Cesare Lombroso: Methodological ambiguities and brilliant intuitions

Abstract

This paper on Cesare Lombroso aims to assess his contribution to the criminological sciences. Although much praised worldwide, Lombroso was also the target of scathing criticism and unmitigated condemnation. Examination of Lombroso's method of data collection and analysis reveals his weakness. Indeed, his approach was extremely naive, simplistic and uncritical, aimed at irrefutably demonstrating the hypotheses that he championed, without exercising the methodological caution that was already beginning to characterize scientific research in his day. However, we must acknowledge that his biological theories of crime are undergoing new developments as a result of the recent success of biological psychiatry. On the other hand we should recognize that his work was not limited to his biological central theory; rather, it covered a range of cues and concepts, for the most part ignored, that demonstrate his interest in the economic, cultural and social factors that impact on crime. For these reasons, Lombroso appears to have anticipated many modern conceptions regarding delinquent behavior and criminal justice, such as those of restorative justice, the so-called "situational" theories of criminal behavior and white collar crime.