Cesare Lombroso Biography

An Italian criminologist and physician, he founded the Italian School of Positivist Criminology. Lombroso rejected the established Classical School, which held that crime was a characteristic trait of human nature. His theory of anthropological criminology, drawing from physiognomy, early eugenics, psychiatry, and Social Darwinism, essentially stated that criminality was inherited. It posited that a "born criminal" could be identified by physical defects, confirming a criminal as savage or atavistic.