Sunday e-mail 30th June
What to expect this week. The Italian School.
Introducing a big week for the Crime & Psychology Substack!
Thank your lucky stars, thank our triumphant tradition of treating you super subscribers somewhat splendidly, (or simply thank your friendly neighbourhood psychologist by buying me a coffee!) but an authentic abundance of peerless publications will be winging its wondrous way to you this week. There’s no need to consult a doctor: your sense of breathlessness is simple excitement.
Is it midsummer madness? Is it an Independence Day celebration? Is it forensic fever? Call it what you will. Here’s what’s coming:
On MONDAY you’ll receive the next exciting edition of our world-famous DICTIONARY OF CRIME. It’s so ludicrously lavish, so thorough, so thrilling, I just can’t jam it into a single newsletter. Besides, there is the danger that you will expire from an overload of awesomeness. That’s why I’ve split the dictionary into two. On TUESDAY, then, expect to receive yet more wordy wonders of lexicographical luxury.
As if that weren’t enough to daze, dazzle, and render you dizzy, of course you can look forward to our regular WEDNESDAY newsletter, too. It’s about time Crime & Psychology took a long look at the fascinating research of one of the discipline’s doughty doyens.
Who was this tremendous titan? I hear you ask. I’ll tell you on Wednesday. All you need to do is make sure you’re here for that epic episode!
On THURSDAY and FRIDAY I’ll be proud to present a couple of cross-posts. The first is from our friends at the Curing Crime Substack. If you haven’t been there, please check it out. One of the most popular features on Crime & Psychology was one about lobotomies and their link to criminality. Curing Crime has a newsletter on a similar topic. You’re going to love it. FRIDAY sees a cross-post from Tracy Bealer at True Crime Fiction. This is a special one because it’s all about one of the most important, influential books in the whole True Crime genre. Which one is it going to be? Find out on Friday!
Is this a lot of work? Is your favourite Substacker exhausted by it all? Yes and yes. But you know what I’ve always said: Nothing, but nothing, is too good for you, Crime & Psychology fan!
If you like, you could buy me a coffee!
This week’s brilliant bullet-list features five fascinating facts about criminology’s italicised Italian School! Enjoy these for now! We’ll work more welcome wonders on Wednesday…
First, please bongo a blue button. It helps keep Crime & Psychology alive! Thank you.
· Previous schools of criminology had emphasised ‘the crime not the criminal’. But the Italian School reversed the polarity. As one famous criminologist insisted, ‘The measure of culpability cannot be determined by a study of the illegal act, but only by a study of the individual committing it”.[i]The Italians studied criminals rather than crimes. Literally nothing has been the same since.
· The Italian state was new. It was weak and unsure of its own reason for being. The emphasis on Criminals (with a capital ‘C’) might never have occurred in a more secure country. France and the United Kingdom, for instance, saw no need to prove themselves by identifying those Others who posed a threat to their identity.
· Crime, the Italians emphasised, had causes. Scientists could identify those causes and root them out. This brand new idea could only have come along during the Century of Science.
· Some members of the Italian School clung to a questionable version of evolutionary thoery. Rather than evolving, they thought, some people appeared to devolve, becoming more and more primitive with time. Such people were in grave danger of becoming criminals.
· Certain plants were criminals. Yeah, I’m just gonna leave that there.
Want to know more? Check out Wednesday’s newsletter! It’s a crafty crash course in criminology, a fearfully fabulous fusillade of forensics!
If freedom is a drum, the blue buttons are the drumsticks. Bang out a solo. Let everyone hear how you love liberty:
Or think about buying me a coffee! That’d be nice.
[i] Franz-Joseph Gall, quoted in Ellis, Havelock The Criminal, HE Walter Scot Publishing Co, London, 1907, p31 (emphasis added)