Emilia Musumeci
Università di Teramo
Abstract
“Neurocriminology” is the “new science” that uses neuroscientific tools to understand and prevent crime. Despite the several, heterogeneous scientific disciplines that are indicated under the term “neuroscience”, there exist an underlying idea which unites them all: the possibility to explain all human behaviours, even the most complex, simply by understanding how the brain works. Nevertheless, this approach is not typical of our age; taking a closer look at this research, the aim to give a strong significance to biological aspects of crime and, in particular, to the innate diversity of brains and bodies of criminals, despite the different historical backgrounds, inevitably recalls the thesis of “born criminality” developed in Italy by Cesare Lombroso in the second half of Nineteenth century and the birth of the Positivist School aimed to study the crime with the empirical method and, consequently , to revolutionize the field of Italian criminal law.
Keywords
Born criminality – Cesare Lombroso – Positivist School – History of Criminal Law – Neuroscience
DOI: 10.13131/2611-9757/sgqp-n278
