Another wonderful column! The criminalization of sex is quite interesting when one sees the different behaviors that have been deemed as bad. You raise some really interesting points regarding Lombroso and his views on female crime.
I also wanted to engage with interaction. How determinist was he during his phase? Is Lombroso still advocating locking criminals up or is the interaction a way to redeem those who have committed crimes. I can see how this would be different for different kinds. Given his views, it would seem habitual criminals appear to be redeemable given that their criminal activities result from ignorance and poor environment whereas criminals by passion seemed harder to "cure." Did Lombroso argued that the frequency of atavisms were different in each category?
Thank you for your kind words! You raise some interesting questions. How determinist was Lombroso during this phase? Well, one has to suspect that by the time he was talking about interactions, he can’t have been quite so determinist as previously. At least he can’t quite have been a *biological* determinist, though determinism does come in various flavours. Certainly he as always in favour of ‘social defence’ when it came to born criminals but I believe he had a softer his stance towards, say, criminaloids. The problem here is how to find out: Lombroso was writing massive multi-volume textbooks by this point & I don’t know any libraries that carry them, let alone anyone who has read them!
I imagine Harvard must have some, if not all, of them. They claim they can get a lot of stuff and their librarians do work miracles (in my short experience). Sadly my Italian is rather limited and my latin non-existent.
Mine too! I can still decline the occasional verb in Latin, but other than that I can't do much. It wouldn't make me a sparkling guest at a Latin party, I fear. Someone should make a modern translation of all of Lombroso's work, maybe. I wonder whether there would be a market for it.
Female criminality is an interesting subject, and the impact of criminal acts perpetrated by women on our collective psyche seems much more daunting then by men since we are conditioned to think women are incapable of criminal violence. Either way, good read!
Thank you for your kind words! I'm glad you enjoyed the article. You are right about female criminals. Somehow a Rose West or a Myra Hindley can't help seeming somehow more of a shock than a Fred West or an Ian Brady. And Bonnie seems more of an aberration than Clyde. Interesting points and worthy of further investigation!
Thanks for you comment & kind words. Yes, I am a little sceptical about changes in nomenclature myself. As you indicate, it’s not as if they make much of a difference to anyone’s actual working conditions. Perhaps there us a whiff of the etymological fallacy here - the idea that you can make something more palatable by giving it a new name. When I think like that, though, I try to remind myself that I am a bit of an old grump & resistant to change anyway. There may well be some empirical research on the impact of name-changes like this one, but I’m not aware if any!
Another wonderful column! The criminalization of sex is quite interesting when one sees the different behaviors that have been deemed as bad. You raise some really interesting points regarding Lombroso and his views on female crime.
I also wanted to engage with interaction. How determinist was he during his phase? Is Lombroso still advocating locking criminals up or is the interaction a way to redeem those who have committed crimes. I can see how this would be different for different kinds. Given his views, it would seem habitual criminals appear to be redeemable given that their criminal activities result from ignorance and poor environment whereas criminals by passion seemed harder to "cure." Did Lombroso argued that the frequency of atavisms were different in each category?
Thank you for your kind words! You raise some interesting questions. How determinist was Lombroso during this phase? Well, one has to suspect that by the time he was talking about interactions, he can’t have been quite so determinist as previously. At least he can’t quite have been a *biological* determinist, though determinism does come in various flavours. Certainly he as always in favour of ‘social defence’ when it came to born criminals but I believe he had a softer his stance towards, say, criminaloids. The problem here is how to find out: Lombroso was writing massive multi-volume textbooks by this point & I don’t know any libraries that carry them, let alone anyone who has read them!
I imagine Harvard must have some, if not all, of them. They claim they can get a lot of stuff and their librarians do work miracles (in my short experience). Sadly my Italian is rather limited and my latin non-existent.
Mine too! I can still decline the occasional verb in Latin, but other than that I can't do much. It wouldn't make me a sparkling guest at a Latin party, I fear. Someone should make a modern translation of all of Lombroso's work, maybe. I wonder whether there would be a market for it.
Female criminality is an interesting subject, and the impact of criminal acts perpetrated by women on our collective psyche seems much more daunting then by men since we are conditioned to think women are incapable of criminal violence. Either way, good read!
Thank you for your kind words! I'm glad you enjoyed the article. You are right about female criminals. Somehow a Rose West or a Myra Hindley can't help seeming somehow more of a shock than a Fred West or an Ian Brady. And Bonnie seems more of an aberration than Clyde. Interesting points and worthy of further investigation!
I so get this! And to quote Kate Hepburn "Seldom do women make history."
And yet she did! She was incredibly cool. Thanks very much for reading.
Thanks for you comment & kind words. Yes, I am a little sceptical about changes in nomenclature myself. As you indicate, it’s not as if they make much of a difference to anyone’s actual working conditions. Perhaps there us a whiff of the etymological fallacy here - the idea that you can make something more palatable by giving it a new name. When I think like that, though, I try to remind myself that I am a bit of an old grump & resistant to change anyway. There may well be some empirical research on the impact of name-changes like this one, but I’m not aware if any!