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Italy’s early experiences
The Cesare Lombroso Museum
The Criminal Museum in Rome
The first premises: the Carceri Nuove
The second premises:
the prisons in Palazzo del Gonfalone
The Criminology Museum today
Essential Bibliography
Notes
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The rise of criminal museums and criminology
Italy and other European countries began to deal with the
problem of prison reform during the second half of the nineteenth
century. The combined effect of the studies carried out on
criminal man by Cesare Lombroso – the
founder of criminal anthropology – the analysis of penitentiary
systems and measures undertaken to improve prison conditions
was to spark a heated parliamentary debate that led to the
first prison reform in the Kingdom of Italy, passed in 1891.
There was widespread interest throughout Europe in studying
the motives and “cure” of the criminal, which contributed
to the foundation of museums dedicated to the phenomenon
of crime, to prison systems, to criminology and
to old instruments of torture.> 1 >
Thus the first museums devoted to crime, criminology and
criminal anthropology, which were nearly always annexed to
the scientific laboratories of universities and the forensic
laboratories at police stations, came into being. Their principal
aim was to display anatomical exhibits and prison objects,
things made by prisoners, evidence from the world of crime,
photographs of “types” taken for the purposes of identifying
and classifying criminals, and photographs of tattoos. |
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