The Lombrosian Myth in Criminology

Bibliographic Data

ID2199928
AuthorsAlfred Lindesmith, Alfred R Lindesmith, Yale Levin
Year1937
Volume42
Issue5
Pages653-671
Publication date1937-03-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueAmerican Journal of Sociology (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0002-9602 • E-ISSN: 1537-5390
PublisherUniversity of Chicago Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1086/217542
OpenAlexW2061342356
LanguageEN
Citations received27

The prevailing conception in this country of Lombroso as the founder of scientific criminology may best be described as a myth. Many earlier studies of crime closely parallel contemporary sociological studies. An extensive literature upon juvenile delinquency, professional crime, crime causation, and other aspects of criminology was already in existence when Lombroso began his work. The use of autobiographical documents, the employment of official statistics, the ecological approach, and the study of the criminal "in the open," were understood and applied long before the time of the Italian school. From a sociological viewpoint, the advent of Lombroso represents a retrogression or an interlude in the progress of criminology rather than a step in advance. The eclipse of the earlier work may perhaps best be explained as a result of shifting prestige values associated with the importation of social Darwinism into the social sciences, with the growing popularity, in the later part of the nineteenth century, of psychiatric and other individualistic or biological theories, and with the isolation of American criminology from earlier European development

Causation · Criminology · Juvenile delinquency · Political science · Popularity · Prestige · Social science · Sociology · Crime, Illicit Activities, and Governance · Historical and Scientific Studies · Law · Wildlife Conservation and Criminology Analyses

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