About Cesare Lombroso
Cesare Lombroso was born in November 1835 in Italy and became known as the founder of Criminology as a field of study.
Lombroso became a Criminologist amongst other things and also founded the Italian School of Criminology.
His work covers a lot of ground when discussing Criminology but in this post, I want to speak about just one of his theories and see if this theory is still in use today.
Some of Lombroso’s work did point to the fact that criminals were inferior to non-criminals meaning that they weren’t as good and should be looked down on, I will delve deeper into this idea later in this post.
Criminal type theory
Lombroso had the theory that criminals can be identified by characteristics such as :
- Higher cheekbones
- Bushy eyebrows
- Larger teeth
- drooping eyelids
- grooves and depressions in skin
Above are just a few examples of what Lombroso listed but it gives the idea of how easy it would be to be wrongly accused of being a criminal.
Lombroso believed that men would only need to have 5 or more of the characteristics to be classed as a born criminal, Women however only required 3.
Lombroso’s work did lead to a lot of people getting locked in institutions and other establishments due to his beliefs and they were locked up simply due to the way they looked.
Do you think that people are born criminals? – Comment your opinion
Can criminals really be identified by the way they look?
Lombroso’s work is fascinating and he was such an inspirational person in the world of Criminology but can criminals really be identified by just looking at them which is what Lombroso’s theory was supporting as well as the fact that people were born criminals.
Firstly in my opinion there is no right or wrong answer to this as there is supporting cases for both sides.
I think just by looking at someone you can’t assume that they are a criminal as this would lead to a lot of unsupported accusations that would lead to wrongful convictions.
You can also look at past cases and serial killers, very few have unusual characteristics but this doesn’t mean that they were born to kill as we all have unique characteristics and looks.
I do believe that there has an expectation of what a criminal needs to look like has been developed for example if a person has been to prison their tattoos instantly mean different things or they are expected to have tattoos on their face and other areas.
This is an example of Lombroso’s work still in action today as we still use stereotypes to make assumptions about people and what they do and at times this still leads to wrongful convictions and people treated differently by society when they may just look slightly different to the next person in line.
Overall my view is that criminals look like criminals due to the media coverage and how they are represented, The media use pictures that suit the stereotype of a criminal so pictures may show a run-down person to make them look more fitting.
I will go further into how the media represents a criminal in a future post.
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