Evaluation

• Lombroso's legacy


  One strength of Lombroso's work is that it changed the face of the study of crime:

  • Lombroso coined the term 'criminology' - Hollin
  • He brought science to the study of crime through empirical evidence, observation and detailed measurement
  • Atavistic characteristics heralded the beginning of offender profiling
  • Therefore, Lombroso made a major contribution to the science of criminology
• Counterpoint to Lombroso's legacy


  • DeLisi questioned whether his legacy is entirely positive
  • Attention has been drawn to the racist undertones of his work - many of the atavistic characteristics are most likely to be found among people of African descent
  • He was suggesting that Africans were more likely to be offenders - a view that fitted 19th-century eugenic attitudes
  • Therefore, some aspects of his work were subjective and racist
• Contradictory evidence


  One limitation of Lombroso's work is evidence contradicts the link between atavism and crime:

  • Goring compared 3000 offenders and 3000 non-offenders
  • He concluded that there was no evidence that offenders are a distinct group with unusual characteristics - although many offenders had lower-than-average intelligence
  • Therefore, this challenges Lombroso's atavistic form
• Poor control

  One limitation of Lombroso's work is that his methods of investigation were poorly controlled:

  • He failed to control important variables in his research
  • He did not include a non-offender control group, which could have controlled for confounding variables that may have explained higher crime rates in certain groups
  • Research has found links between crime and poor social conditions - Hay and Forrest - links that would explain why offenders were more likely to be unemployed
  • Therefore, Lombroso's research does not meet modern scientific standards