Lombroso's Biological Explanations: Modern Criminal Psychology

Cesare Lombroso’s biological explanations: How relevant are they to modern criminal psychology?

Cesare Lombroso is thought of by many as the founding father of criminal psychology (Kushner 2011; Assael & Avanzini, 1997; Granieri and Fazio, 2011). When Lombroso was alive his theories on the biological explanations of crime were seen as cutting edge (Kurella, 1911) but after death his theories were ridiculed and denigrated (Gatti & Verde, 2012) with Abraham Verghese referring to them as “pseudoscience, utter rubbish” (Verghese, 2009: p239). Despite much criticism the author believes that a reappraisal of Lombroso’s work is necessary in order to conclude how relevant his biological explanations of crime are to modern criminal psychology.
Lombroso’s daughter Gina Lombroso-Ferrero provides an account of how Lombroso first came upon his theory of atavism. When Lombroso was a young doctor it was requested of him to perform an autopsy on a criminal named Viella who was an “Italian Jack the Ripper” (Lombroso-Ferrero 1911; p6). Upon performing the autopsy he noticed a hollow in the occiput of the skull, he named this the median occipital fossa. He also noticed hypertrophy of the vermis which he had found in apes and forty percent of members of the Aymaras tribe in Bolivia and Peru. This was the dawn of his theory of atavism; he declared that “At the sight of the skull… I seemed to see all at once… the problem of the nature of the criminal” (Lombroso-Ferrero 1911; p7). Following this discovery Lombroso felt that the presence of physical anomalies such as enormous jaws and strong canines in criminals was explained by atavism however this jaw size can be more likely linked to an excess of testosterone (Burriss, Little & Nelson, 2007). Lombroso lists a litany of physical characteristics he had found in criminals that he believed to be atavistic (Lombroso, 1911). Many of these characteristics are contentious and baseless such as a wrinkled face, Lombroso speaks of how the “wrinkled face takes us back
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