MEASURING BODIES 77 /needs no protection from him, for he will not transgress again. A
born criminal might be in the dock for some petty crime. What
good will a short sentence serve: since he cannot be rehabilitated,
a short sentence only reduces the time to his next, perhaps more
serious, offense.
The positive school campaigned hardest and most successfully
for a set of reforms, until recently regarded as enlightened or "lib-
eral," and all involving the principle of indeterminate sentencing.
For the most part they won, and few people realize that our mod-
ern apparatus of parole, early release, and indeterminate sentenc-
ing stems in part from Lombroso's campaign for differential
treatment of born and occasional criminals. The main goal of crim-
inal anthropology, wrote Ferri in 1911, is to "make the personality
of the criminal the primary object and principle of the rules of
penal justice, in place of the objective gravity of the crime" (p. 52).
Penal sanctions must be adapted ... to the personality of the criminal.
... The logical consequence of this conclusion is the indeterminate sen-
tence which has been, and is, combatted as a juridical heresy by classical
and metaphysical criminologists.... Prefixed penalties are absurd as a
means of social defense. It is as if a doctor at the hospital wanted to attach
to each disease the length of a stay in his establishment (Ferri, 1911,
p. 251).
The original Lombrosians advocated harsh treatment for "born
criminals." This misapplication of anthropometry and evolutionary
theory is all the more tragic because Lombroso's biological model
was so utterly invalid and because it shifted so much attention from
the social basis of crime to fallacious ideas about the innate pro-
pensity of criminals. But the positivists, invoking Lombroso's
enlarged model and finally even extending the genesis of crime to
upbringing as well as biology, had enormous impact in their cam-
paign for indeterminate sentencing and the concept of mitigating
circumstances. Since their beliefs are, for the most part, our prac-
tices, we have tended to view them as humane and progressive.
Lombroso's daughter, carrying on the good work, singled out the
United States for praise. We had escaped the hegemony of classical
criminology and shown our usual receptiveness for innovation.
Many states had adopted the positivist program in establishing
good reformatories, probation systems, indeterminate sentencing,
and liberal pardon laws (Lombroso-Ferrero, 1911).
Yet even as the positivists praised America and themselves,