Lombroso's critics

Question 1

What did Trade critique about Lombroso?

Answer 1

“I compare Lombroso to coffee, which does not nourish, but at least stimulates and prevents one from dying of inanity.”

Question 2

How did the French challenge Lombroso’s theory?

Answer 2

French jurists and medical legal experts joined together to mount a challenge to Lombroso and his school which resulted in a series of international congress’s in 1885

Question 3

What did the French propose?

Answer 3

An alternative sociological understanding of crime which in both the French and international context was favored

Question 4

When did Lombroso’s theory take a fatal hit?

Answer 4

1913, with the publication by Charles Goring by the English Convict (although the French had already diminished the influence of French anthropology by 1900)

Question 5

What did criminal anthropology coincide with in the 1880s?

Answer 5

The period in Europe in which the revision and update of criminal codes were based on classical ideas about free will (Lombroso was challenged against another theory of criminology)

Question 6

Who did Lombroso make a tax on?

Answer 6

Made a tax on the classical conception of crime and the notion of free will and responsibility

Question 7

What did Lombroso do to try and get his ideas across?

Answer 7

He held a conference in 1885 (at the same time classical school held a conference)

Question 8

How did the congress impact Lombrossian ideas?

Answer 8

The congress became an opportunity to state baldly Lombroso’s theory of the “born criminal”

Question 9

What were Lombroso’s thoughts on capital punishment?

Answer 9

Regarded capital punishment as a social defence and that capital punishment was the most effective means for social security

Question 10

Who was the main French critic against Lombroso?

Answer 10

Alexandre Lacassange

Question 11

What did Lacassange critique about Lombroso?

Answer 11

Refuted the idea of atavism

Question 12

What was important to Lacassange?

Answer 12

The social environment

Question 13

What did Lacassange warn against telling jurors and legislators?

Answer 13

Do nothing but cross there arms or construct prisons or asylums

Question 14

What happened in Paris in 1889?

Answer 14

The tables had turned and Lombroso and his supporters were put on the defence.

Question 15

What did Gabriel Tarde note that criminal anthropology did not provide?

Answer 15

An explanation for the differences between male and female crime rates?

Question 16

What did the French base their arguments on against Lombroso?

Answer 16

How unacceptable the theories of Lombroso were to the legal community
-Crime was not heredity, but rather controlled by the social environment

Question 17

True or false? Congress rejected the idea from the Italians that meetings should be held to discuss the reliability of Lombroso theories

Answer 17

True

Question 18

Why were the French so resistant of Lombroso’s approach to crime?

Answer 18

They were convinced that crime was related to the socioeconomic environment, poverty, broken families and alcoholism

Question 19

What did the French do throughout the 1880s and 1890s?

Answer 19

They French school continued to diminish Lombroso’s theories

Question 20

What was the turning point in 1889 for Lombroso’s theories?

Answer 20

It was declared that criminality is understand as a social phenomenon and not biological phenomenon

Question 21

What did Hans Gross argue about criminal anthropology?

Answer 21

Argued that criminal anthropology had falsely understood itself as the science of the physical and mental distinctiveness of the criminal (Hans Gross believed that no body yet has fully explained criminality)

Question 22

What did Gross’s criminalistic school believe?

Answer 22

An inquiry not just into the criminal but also the crime scene and everyone partaking in the investigation is crucial

Question 23

What did Gross believe we had to distinguish between?

Answer 23

Those who produced reliable knowledge and those who did not