Anthropological criminology

Anthropological criminology (sometimes referred to as criminal anthropology, literally a combination of the study of the human species and the study of criminals) is a field of offender profiling, based on perceived links between the nature of a crime and the personality or physical appearance of the offender. Although similar to physiognomy and phrenology, the term "criminal anthropology" is generally reserved for the works of the Italian school of criminology of the late 19th century (Cesare Lombroso, Enrico Ferri, Raffaele Garofalo and Lorenzo Tenchini). Lombroso thought that criminals were born with detectable inferior physiological differences. He popularized the notion of "born criminal" and thought that criminality was a case of atavism or hereditary disposition. His central idea was to locate crime completely within the individual and divorce it from surrounding social conditions and structures. A founder of the Positivist school of criminology, Lombroso opposed the social positivism developed by the Chicago school and environmental criminology. On the other hand, Alphonse Bertillon (1853–1914) created a mugshot identification system for criminals prior to the invention of fingerprinting. Hans Gross (1847–1915), leading worker in the field of criminology was also involved in the development of the theory.Anthropological Criminology, North Carolina Wesleyan College, retrieved from here on March 10, 2007 The theory of anthropological criminology was influenced heavily by the ideas of Charles Darwin (1809–1882). However, the influences came mainly from philosophy derived from Darwin's theory of evolution, specifically that some species were morally superior to others. This idea was in fact spawned by social Darwinism but nevertheless formed a critical part of anthropological criminology. The work of Cesare Lombroso was continued by social Darwinists in the United States between 1881 and 1911.