Against the Rising Tide of Crime: Cesare Lombroso and Control of the “Dangerous Classes” in Italy, 1861-1940

Abstract

This article analyses the impact of criminal anthropology, established by Cesare Lombroso, on the field of scientific policing in Italy. It focuses on the techniques and methods employed by police departments to identify and detect criminals and suspects at the end of the nineteenth century and during the first half of the twentieth century in order to control the so-called “dangerous classes”. In Italy, the Bertillonage system was introduced thanks to the efforts of Salvatore Ottolenghi (1861-1934), a pupil of Cesare Lombroso and founder of the Italian scientific police (polizia scientifica). While such identification techniques spread to many countries, their deployment in Italy was different, being strongly influenced by Lombroso’s concept of “criminal man”. The so-called “Ottolenghi method” was used, particularly during the Fascist regime, to identify not only criminals but also “subversives”, “enemies of social order” and any “suspicious person”.