The French–Italian Controversy: A Neglected Historical Topic in Criminological Literacy

Abstract

This article focuses on a “scientific” controversy that took place at the end of the nineteenth century between the Italian positivist school of Lombroso and his followers and a group of French intellectuals centered around the professional journal Les Archieves de l’anthropologie criminelle. The exploration of this controversy is rarely included in criminology/criminal justice curriculum. It demonstrates the conflicting approaches to biological evolution and to the role of social factors in criminal behavior. It also shows the interplay of these theoretical positions with the socio‐political developments of that time.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank my colleague Mike Persell for sharing with me his knowledge of the history of neo‐Lamarckism and Gil Geis for his comments on a previous version of this article and for his editorial work that involved the use of a great deal of red ink. Finally, I thank my daughter‐in‐law Iris Shichor for her help in navigating the complexities of the electronic submission of the manuscript.