Introduction: “like a natural disaster”
In 1879, shortly after the publication of the first edition of his well-known and provocative book, L’uomo delinquente [published in English as Criminal Man (1911)], Cesare Lombroso, in his “minor” work entitled Sull’incremento del delitto in Italia e dei mezzi per arrestarlo [On the Increase of Crime in Italy and the Means to Stop it] warned readers that: “the tide of crime is increasingly rising, and threatens to submerge civilisation, if no one thinks about building a dam to stop it”. The battle against crime seemed to Lombroso’s eyes unfair if fought without the necessary tools, like a defenceless man in the face of a natural disaster. Lombroso’s opinion was, however, not an isolated one: after the unification of Italy in 1861, there had followed a period of emergency stemming from gradual but inexorable migration from the countryside to the cities, which became increasingly crowded with social outcasts that would populate the ranks of what...

