Cesare Lombroso

“ Psychology. Here, as in all physical characteristics, criminals of passion are scarcely distinguishable from their fellow-men, except that we find in an excessive degree those qualities we consider peculiar to good and holy persons—love, honour, noble ambitions, patriotism. In fact, the motive of the crime is always adequate, frequently noble, and sometimes sublime. Love prompts certain natures to kill those who insult their beloved ones or are the cause of their dishonour and, in some cases, even the object of their affection who proves unfaithful. ”

“ I began dimly to realise that the a priori studies on crime in the abstract, hitherto pursued by jurists, especially in Italy, with singular acumen, should be superseded by the direct analytical study of the criminal, compared with normal individuals and the insane.
I, therefore, began to study criminals in the Italian prisons, and, amongst others, I made the acquaintance of the famous brigand Vilella. This man possessed such extraordinary agility, that he had been known to scale steep mountain heights bearing a sheep on his shoulders. ”

“ Born criminals form about one third of the mass of offenders, but, though inferior in numbers, they constitute the most important part of the whole criminal army, partly because they are constantly appearing before the public and also because the crimes committed by them are of a peculiarly monstrous character ”

“ In imitation of this principle, criminal anthropologists seek to devise a means of making offenders serviceable to civilisation by carefully analysing their tendencies and psychology, and fitting them into some suitable groove in the social scheme, where they may be useful to themselves and to others. Side by side with depraved instincts, criminals frequently possess invaluable gifts: an abnormal degree of intelligence, great audacity, and love of innovation. ”

“ The magnitude of a crime does not imply greater criminality on the part of its author, but rather that he is a man of brilliant endowments, whose culture and talents multiply his opportunities and means for evil. ”

“ Love is the spiritual sun of mankind. A ray shed by a human heart may spread far and wide, traversing unknown regions and sojourning with unknown races; and if powerless to revive some timid flower that has been numbed by the chilly night, it may still be stored up in the songs of a people, like the sunlight in green plants, to be retransformed at some future time into light and warmth. ”

“ Like savages, too, they are passionately fond of alcohol, orgies, and sensual pleasures, which alone rouse them to activity.
Orgies. Those who have observed children absorbed all day long by a game that pleases them, can understand the meaning of these words, spoken by a woman: "Criminals are grown-up children." The love of habitual debauch is so intense that, as soon as thieves have made some great haul or escaped from prison, they return to their haunts to carouse and make merry, in spite of the evident danger of falling once more into the hands of the police. ”

“ The army of progress is recruited from all ranks and conditions—men of genius, intellectual spirits who are the first to realise the defects of the old system and to conceive a new one, synthesising the needs and aspirations of the people; lunatics, enthusiastic propagandists of the new ideas, which they spread with all the impetuous ardour characteristic of unbalanced minds; criminals, the natural enemies of order, who flock to the standard of revolt and bring to it their special gifts, audacity and contempt of death. ”

“ Revolution is the historical expression of evolution and has always great and sublime ends in view. It is the struggle against an institution or a system which hinders the progress of a nation, never against any temporary oppression, no matter how unbearable it may be. The French revolution was not a struggle against an individual king or even a dynasty, but against the institutions of monarchy and feudalism ”

“ They are consumed by a passion for altruism and self-immolation, and experience a strange delight in martyrdom for their ideals. These men sweep the masses along with them and lead to victory with their propaganda, their inspired songs, and thrilling accents. Tyrtæus was not the only poet who led soldiers to war: every insurrection has had its own songs, in which the love of a whole people is crystallised.
Lunatics, unbalanced individuals, and saints are the promoters of progress and revolutions. ”

“ In order that the knowledge of good should be transformed into an ardent desire for its triumph, as food is converted into chyle and blood, it must be urged to action by elevated sentiments, and these are generally lacking in the criminal. ”

“ These ridiculous, cruel, and tyrannical prohibitions have certainly been largely instrumental in maintaining or, worse still, increasing her present state of inferiority and permitting her exploitation by the other sex. The very praises, not always sincere, alas, heaped on the docile victim, are often intended more as a preparation for further sacrifices than as an honour or reward. ”

“ In conclusion, the born criminal possesses certain physical and mental characteristics, which mark him out as a special type, materially and morally diverse from the bulk of mankind.
Like the little cage-bred bird which instinctively crouches and trembles at the sight of the hawk, although ignorant of its ferocity, an honest man feels instinctive repugnance at the sight of a miscreant and thus signalises the abnormality of the criminal type. ”

“ Any attempt to obtain forcibly a change in existing systems, to enforce by violence, for instance, the claims of free trade in a protectionist country, to plunge a nation into war or to incite workers to strike—all such actions represent the first steps in political crime, which reaches its climax in revolts and insurrections, and which victory alone can exalt above a host of blameworthy and base deeds, and crown with glory.
Revolution is the struggle between the tendency to immobility innate in a community, and the force which urges it to move. ”

“ The Italian revolution was not directed against foreign rule, which indeed was mild and generous in some parts of the country, but it voiced an imperious demand for independence indispensable to every people that desires to become truly civilised. ”

“ These unfortunate beings frequently show perfect mental clearness before the crime and even in the act of striking the fatal blow; yet their action is purely instinctive and not prompted by passion or any other cause. Although such individuals appear to reason, can it be said that they are in full possession of their mental faculties? If they are, how shall we explain the wholesale destruction of those they hold most dear? A husband kills the wife to whom he is sincerely attached; a father, the son he loves most; or a mother, the infant at her breast. ”

“ CHAPTER I THE BORN CRIMINAL A criminal is a man who violates the laws decreed by the State to regulate the relations between its citizens, but the voluminous codes which in past times set forth these laws treat only of crime, never of the criminal. ”

“ Since a revolution implies a change in the ideas of the masses and not of a minority, be this of the elect or merely of turbulent spirits, revolutions are rare occurrences in history and their effects are lasting. ”

“ Many criminals, indeed, allege repentance, but generally from hypocritical motives; either because they hope to gain some advantage by working on the feelings of philanthropists, or with a view to escaping, or, at any rate, improving their condition while in prison. Thus Lacenaire, when convicted for the first time, wrote in a moving strain to his friend Vigouroux in order to get money and help from him, "Repentance is the only course left open to me. You may well feel pleased at having turned a man from a path of crime for which he was not intended by nature." ”

“ The autobiographies of criminals show us that far from reforming evil-doers, prison is in reality a criminal university which houses all grades of offenders during varying periods; that far from being a means of redemption, it is a hot-bed of depravity, where are prepared and developed the germs which are later to infect society, yet it is to this incubator of crime that society looks for defence against those very elements of lawlessness which it is actively fostering. ”

“ Violence is more primitive than trickery and must always precede it, exactly as a more barbarous state in which property is gained or maintained by force, at the point of the sword, precedes a state in which ownership is regulated by means of contracts; and crime always adapts itself to the prevailing customs. ”

“ Like the pear which falls in autumn when the process of ripening has caused the gradual reabsorption of the juices in the stalk, revolution triumphs and the ancient system perishes when an entire people is persuaded of the necessity for a change. ”

“ CHAPTER II THE PREVENTION OF CRIME The curability of crime is an entirely novel idea, due to the Modern Penal School. As long as, in the eyes of the world, the criminal was a normal individual, who voluntarily and consciously violated the laws, there could be no thought of a cure, but rather of a punishment sufficiently severe to prevent his recidivation and to inspire others with a salutary fear of offending the law. ”

“ Political offenders, insurrectionists, and revolutionists are the men who seize the standard of progress and contest every inch of the ground with the masses, who naturally incline towards a dislike of a new order of things. ”

“ War, the original, perpetual and exclusive occupation of our ancestors, is eminently [Pg 215] suited to the tendencies of criminals. All the characteristics of the criminal, impulsiveness, cynicism, physical and moral insensibility, and invulnerability are valuable qualities in the soldier in times of war, especially when waged against savage and barbarous nations, when cunning and ability have to be employed against primitive races who laugh at the rules and ethics of civilised warfare. ”

“ In practice, however, it is extremely difficult to distinguish a revolt from a revolution since the results alone determine its nature, victory being the proof that the ideas have permeated the whole mass of the people. ”

“ The origin of passionate and political criminals is entirely diverse. Their criminality springs from an excess of noble passions, the impetuosity of which prevents them from exercising sober judgment and urges them to unpremeditated actions that afterwards cause them the deepest remorse. ”

“ Conspiracies, almost unknown in common asylums, and the murder of warders or officials are very common. Despairing of release and conscious of their irresponsibility, these wretched beings attack the warders, destroy the walls which confine them, murder and wound others and themselves; but at any rate the injury is limited to a small circle, and both harmless lunatics and common criminals are not contaminated. ”

“ By political crime we understand every action which attacks the laws, the historical, economical, political and social traditions of a nation or, in fact, any part of the existing social fabric, and which comes into collision with the law of inertia. ”

“ The cure of crime, as of any other disease, has the greater chance of success, the earlier it is taken in hand. Attention, therefore, should be specially concentrated on the childhood of those likely to become criminals: orphans and destitute children, who as adults contribute the largest contingent of criminality. A community seriously resolved to protect itself from evil should, above all, provide a sound education for those unfortunate waifs who have been deprived of their natural protectors by death or vice. ”

“ There is one disease that without other causes—either inherited degeneracy or vices resulting from a bad education and environment—is capable of transforming a healthy individual into a vicious, hopelessly evil being. ”

“ The repressive system may check unruliness, but can never influence for good. It involves little trouble on the part of those who make use of it and may be efficacious in the army, which is composed of responsible adults, but it has a harmful effect on the young, who err more from thoughtlessness than from evil disposition. Far more suitable in their case is the preventive system, which consists in making them thoroughly acquainted with the regulations they have to obey and in watching over them. ”

“ If imprisonment does not serve to intimidate instinctive criminals, still less is it a means of rehabilitation. In virtue of what law, should any man, even if he be normal, become reformed after a varying period of detention in a gloomy cell, where he is isolated from the better elements of society and deprived of every elevating influence—art, science, and high ideals; where he loses regular habits of work, the disciplining struggle with circumstances, and the sense of responsibility natural to free citizens and is tainted by constant contact with the worst types of humanity? ”

“ In all cases where opportunity plays an important part, the crime must necessarily be committed by individuals exposed to special temptations: cashiers who handle other people's money, which they may be tempted to spend with the illusory idea of being able later to replace what they have taken, officials and public men, who possess a certain amount of power and an apparent impunity, and bankers who are entrusted with wealth belonging to others, of which in that capacity they are accustomed to make use. ”

“ We have therefore an epilepsy sui generis, a variety of epilepsy which may be called criminal.
Thus the primitive idea of crime has become organic and complete. The criminal is only a diseased person, an epileptic, in whom the cerebral malady, begun in some cases during prenatal existence, [Pg 73] or later, in consequence of some infection or cerebral poisoning, produces, together with certain signs of physical degeneration in the skull, face, teeth, and brain, a return to the early brutal egotism natural to primitive races, which manifests itself in homicide, theft, and other crimes. ”

“ Not one of the conclusions drawn from the history and examination of woman can justify the tyranny of which she has been and is still a victim, from the laws of savage peoples, which forbade her to eat meat and the flesh of the cocoanut, to those modern restrictions, which shut her out from the advantages of higher education and prevent her from exercising certain professions for which she is qualified. ”