Pioneers in Criminology XV--Enrico Ferri (1856-1929)
Thorsten Sellin (1958)
https://scholarlycommons.law.northwestern.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4636&context=jclc
THE JOURNAL OF CRIMINAL LAW, CRIMINOLOGY, AND POLICE SCIENCE
VOL. 48 JANUARY-FEBRUARY 1958 NO. 5
PIONEERS IN CRIMINOLOGY
XV-ENRICO FERRI (1856-1929)
THORSTEN SELLIN
Professor Sellin is chairman of the Department of Sociology, University of Pennsylvania; editor of
the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science (since 1929); and president of
the International Society of Criminology. From time to time, during the last thirty years he has pub-
]ished articles in the Journal on a variety of subjects of interest to criminologists.
The accompanying photograph by Giacomo Brogi, Florence, is reproduced from "The Italy of
the Italians", published by Charles Scribners and Sons. It represents Ferri in middle thirties.
-EDITOR.
ENRICO FERRI
When Enrico Ferri died, April 12, 1929, one of
the most colorful and influential figures in the
history of criminology disappeared. Born at San
Benedetto Po in the province of Mantua, February
25, 1856, his active life spanned more than half a
century, beginning with the publication of his
dissertation in 1878 and ending with the fifth
edition of his "Criminal Sociology," which was
being printed when he died. During the intervening
five decades he became the acknowledged leader of
the so-called positive school of criminal science,
a highly successful trial lawyer and Italy's perhaps
greatest contemporary forensic orator, member of
Parliament, editor of the Socialist newspaper,
"Avanti," indefatigable public lecturer, university
professor, author of highly esteemed scholarly
works, founder of a great legal journal, and a
tireless polemicist in defense of his ideas. His was a
rich and varied life, to which no brief article can
do justice.
In the book, which Ferri published in 1928 on
the "Principles of Criminal Law,"' a work which
contained the systematic presentation of the legal
principles of the positive school, he listed what he
himself regarded as his most important contributions.
They were the demonstration that the concept of freedom
of will has no place in criminal
law; that social defense is the purpose of criminal
justice; the three types of factors in crime causation;
the classification of criminals in five classes;
penal substitutes as means of indirect social defense;
motivation, rather than the objective nature
of the crime, as the basis for sanctions; the demand
that farm colonies be substituted for cellular
isolation of prisoners by day; the indeterminate
sentence instead of the dosage by fixed terms o
institutionalization; the demand that hospitals
1 PRINCIPI IIDI DIRITTO CRIMINALE. xvi, 848 pp.
Torino: UTET, 1928.
SOCIOLOGY THEORIES OF CRIME AND DEVIANCE
https://courses.lumenlearning.com/boundless-sociology/chapter/theories-of-crime-and-deviance/
The recent death of Enrico Ferri brings to a close a period of struggle and partial though continuous conquests for the science that seeks to combat the for-.
Ferri explains principles of Herbert Spencer's theory of social Darwinism, often reduced to the mantra of “survival of the fittest.” This theory sought to apply ...
Popular Science Monthly/Volume 49/October 1896/Enrico Ferri on Homicide II
< Popular Science Monthly | Volume 49 | October 1896https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Popular_Science_Monthly/Volume_49/October_1896/Enrico_Ferri_on_Homicide_II
| ENRICO FERRI ON HOMICIDE. |
FERRI passes in review 1,711 individuals, of whom 711 are soldiers, 699 criminals, and 301 madmen. In this minute examination of anthropometric data he discusses almost every case, pointing out its specific characteristics by means of ample comparisons, which justify his methods of research and his conclusions, as well as throw light on the difficult and not yet firmly established study of criminal anthropology. To close this section of his learned work, he devotes a portion to the reaffirmation of the inferiority of criminal as compared with normal man, and to the analogy that certain anomalies and delinquent characteristics present, deducing thence criminal degeneracy. Very remarkable are the differences of cephalometric characteristics between a certain number of soldiers examined, among whom were some students. The superiority of the latter was incontestably proved by the great anterior semicircumference of the head, by the greater cranial capacity, by the larger frontal diameter, and the minor development of the upper jaw. Worthy of note, too, in regard to this last point is the result of the examination of homicidal murderers as respects recidivistry. The former showed less cranial capacity and a minor frontal diameter, while their upper jaws were more developed.
Having examined these chronic anomalies in criminals in reaffirming the conclusions arrived at by the modern school of criminal anthropology, Ferri gives us the physiognomy of murderers in their characteristic traits, calling to aid the help of photography. It is an interesting series of pictures that he has thus grouped together. Here is the apish type; there the half-mad; there one with large jaws, the most characteristic and frequent feature; the type with receding forehead, etc. The study of temperament and of race in the order of delinquency, which represents the bio-psychic personality of an individual and of a people, is not yet well matured, as opinions with regard to their influences are many and varied. Still, some progress has been made.
Thus it is popularly held that full-blooded, passionate, energetic temperaments are more prone to homicide, while the truth really lies in the opposite direction; the physiological character of this determination is rather a general denutrition of the organism and of the nervous system which originates that irritability and that lack of inhibition by which men react with more difficulty against the murderous impulse.
Race, whose marked influence in biological and social manifestations is, however, denied by many eminent scientists, is nevertheless one of the concurrent factors in the determination of a crime and one which can not be overlooked. Race is not the only factor in the distribution of homicide in Europe, for side by side with this run the social economical conditions induced in their turn by this very race. In this distribution there are manifest three distinct ethnographical groups—the Græco-Latin, the Germanic with the Anglo-Saxon, and the Slav—which stand for the three large zones of homicide. In the first place for the greater frequency of homicide stand the Latin peoples—Italy, Spain, Roumania, Portugal, France, and Belgium; in the medium zone the Slav people of Russia and Austria; for the minor frequency of this crime, the peoples of Germanic origin of Germany, Holland, and England. The sad supremacy pertains not to Italy but to Spain.
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