DELINQUENTE. — A preliminary problem is posed by the biological definition of the d.; in effect, it must be established whether or not delinquents constitute a category of men differing from others by particular somatic and psychic characteristics.
The answers to this question have varied: at the dawn of criminological studies, the d. was considered a “degenerate,” that is, a descendant of defective or intoxicated progenitors; or else a subject descended from alienated persons. Intimate relations between crime and insanity were likewise discerned. Such conceptions took concrete form in the doctrine of Lombroso, who initially considered the d. a “primitive,” that is, the product of atavistic heredity, then a degenerate for pathological causes, and finally a particular type of epileptic in whom the irresistible impulse to perform the criminal act would represent the counterpart of the convulsive seizure of the ordinary epileptic. On the basis of this theory, the d. would be someone compelled by abnormal conditions (hereditary, degenerative, pathological); a series of morphological and psychiatric investigations attempted to identify and define the distinctive and particular characteristics of the d.
It was realized, however, that other factors, in addition to organic ones, operated in the d.: sociological-environmental factors; indeed, certain scholars maintained that the latter were to be regarded as the sole elements determining crime.
Without neglecting problems of a psychological nature, predominant criminogenic efficacy had nevertheless been attributed to factors that might be termed organic and to environmental ones. Through the work of illustrious Italian authors (Sergi, Sighele, Niceforo, Patrizi, Ottolenghi, etc.), the broad doctrinal movement began to take shape that recognizes pre-eminent importance in psychological investigations, since the motives for unlawful action are primarily psychic in origin. It was thus maintained that in the d. there exists a profound self, the seat of the elementary psychic impulses of the personality, from which criminogenic stimuli would originate and burst forth to the surface after overcoming the antagonistic action of the counter-motives promoted by the higher self (Niceforo). These concepts found a much broader development in the doctrine of Freud (v. PSICANALISI): crime would always arise from the unconscious sectors of the
personality and almost always from psychic experiences of a sexual nature which, lived through during childhood, were repressed—from the ego into the unconscious—as the subject’s moral consciousness matured under the influence of the environment.
Especially in recent years, the conviction has gained ground that the d. should not always be regarded as compelled by biological causes. Such a conception may now be said to have taken concrete form, notwithstanding the recent revival of studies tending to demonstrate an intimate correlation between temperament and organic constitution, which seemed, under apparently different aspects, to foreshadow a return to the determinism of the earlier criminological schools. This fundamentally psychological orientation has consequently restored dignity to the human person, recognizing that only the free exercise of the intellect and the will—activities present only in man—is to be regarded, even from a purely scientific standpoint, as the determining factor in action.
This does not mean denying that crime may at times be the expression of a pathological condition, but only affirming that, generally speaking, the d. is such not because he is ill in body or mind. Indeed, a series of in-depth observations conducted—even by the Roman medico-legal school—on individual delinquents makes it possible to advance the hypothesis that the population of penal institutions consists predominantly of “ordinary” subjects, who, if anywhere, should be placed within that broad graduated series of human individualities constituted by characterological varieties (v. CARATTERE e CARATTERIOLOGIA). It must therefore be held that there are no specific biological characteristics that make it possible to distinguish the d. from other men and that “the differentiation by which some men are judged to be delinquents is not biological but juridical” (Gemelli). It follows that criminality must be regarded as a problem predominantly of an ethical-social nature. V. EDUCAZIONE.
As regards the d. from the juridical standpoint V. DELITTO.