Lidia Poët & measuring criminals' skulls
I've been watching The Law According to Lidia Poët on Netflix. In season 2 episode 3, a serial killer is murdering women in Turin.
Lidia meets a famous professor Cesare Lombroso, who claims he can identify criminals by the shape of their skulls. Of course, he thinks Lidia an intellectual inferior, and has full confidence in his theories.
Without any spoilers: basically someone has taken Lombroso's theories to the extreme, and is killing off women who purportedly are inclined to criminality – based on their skulls.
Did some digging, and Cesare Lombroso was indeed a real person, who had those theories (that skull characteristics are associated with criminal behaviour).
In fact, here's one of his papers: “Illustrative Studies in Criminal Anthropology”, from 1891.
For today's eyes, it’s a strange read.
Lombroso doesn't just talk about skulls – he says "born criminals" have distinguishable walks, gestures, sense of smell, taste, and other characteristics (compared to "occasional criminals").
An excerpt:
Walk.– A study which I have made with Perachia, shows us that, contrary to the case of normal men, the step of the left foot of criminals is generally longer than that of the right; besides they turn off from the line of the axis more to the right than to the left; their left foot, on being placed on the ground, forms with this line an angle of deviation more pronounced than the angle formed by their right foot ; all these characteristics are very often found among epileptic
He attributes this distinction to natural selection.
I encourage you to scan through the paper. Strange, but fascinating.
The Netflix episode presents a thought experiment: if we knew someone would commit a crime, is it moral to take pre-emptive action? As we know, Lombroso's theories didn't stand up to scientific scrutiny. So the answer is of course "the killer was wrong and an extremist". And if you could predict someone's future behaviour? Well that's explored in Minority Report and other stories!