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The
discovery of the “fossette” and the theory of the criminal
man
Later editions of Criminal Man and the development of Lombroso studies
The last studies
The Cesare Lombroso Museum
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The last studies
Lombroso was aware that his atavistic theory of the criminal had been questioned in the writings of his own pupils and followers, including Enrico Ferri, and while remaining faithful to his early development of the anthropological theory of the criminal, introduced new elements into the study of the phenomenon of crime, in an attempt to avoid the sometimes barbed and scornful criticism levelled at him by other experts.
In the Funzione sociale del delitto (Social Function of Crime), published in 1896, the perspective broadens and Lombroso attempts a social analysis of crime on a vast scale, suggesting an interpretation of society and crime that includes not only the atavistic criminal, but sectors of public and political life, where new crimes “new branches of fraud or political intrigue, or of embezzlement” increase “as civilization advances”. Lombroso dares to challenge public opinion by putting forward a view of crime that also encompasses men of government, parliamentarians who perpetrate lies, fraud, vice, amorality and crime.
The conclusion Lombroso reaches regarding the social function of crime is that in the long run it generates, in its excesses, a reaction, which takes the form of a renewal of Lombroso’s ideas and a distrust of his positivist approach, which is replaced by a secular faith in the moral renewal of society, and the conviction that from crime (sin) regeneration is born.
During the last years of his life, Lombroso became passionately interested in paranormal and medium-
istic phenomena, spiritualism and hypnosis in an incompatible attempt to explain these phenomena by resorting to positivist science.
Cesare Lombroso died of angina in his home in Turin on 19 October 1909. He expressed the wish that an autopsy should be performed on his body by the Institute of Forensic Medicine in Turin.
Today nobody would support the scientific validity of Lombroso’s theories, but it is essential to stress the thrust and novelty of Lombroso’s work which, in taking bioanthropological data as its starting point paved the way for a multifaceted approach that also included social factors, which his pupils Ferri and Garofalo developed.
Through Lombroso, Italy began to question aspects that had been neglected until then and the study of crime as a human and social phenomenon was confronted for the first time.
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