Criminal Man

Criminal Man

  • Author: Gibson, Mary; Rafter, Nicole Hahn; Lombroso, Cesare; Lombroso, Cesare
  • Publisher: Duke University Press
  • ISBN: 9780822337119
  • eISBN Pdf: 9780822387800
  • Place of publication:  Durham , United States
  • Year of digital publication: 2006
  • Month: July
  • Pages: 448
  • DDC: 364.3
  • Language: English
Cesare Lombroso is widely considered the founder of criminology. His theory of the “born” criminal dominated European and American thinking about the causes of criminal behavior during the late nineteenth century and the early twentieth. This volume offers English-language readers the first critical, scholarly translation of Lombroso’s Criminal Man, one of the most famous criminological treatises ever written. The text laid the groundwork for subsequent biological theories of crime, including contemporary genetic explanations.

Originally published in 1876, Criminal Man went through five editions during Lombroso’s lifetime. In each edition Lombroso expanded on his ideas about innate criminality and refined his method for categorizing criminal behavior. In this new translation, Mary Gibson and Nicole Hahn Rafter bring together for the first time excerpts from all five editions in order to represent the development of Lombroso’s thought and his positivistic approach to understanding criminal behavior.

In Criminal Man, Lombroso used modern Darwinian evolutionary theories to “prove” the inferiority of criminals to “honest” people, of women to men, and of blacks to whites, thereby reinforcing the prevailing politics of sexual and racial hierarchy. He was particularly interested in the physical attributes of criminals—the size of their skulls, the shape of their noses—but he also studied the criminals’ various forms of self-expression, such as letters, graffiti, drawings, and tattoos. This volume includes more than forty of Lombroso’s illustrations of the criminal body along with several photographs of his personal collection. Designed to be useful for scholars and to introduce students to Lombroso’s thought, the volume also includes an extensive introduction, notes, appendices, a glossary, and an index.

  • Contents
  • List of Tables
  • List of Illustrations
  • Acknowledgments
  • Editors’ Introduction
  • EDITION 1
    • Editors’ Foreword
    • Author’s Preface
    • 1 Criminal Craniums (Sixty-six Skulls)
    • 2 Anthropometry and Physiognomy of 832 Criminals
    • 3 Tattoos
    • 4 Emotions of Criminals
    • 5 Criminals and Religion
    • 6 Intelligence and Education of Criminals
    • 7 Jargon
    • 8 Criminal Literature
    • 9 Insanity and Crime
    • 10 Organized Crime
    • 11 Atavism and Punishment
  • EDITION 2 (1878)
    • Editors’ Foreword
    • Author’s Preface
    • 12 Suicide among Criminals
    • 13 Criminals of Passion
    • 14 Recidivism, Morality, and Remorse
    • 15 Handwriting of Criminals
    • 16 Etiology of Crime: Weather and Race
    • 17 Etiology of Crime: Civilization, Alcohol, and Heredity
    • 18 Etiology of Crime: Age, Sex, Moral Education, Genitals, and Imitation
    • 19 Prevention of Crime
    • 20 Penal Policy
    • Appendix 1 Giovanni Cavaglià
    • Appendix 2 A Medical Examination of Parricide and Insanity
  • EDITION 3 (1884)
    • Editors’ Foreword
    • Author’s Preface
    • 21 Crime and Inferior Organisms
    • 22 Crime and Prostitution among Savages
    • 23 Origins of Punishment
    • 24 Moral Insanity and Crime among Children
    • 25 Anomalies of the Brain and Internal Organs
    • 26 Photographs of Born Criminals
    • 27 Sensitivity and Blushing in Criminals
    • 28 Moral Insanity and Born Criminality
    • 29 Summary of Edition 3
  • EDITION 4 (1889)
    • Editors’ Foreword
    • Author’s Preface
    • 30 Metabolism, Menstruation, and Fertility
    • 31 Criminal Communication
    • 32 Art and Industry among Criminals
    • 33 The Epileptic Criminal
    • 34 Epileptics and Born Criminals
    • 35 Physiology and Etiology of Epilepsy
    • 36 The Insane Criminal
    • 37 Biology and Psychology of Insane Criminals
    • 38 The Alcoholic Criminal
    • 39 The Hysterical Criminal
    • 40 The Mattoid
    • 41 The Occasional Criminal
  • EDITION 5 (1896–97)
    • Editors’ Foreword
    • 42 Criminal Craniums
    • 43 Anthropometry and Physiognomy of 6,608 Criminals
    • 44 Political Criminals
    • 45 Etiology of Crime: Urban Density, Alcoholism,Wealth,and Religion
    • 46 Etiology of Crime: Heredity, Sex, and Politics
    • 47 Prevention of Crime
    • 48 Synthesis and Penal Applications
  • Appendix 1 Comparison of the Five Italian Editions
  • Appendix 2 Illustrations in the Five Italian Editions
  • Notes
  • Glossary
  • References
  • Index

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