While surfing the web I ran into this announcement: “The Museum of Criminal Anthropology, dedicated to Cesare Lombroso, has reopened after years of restoration and access to specialist researchers only. The institution was founded by Lombroso in 1898 under the name ‘The Museum of Psychiatry and Criminology,’ documenting his beliefs and research into detecting criminality through physiognomy.” You can now see this collection for yourself but you will have to fly to Turin, Italy. How you feel about this kind of pathologizing is another thing. Here’s some history: “For many years, Lombroso’s text on the female criminal would have great influence. It described the female offender as worse than male offenders, contending that they had more masculine than feminine characteristics. Lombroso also popularized the notion of a ‘born criminal’ which represents an extreme statement of biological determinism which had great influence well into the 20th Century.” The Museum of Criminal Anthropology serves as a reminder of a past that must be known but never repeated.
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