Duchatelet, who, out of 5144 interviewed prostitutes, found only 89 who chose this sad profession for themselves in order to support their old and sick parents or to provide a livelihood for their large family; yet others entered the path of debauchery through poverty, the betrayal of lovers, or, finally, the fact that they were abandoned and abandoned by their parents as children.

But even the objective reasons for the fall did not save them from the labels pasted by the representatives of the anthropological trend: they were also considered mentally and morally abnormal individuals, otherwise these women would be able to withstand the random circumstances described above.

Lombroso notes: “Of course, for many, poverty and lack of parental supervision are only occasional excuses for prostitution; the true reason for it lies in their lack of a sense of shame and in moral idiocy, due to which the girl first falls, and then gradually reaches the house of brothel. This applies especially to those unfortunates who are deprived of parental supervision. A woman with a passionate temperament who makes a wrong move out of love and is then abandoned by her treacherous lover would rather lay hands on herself than become a prostitute. No matter how great the poverty in which she is, she will not embark on the path of debauchery if she does not have a very weak sense of modesty by nature, or if she does not have a special inclination for gross pleasures and a luxurious life.

However, the reasoning of Lomroso and his supporters was immediately criticized on many fronts. First of all, his studies on prostitution were based on very narrow statistical material, and the small sample did not allow the conclusions to be objective. In addition, many scientists already then recognized that vindictiveness is inherent not only in congenital prostitutes, but also in ordinary women. Against the lack of maternal feeling in fallen women, A. Paran-Duchatelet always objected in his work “Prostitution in Paris”. It is interesting that Lombroso himself studies the position of Paran-Duchatelet in his work: “... however, Parent-Duchatelet has a different opinion about prostitutes. According to this best connoisseur of them, paying tribute at every step, one has to observe that a pregnant prostitute becomes the object of careful care for her companions, whose attentive attitude is doubled when she is relieved of her burden. Eternal disputes take place between them, either because of underwear for the newborn, or because of various trifles for the puerperal, whom each one tries to serve with each other in something. When a mother keeps a child with her, her comrades constantly interfere in her worries about him so much that she often has to give him into the wrong hands just because of this.

The views of Italian researchers in Russia were shared by a professor at the Imperial Military Medical Academy. V.M. Tarnovsky. He argued that the predisposition to vice being their genetic feature. “Destroy the proletariat, dissolve the army, make education accessible, give everyone the opportunity to marry, guarantee them peace in family life and convince everyone to live morally, honestly, according to Christian law, and then ... and then there will still be prostitution ... Under in one form or another it has existed and will exist in all cultural societies.

We are not surprised that there are thin and fat people, and the latter most often painfully overeat. So there are sexual gluttons, this is the result of a natural process of genetic pathology, so prostitution, like debauchery, will exist forever. Tarnovsky cited many examples from our and foreign life, when attempts to help women leave the world of debauchery did not lead to anything, they abandoned their well-established life and work and again went to the panel.

According to V.M. Tarnovsky, a born prostitute can be born in any social environment, in any case, she will always find the opportunity to lose her honor as soon as her sexual instinct awakens, after which she will gradually move on to active prostitution.

Like Lombroso, Tarnovsky admitted that certain social causes - economic, domestic, social - on occasion can "shape" random prostitutes. It is this "random" and small element in prostitution that is the bearer of suicides, arson of brothels, attempts to escape from them and complaints to the authorities about their keepers, because he feels the abnormality of the craft.

In many ways, Tarnovsky's views were influenced by an anthropometric study of prostitutes conducted by his wife, psychiatrist P.N. Tarnovskaya. The sample of her research included 150 prostitutes of the lowest rank, on the one hand, and 100 rural workers and 50 urban intelligent women, on the other. Tarnowska revealed signs of degeneration in 14% of peasant women, 2% of urban women, and 82.64% of prostitutes.

Tarnovskaya, like Lombroso, distinguishes common anthropological and psychological signs in women of this type: developed frontal sinuses, obesity, premature puberty, anomalies of reflexes (mainly reduced), insignificant mental development, dullness of the senses, a poor emotional world, extinguished maternal feeling, hereditary alcoholism, lack of modesty, deceit, vanity, imprudence, moral underdevelopment. She especially talks a lot about the lack of maternal love, believing that children are a burden for them, and that women during pregnancy do the impossible to get rid of them.

Tarnovskaya's studies were widely known and discussed not only in Russia, but also abroad. Lombroso also refers to them in her book: “Tarnowska has already pointed out the analogy that exists between morally insane people and prostitutes, and a more accurate study of many individual cases led to the conclusion that moral insanity is such a frequent occurrence among the latter that it determines even between them the predominant type . The proof of this is, on the one hand, the absence of the most natural feelings in congenital prostitutes, such as attachment to parents and sisters, and on the other hand, their premature corruption, jealousy and merciless vindictiveness.

Lombroso's views were generally refuted during his lifetime, but similar ideas were expressed over and over again. The students of C. Lombroso and his compatriots E. Ferri and R. Garofalo also recognized the role of biological, hereditary factors. E. Ferri considered one of the main merits of Lombroso to criminal anthropology that he brought light to the study of the modern criminal person, indicating that such a person, whether due to atavism, degeneration, arrest in development or other pathological condition, reproduces the organic or mental properties of a primitive person. As proof of the idea of ​​a born criminal, he cites the results of his own research: “When I examined 700 soldiers one after another in comparison with 700 criminals, then one day a soldier appeared before me and before the doctor who was present at this study, with a clearly expressed type of born killer, with huge jaws, with extremely developed temporal bones, with a pale and sallow complexion, with a cold and fierce physiognomy. Although I knew that persons convicted of important crimes were not allowed into the army, I still ventured to tell the major that this man must be a murderer. A little later, to my indirect questions, this soldier replied that he had served 15 years in prison for a murder he had committed as a child. The major looked at me with great surprise, and I said to myself: now let the critics, who have never carried out research on the criminal himself, argue without any sense that criminal anthropology is not justified!

In the same way, in 1889, at the penitentiary at Tivoli, the director told us that it contained only little idlers and no children convicted of important crimes; nevertheless, I pointed out to my students, among whom was Si-gele, a boy with unusually developed fangs and other signs of degeneration, as a natural killer. After questioning, it turned out that he was here temporarily, that he was sent to Generate in Turin to serve his sentence for having killed his little brother at the age of 9 by crushing his head with a stone.

In Paris, in the asylum of St. Anna, during the criminal-anthropological congress, in the presence of Tarde, Lacassagne and Benedict, I distinguished by the outlines of the head among the degenerates shown to us by Magnan, rapists (murderers) from thieves.

Critics of anthropological theory (and there were many) Ferry accuses of inability to investigate the specific features of criminals: since they were lawyers, not anthropologists, they did not have the relevant scientific research experience.

As Ferry and his followers argued, criminal liability should be based not on the principle of free will, but on the needs of society. Attention should not be paid to the guilt of a person, but to his potential danger to society. According to Ferry, punishment should perform a purely preventive, defensive function. He already singled out several causes of crimes: anthropological (organic structure, human psyche, personal properties of the criminal), physical (causes of the environment - climate, season, etc.) and social (population density, religious beliefs, alcoholism, economic and political system, system of criminal and civil legislation) determinants.

It is worth noting that Ferry attached great importance to preventive measures (improving working conditions, living and leisure activities, lighting streets and entrances, educational conditions, etc.), believed that the state should become an instrument for improving socio-economic conditions.

He distinguished five types of criminals:

born;

• “criminals due to insanity”, psychopaths and others suffering from mental anomalies;

• criminals out of passion;

random;

habitual.

According to Ferry, born and habitual criminals make up from 40 to 50% of the total mass of criminals. He characterizes the category of born criminals as people who are wild and cruel or lazy and rogue, who are not able to distinguish between murder, theft, crime in general, from any honest craft. “They are “criminals, as others are good workers”; their thoughts and feelings about crime and punishment are quite the opposite of what the legislator or criminalist assumes. On them, as Romagnosi said, the punishment served is less effective than the fear of the expected punishment; the former does not even have any effect on them at all, since they look upon prison as a refuge where they are provided with food, especially in winter, without having to work too hard, even sitting more often with folded hands; at most, they regard punishment as a risk to their trade, similar to the risk associated with many honest trades, such as, for example, the risk of falling from scaffolding, which masons are exposed to, or the risk of train collisions, which are exposed to stokers. It is they, together with habitual criminals, who, under the guise of two typical and opposite groups - murderers and thieves, make up the cadres of those criminals who, not having time to get out of jail, become recidivists - cadres of permanent boarders of all detention houses, well known to both judges and jailers; they have to serve 10 or even 20 court sentences during their life, unless they have committed a single major crime; and with them the legislator, turning a blind eye to the data of everyday experience, continues to wage a futile and costly struggle, threatening them with punishment for constantly repeated crimes, which no one is afraid of.

Despite the obvious interest in this group, Ferry gives a description of other categories of criminals. Among the lunatics, he is most interested in the morally lunatic, who have no or atrophied "moral sense." In addition to the morally insane, as Ferry relates, there is a whole mass of unfortunate people who are ill with the most common, more or less obvious form of mental disorder and often commit the most terrible crimes in this morbid state, for example, under the influence of persecution mania, violent insanity, epilepsy, etc. .

Habitual criminals, according to the scientist, completely indulge in crime, acquire a chronic habit of it and make it a real profession. He sees the main reason for the deviant behavior of this group of people in the fact that the general imprisonment cripples them physically and morally; they "stupefy" under the influence of solitary confinement or coarsen under the influence of alcoholism. Ferry makes a very important and unusual conclusion for his time: this category commits a crime because society leaves them without help after release, just as he did not support them before imprisonment, thereby dooming them to poverty, idleness and temptation. It is on the readaptation of former prisoners that the efforts of modern European post-penitentiary psychology are directed, which pays great attention to the development of technologies for the adaptation and rehabilitation of convicts.

Criminals of passion, according to Ferry, are a particularly pronounced variety of random criminals. These include people of a sanguistic or nervous temperament with increased sensitivity. Most often they commit a crime at a young age under the influence of a sudden explosion of passion, anger, unsatisfied love, hurt feelings. The commission of a crime is preceded by a strong agitation of the future criminal, by virtue of which he commits it openly and often by ill-chosen means. Among other characteristic features characteristic of criminals by passion, Ferry notes their full confession of their guilt, deep repentance, often leading to suicide.

Random criminals, according to Ferry, do not have a natural inclination to crime, but they commit it under the influence of various temptations. However, the scientist insists that external incentives alone for committing a deviant act would not be enough if they were not assisted by some internal predisposition. “So, for example, during a famine or a very harsh winter, not everyone is engaged in theft; but some prefer to live in poverty, remaining honest, others, at most, will go to beg; and even among those who decide to commit a crime, some confine themselves to simple theft, while others go as far as theft with violence and with weapons ... however, there is still the main difference between an accidental and a born criminal, that for the latter, external causes are a secondary stimulus compared to with an internal propensity for criminal behavior, forcing him to look for an opportunity to commit a crime and commit the latter, while the former show rather weak resistance to external stimuli, which, as a result, acquire the significance of the main determining force.

Following Lombroso, Ferri proposes practical measures for the system of punishment (he called them reforms), because, in his opinion, contemporary criminal codes for protecting society from crime were ineffective. He insists that the measures of society's defense against crime must be adapted to the anthropological categories of criminals, thus denying the idea of ​​a single punishment.

As the well-known criminologist A.M. Yakovlev, the anthropological concept began to penetrate into the practice of criminal justice. Baron Raphael Garofalo, a prominent judge of the Court of Criminal Appeal of the city of Naples, strongly attacked in 1914 the proportionality of punishment, or, in other words, the obligation that the severity of the punishment should correspond to the gravity of the crime, which he dismissively described as "the tariff system of punishment." In his opinion, it is impossible to establish the real gravity of the crime, he argued. “There are too many elements to take into consideration. We must take into account both the material harm and the degree of immorality of the criminal act, its danger and the degree of anxiety it arouses. By what right, he asked, can we single out any one of these elements and ignore the others? Instead of all this, Garofalo proposed to take into account only the degree of harm that can be expected from the offender, or, in other words, the degree of his ability to commit a crime.

But the external manifestations of criminal inclinations were far from the only sphere of interest of the scientist.

catch a liar

Few people know that the authorship of the modern polygraph () belongs to Cesare Lombroso. The prototype of the device invented by the scientist was called a hydrosphygmometer. With the help of this unit, Lombroso measured the blood pressure and pulse of the criminals and tried to assess the reaction of the suspects to the photographs shown to them and the questions asked.

The scientist tested the device for the first time during the interrogation of a robbery suspect. When the detainee was asked about the details of the theft, his blood pressure remained normal. However, when the investigator started talking about another case - about fraud with other people's passports - the hydrosphygmometer recorded a change in indicators. As it turned out later during the investigation, the suspect was really involved in the passport scam, but he had nothing to do with the robbery!

The device was next used during a rape investigation. The police were confident in the guilt of the pimp they caught, who was repeatedly prosecuted. However, the suspect's blood pressure was normal when he was shown photographs of the victim.

When Lombroso drew the attention of the investigator to this, he only brushed it off - in his opinion, the seasoned recidivist had long ceased to experience pangs of conscience and was not afraid of anything, even severe punishment. Then Cesare Lombroso decided to conduct an additional experiment and asked the alleged criminal a mathematical problem. As soon as the subject saw a long column of numbers that had to be added up in his mind, the device immediately showed a decrease in pressure and an increase in heart rate. This means that the detainee knows the feeling of fear! Lombroso insisted on an additional investigation, and soon the real criminal was found, and the "amateur" of mathematics turned out to be nothing to do with it.

Inferior people

Cesare Lombroso was born in 1836 in the family of a wealthy merchant in Verona. After graduating from the gymnasium, Cesare began to study anthropology at the University of Pavia, and later became interested in both psychiatry and neurophysiology.

Portrait of Cesare Lombroso, 1891 Photo: wikipedia.org / Photo by V. Chekhovsky, engraved by B.A. Putsa

Teachers of the soul doted on a capable student. Cesare not only brilliantly mastered the program, but also diligently studied additionally. For example, in order to better understand the characteristics of people belonging to different races, he began to study foreign languages, including Chinese and Aramaic.

However, the years of study at the university were by no means cloudless. At 18, Cesare Lombroso ended up behind bars! The young man was suspected of participating in an anti-government conspiracy - at that time revolutionary sentiments were in full swing in northern Italy, because this part of the country was under the control of Austria-Hungary. Lombroso was released from prison rather quickly - he even managed to pass all the exams on time. However, being in the cell made a huge impression on the student: the criminals whom he had a chance to see literally struck him with their faces and manners. Most of them were so rude and uncouth that Cesare suspected them of cretinism.

Interesting

In addition to anthropology and psychiatry, Cesare Lombroso was fond of graphology - the study of human handwriting. When Lombroso was shown the manuscript of Leo Tolstoy, the psychiatrist declared that the handwriting belonged to ... a woman with hysterical inclinations.

Having been released, the gifted student wondered if criminal inclinations are a sign of any inferiority? And if so, how does this inferiority manifest itself in appearance? After graduating from university, Lombroso decided to continue his studies in science, and he chose cretinism as the topic of his research.

heavy legacy

When Lombroso was 27 years old, he ended up in the army. The young scientist simply could not stand aside when the country defended its independence from Austria. And after the revolution ended with the defeat of the rebels, the scientist continued to serve in the army, but already as a military doctor in a military unit that was engaged in the fight against banditry in southern Italy.

It was at that time that Lombroso began to seriously seek confirmation of his theory that biological causes were at the heart of crime.

Armed with a caniograph - a device created specifically for measuring faces by Lombroso - the scientist enthusiastically measured the noses, foreheads, superciliary arches and other parts of the face of the captured bandits. After the notes were systematized, Lombroso came to a sensational conclusion. According to his hypothesis, criminals are not made, but born! After all, criminal inclinations, according to Lombroso, are nothing but a “legacy” inherited from animals! And the killers and rapists themselves can be considered either underdeveloped or degenerates. The reason for this conclusion was that most of the examined Lombrosos, to one degree or another, had such facial features as a flattened nose, low forehead, close-set eyes, that is, signs inherent in primitive man.

Scandalous views

When the revolution in Italy was over, and its consequences were eliminated, Lombroso continued his study of criminal types and the characteristic external features of the inhabitants of prisons. Until his death in 1909, the scientist served as professor of psychiatry and criminal anthropology at the University of Turin. Despite the fact that Lombroso's work caused a flurry of criticism, he continued to command respect in the scientific community.

And there was something to criticize. After all, if you follow Lombroso's theory, the future criminal must be identified and imprisoned even in childhood, since his biological type will still force him to do something illegal. But what about education? What about social factors?

Scolded and other works of Lombroso. His book "Genius and Madness", in which the scientist found signs of mental illness in great musicians, poets, artists, gave rise to a wave of indignation. How can you declare great people crazy, and even go unpunished just because all the characters in the book died long ago!

However, despite the fact that Lombroso's theories were, to put it mildly, ambiguous, his developments are still used. And the polygraph is not the only one. The method of fixing the anthropological data of a person, created by Lombroso, his division of criminals into psychological types, his works on the study and systematization of tattoos - all this has not become outdated to this day.

They don't become criminals, C. Lombroso said, criminals are born.

A criminal is an atavistic being who reproduces in his personality the violent instincts of primitive humanity and lower animalsGertsenzon A.A. Methods of criminological study of the identity of the offender. M., 2004. S. 221..

Criminals have distinctly different physical traits. Innate individual factors are the main causes of criminal behavior, he argued.

Lombroso developed a table of signs of a born criminal - such traits (stigmas), by identifying which, by directly measuring the physical features of a person, it was possible, he believed, to decide whether we are dealing with a born criminal or not Criminology: ed. N.F. Kuznetsova, V.V. Lunaev, 2nd edition M; Wolters Kluwer-2005, p. 192.

The very first checks of Lombroso's tables showed, however, that the presence of special physical features in a criminal that distinguishes them from all other modern people and brings them closer to primitive man is nothing more than a myth.

In 1913, the English criminologist S. Goring tested Lombroso's study by comparing prisoners with students from Cambridge (1000 people), Oxford and Aberdeen (959 people), military personnel and college teachers (118 people). It turned out that there were no differences between them and the criminals.

In Lombroso's book, attention was drawn primarily to the thesis of the existence of an anatomical type of a born criminal, that is, a person whose criminality is predetermined by his certain lower physical organization, atavism or degeneration.

However, subsequent thorough examinations of criminals, including in Russia, did not confirm his conclusions.

So, the pathologist D. N. Zernov, on the basis of specially conducted testing studies, came to the conclusion that a “born criminal” does not exist; qualified research in the field of anatomy failed to confirm its existence.

Zernov noted that among criminals there are people with signs of degeneration in the same way as among non-criminal people. Their number, in all probability, is the same among both criminals and non-criminals, and therefore the average numbers are the same.

C. Lombroso attached great importance to the dissemination and development of his theory, which received a wide response at the International Legal Congress that opened in Lisbon on April 4, 1889. Lombroso C. A crime. The latest advances in science. Anarchists. M., 2004. S. 211.

However, already in the XIX century. the theoretical constructions of C. Lombroso were criticized. One of these critics was the famous German lawyer F. von List.

Recognizing the importance of addressing the identity of the criminal, F. von List, nevertheless, pointed out: C. Lombroso is far from the truth, believing that most criminals are prone to epilepsy and that in almost any criminal one can find the characteristic signs of a wild man. List F. background. Tasks of criminal policy. Crime as a socially pathological phenomenon. M., 2004. S. 15.

F. von List, in his publications, sought to show that it is necessary to take into account both the social conditions that give rise to crime and the characteristics of the offender's personality. S. 92..

This led to the conclusion that the anthropological and sociological schools in criminology without each other would not be able to give an accurate answer regarding the crime.

A consistent critic of the exceptional anthropologization of criminology was, as already noted, S. Ya. Bulatov.

In the monograph "Criminal Policy of the Age of Imperialism", he showed the inconsistency of the so-called natural science experiments, which served as the basis for considering criminals as a supposedly special group of people, something akin to a special race Bulatov S.Ya. Criminal policy of the era of imperialism. M., 1933..

S.Ya. Bulatov saw the reasons that prompt a person to embark on the path of committing crimes in social existence, in social relations that take shape in the conditions of class struggle.

Ch. Lombroso developed his views over time, drawing attention to certain socio-economic causes of the emergence and growth of crime.

In particular, he noted that “poverty is a source of crimes, although not very gross and cruel in their form, but rather limited in number.

Meanwhile, the artificial endless needs of rich people also create numerous types of special crimes.

The evolution of C. Lombroso's views did not go unnoticed by S. Ya. Bulatov. He gives a detailed analysis of the views of the founder of the anthropological school of criminology and the approaches of his followers.

As a result of a comprehensive study, he comes to the conclusion: “The anthropological school is not a school of determinism, but of fatalism, a school not of materialism, but of idealism disguised as materialism, since it turns a class historical phenomenon - crime into a supraclass, ahistorical phenomenon, “eternal, like birth like death."

At the same time, of course, it must be borne in mind that the views of scientists are largely determined specifically by the historical situation in which they live.

It is in this vein that one should evaluate the achievements of a scientist, his real contribution to the development of science, and not those opportunities that were not realized for one reason or another.”

Despite the fallacy of Lombroso's position about the existence of a variety of born criminals, one cannot deny his contribution to the development of criminology Begimbaev S.A. Ideas S.Ya. Bulatov about the anthropological theory of crime. State and law. No. 10. 2008. P. 25 - 27..

It was Lombroso who began researching the factual material, raised the question of the causality of criminal behavior and the identity of the criminal. His main idea is that a cause is a chain of interrelated causes.