THE MIS MEASURE OF MANWar I, the subject of an international conference held every four
years for judges, jurists, and government officials as well as for
scientists.
Beyond its specific impact, Lombrosian criminal anthropology
had its primary influence in bolstering the basic argument of bio-
logical determinism about the roles of actors and their surround-
ings: actors follow their inborn nature. To understand crime, study
the criminal, not his rearing, not his education, not the current
predicament that might have inspired his theft or pillage. "Crimi-
nal anthropology studies the delinquent in his natural place—that
is to say, in the field of biology and pathology" (Lombroso's disciple
Sergi, quoted in Zimmern, 1898, p. 744). As a conservative political
argument, it can't be beat: evil, or stupid, or poor, or disenfran-
chised, or degenerate, people are what they are as a result of their
birth. Social institutions reflect nature. Blame (and study) the vic-
tim, not his environment.
The Italian army, for example, had been bothered by several
cases of misdeismo, or, as we would say, fragging. The soldier Mis-
dea (Fig. 4.5), who gave the phenomenon its Italian name, had
murdered his commanding officer. Lombroso examined him and
proclaimed him "a nervous epileptic... , very affected by a vicious
heredity" (in Ferri, 1911). Lombroso recommended that epileptics
be screened from the army and this, according to Ferri, eliminated
misdeismo. (I wonder if the Italian army got through WW II without
a single incident of fragging by nonepileptics.) In any case, no one
seemed disposed to consider the rights and conditions of recruits.
The most dubious potential consequence of Lombroso's theory
was neither realized in law nor proposed by Lombroso's support-
ers: prescreening and isolation of people bearing stigmata before
they had committed any offense—though Ferri (1897, p. 251) did
label as "substantially just" Plato's defense of a family's banishment
after members of three successive generations had been executed
for criminal offenses. Lombroso did, however, advocate prescreen-
ing of children so that teachers might prepare themselves and
know what to expect from pupils with stigmata.
Anthropological examination, by pointing out the criminal type, the
precocious development of the body, the lack of symmetry, the smallness
of the head, and the exaggerated size of the face explains the scholastic
and disciplinary shortcomings of children thus marked and permits them