Anthropological Criminology is the thought fact that criminals have different physiological differences compared to others amongst in their environment which can be detected.
Anthropological relating to the study of human kind inter beamed with the perceived links between the nature of a criminal creates the field of offender profiling.An idea of ‘Atavism’ rose from the study of two professors from the late 19th century, Charles Darwin and Ceasare Lombroso. Atavism is the concept that criminals come from a specific group of the human species with regressed DNA from the evolutionary advancement (Darwinism, in this time the belief of evolution from animals still occurred). While Lombroso was doing thorough study on a skull from a criminal, he noticed a unique, out of place factor relating to his theory 1. He took further action to provide biological evidence that the individuals skull fragment was connected to an ‘inferior animal’ and thus provided substantial proof of atavistic regression in that time. Now in the 21st Century, despite general refusal and his theory being debunked, Lombroso’s theory can still find it way into modern times anthropological criminal profiling.
1 Lombroso’s theory relates to the concept came from the 19th century, Ceasare Lombroso who was an Italian professor and criminologist had preformed a numerous amounts of autopsies and interviews on criminals and declared his new found discovery. He had determined similarities between the physical traits of the bodies and those of primitive humans. Lombroso outlined 14 physiognomic characteristic’s which he believed were common and recurring in all criminals. Some of these traits included physical denominations such as longer arms, asymmetry face, sloping forehead or receding hairlines.
He had published several works regarding this concept of his work, L’Uomo Delinquente, L’Homme Criminel (The Criminal Man), The Female Offender (original titled Criminal Woman, the Prostitute, and the Normal Woman) and Criminal Man, According to the Classification of Cesare Lombroso.
