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The criminology school
In 1902, the Minister of the Interior, Giovanni Giolitti, asked Professor Salvatore Ottolenghi, a police doctor, to hold a course in criminology for Rome Police officers. The course was held in the “identification” room at the Regina Coeli Prison.
The following year, a decree signed by the new Minister of the Interior, Zanardelli made the criminology course compulsory for all trainee police officers.
The course, which had now evolved into an actual school, was held in a room in the Carcere Nuove in Via Giulia, allocated by the director general of prisons Alessandro Doria. At the time this jail housed prisoners in transit through Rome, who were the “raw material” for the study of criminals.
The Criminology School, founded with the aim of teaching police officers how to apply the theories of criminal anthropology and psychology, sociology and forensic medicine for the purposes of research, the surveillance of criminals and the investigation of crimes, taught four subjects: anthropology and applied psychology, legal investigations, identification techniques and legal photography. In subsequent years a course in identification techniques was also introduced for prison guards.
In 1904 the school also became responsible for the identification of previous offenders at the Rome Police Headquarters, this was followed by the establishment of nineteen identification and legal photography offices in the main police stations that sent the fingerprint cards and identity photos to the Central Office in Rome, where the central file was compiled.
In 1907, when the prisoners were transferred from the Carceri Nuove and the School for Prison Guards moved to these premises, the Criminology School was relocated in Via delle Mantellate.
From the outset, a museum was established in the school to serve as a teaching aid.
It contained enlarged photographs of various criminal types; photographs and drawings of tattoos; photographs and on-the-spot reports on the scene of murders investigated by the criminology department; original writings by criminals and the criminally insane contributed by the prisons; items made by prisoners; “evil stratagems”; objects and weapons used in organized and ordinary crime.
When the Criminology Museum was established in 1930, most of this material entered its collection.
