Are Female Criminals the Product of Biological Anomalies?

CESAR LOMBROSO

From 1865 through the late 1890s, some of the most violent industrial conflicts in history took place in the United States according to David E. and Melissa Hickman Barlow, authors of Police in a Multicultural Society. Lower classes struggled with the powerful and affluent as they sought to gain workers’ rights and protect the civil liberties of ordinary citizens. Meanwhile, in Italy, physician and criminologist Cesar Lombroso was developing theories to explain the criminal nature of women. Lombroso believed females were less advanced than males and if crime was the result of primitive traits, female crime would be greater than male crime. In reality, female criminality was and still is much lower than male criminality. Lombroso tried to repair the inconsistencies in his theory by stating that prostitution was the female substitute for crime.

In 1893, Lombroso and co-author Guglielmo Ferrero published La Donna Delinquente (The Female Offender) in Italian and it was translated into English in 1895. This controversial criminological work asserted that white males were the most advanced forms of humans, while non-white females were the most primitive. Lombroso believed that women were less intelligent and therefore, less capable of abstract reasoning because of their small cerebral cortex. This made females more vulnerable to psychological disturbances and sexual anomalies. He also maintained that women were similar to domestic animals in that they have the ability to adapt and survive in any given situation, which makes it easier for them to tolerate male manipulation and control.

Lombroso also explained that criminal women were unnaturally masculine and showed signs of atavism - the idea that criminals are born and are evolutionary "throwbacks" that resemble more primitive humans. The alleged "unnatural" masculinity and signs of atavism included biological abnormalities such as irregular cranium shape, moles, and excessive body hair. Lombroso argued that females' passivity as well as their lack of intelligence and initiative to become criminal prevented them from breaking the law. In the end, he concluded that female criminals were rare and exhibited few signs of "degeneration" because they had "evolved less than men due to the inactive nature of their lives". The field of criminology abandoned Lombroso's theories in the early 20th century.