Book-bot.com - read famous books online for free

Criminal Sociology by Enrico Ferri
page 21 of 307 (06%)
This is all; and yet it is sufficient to enable the student of
crime to arrive at positive conclusions concerning the measures
which society can take in order to defend itself against crime;
whilst he can draw other conclusions from criminal statistics.

As for the principal data hitherto established by criminal
anthropology, whilst we must refer the reader for detailed
information to the works of specialists, we may repeat that this
new science studies the criminal in his organic and in his
psychical constitution, for these are the two inseparable aspects
of human existence.

A beginning has naturally been made with the organic study of the
criminal, both anatomical and physiological, since we must study
the organ before the function, and the physical before the moral.
This, however, has given rise to a host of misconceptions and one-
sided criticisms, which have not yet ceased; for criminal
anthropology has been charged, by such as consider only the most
conspicuous data with narrowing crime down to the mere result of
conformations of the skull or convolutions of the brain. The fact
is that purely morphological observations are but preliminary
steps to the histological and physiological study of the brain,
and of the body as a whole.

As for craniology, especially in regard to the two distinct and
characteristic types of criminals--murderers and thieves, an
incontestable inferiority has been noted in the shape of the head,
by comparison with normal men, together with a greater frequency
of hereditary and pathological departures from the normal type.
Similarly an examination of the brains of criminals, whilst it
DigitalOcean Referral Badge