Die Psychologie des Verbrechers – Kriminalpsychologie (English: The psychology of a felon – criminal psychology; 2nd edition) was a book written by Dr. med. Paul Pollitz and published in Leipzig, Germany, in 1916. It is a summary of previous findings on psychological, social and economic characteristics of criminals for a variety of different crime types based on the statistics of the early 20th century. The focus lies on three main causes for committing crimes, which can interact or are presented in solitude. These causes depict crimes as a result of socio-economic circumstances, impaired psyche, and/ or personality of the criminal.
The book is divided into five main categories, which include an introduction to the necessity of criminal psychology, followed by the second section on Lombroso's theory of a criminal's psychological characteristics. Afterwards, the third main section, namely general criminal psychology and statistics, presents different frequency numbers and trends of crimes in various background, including for instance sex, age, profession, and marriage relations to crime. Furthermore, the fourth main section deals with specific criminal psychology and describes crimes of people with mental illnesses, alcoholism, prostitution, puberty, and others. The closing words highlight the areas, which the author believes to be most crucial to interfere with in order to decrease the frequency of crime.
Historical background
During the end of the 19th century, criminal psychology became known as a proper field of studies due to Cesare Lombroso's research on characteristics of the "criminal man" (1876). Inspired by Charles Darwin recently published theory of evolution, Lombroso conducted anthropological research and performed extensive analyses on physiological, psychological, zoological and ethnological characteristics of criminals. Based on his results, he concluded that a habitual criminal can be seen as a regression of the human being to his very roots as a wild, uncivilized person. This regression is also called atavism, and, according to Lombroso, explains a large number of criminal acts. Further, Lombroso stated that criminality is an inheritable feature which can be detected by presence of tattoos or a felon's physiognomy, meaning measurements based on visible face and skull characteristics. Charles Goring was the first to refute a relation of physical aspects and criminality-likelihood with an extensive study that compared non-criminals to convicts on numerous physical features and mental abilities. Goring's results, published in 1913, could not support Lombroso's findings on inheritable criminality. In the presently reviewed book, Pollitz refers to Lombroso and his theory's current status in criminal psychology.
Content
Lombroso's theory
Pollitz denies the correctness of Lombroso's investigations on criminal physiognomy, as at that time the accuracy of such measures has already been discredited. However, Lombroso's notes on the lack of empathy, cold-hearted cruelty and indifference, and even on tattoos and racketeer language are picked up at later parts of the book. Moreover, Pollitz supports Lombroso's description of the habitual female criminal, whose physical built is supposedly very similar to a man's body. In the following topics of the book, Pollitz bases several sub-topics on areas that Lombroso already identified as being significant to criminal statistics and crucial to consider in mathematical analyses.
General criminal psychology - Overview of criminal statistics
Pollitz emphasizes the importance of statistics in criminal psychology, for which it is essential to also inspect the reasons for a decrease or increase in criminality. Here are a few examples of his disquisition on criminal statistics: