REFORMATORY PRISONS. 599 



of Forensic Medicine at the University of Turin, who may be re- 

 garded as the inaugurator of the modern science of criminal an- 

 thropology, the thinker whose work on Criminal Man (L'Uomo 

 Delinquente) had, on its appearance in 1889, an influence as de- 

 cisive as had in its day the publication of Darwin's Origin of 

 Species. In the vexed question that is now waging as to the 

 treatment of criminals, in which we find ranged on one side men 

 like W. Z. Brockway, of the Elmira Reformatory, and on the other 

 an authority such as Mr. William Tallack, of the Howard Asso- 

 ciation, a society that bears the name of the great English prison 

 philanthropist and exists for the purpose of alleviating the male- 

 factor's pain, it is well to go to the fountain head and hear what 

 Lombroso has to say on the point. 



Now, Lombroso starts from the premise that a reason must 

 exist why certain men are impelled by their very nature to com- 

 mit crimes, and that hence there must be a difference in their 

 very organism sufficiently marked to distinguish normal men from 

 those morally or mentally mad. In the various medical clinics 

 numerous and minute psychiatric observations, calculations of the 

 most insignificant abnormities in the eurythmia of the human 

 body, confrontation and establishment of mathematical data, have 

 all combined to advance the science of criminal anthropology, so 

 that it has become possible to divide mankind into three great 

 principal classes normal men, criminal men, and madmen. Now, 

 Prof. Lombroso, from his own experience and that of the scholars 

 who work under his direction many of whom, like Prof. Enrico 

 Ferri, have become almost as prominent as himself had come 

 some while ago to the conclusion that an absolute reform is re- 

 quired in the old methods of criminal punishment, and the first 

 thing to do was to distinguish with great care the congenital 

 criminal from the madman. The professor condemns rigorously 

 the carelessness with which the legal tribunals pronounce sen- 

 tences, and points out with much acumen that inconvenience, not 

 to say irreparable harm, is thus done, mischief that always ac- 

 crues to the detriment of those who perform their duty, and who 

 surely have a right to be protected by the state. Hence, says 

 Lombroso, it is above all others the magistrate who should pur- 

 sue the study of criminal anthropology, because while every one 

 of those who have had contact with malefactors, such as the 

 members of their own family and prison directors, regard them 

 as men different from others that is, persons of weak mind or al- 

 most insane, and never, or at least hardly ever, susceptible of im- 

 provement ; while the psychiatrist finds it impossible in most cases 

 to distinguish clearly between madness and guilt, the legislator, 

 on his part, rarely gives heed to the acute criticisms of the alien- 

 ist, to the timid objections of the prison officials. As a rule, 



