Widescreen illustration of Enrico Ferri in a scholarly study with books and legal documents, representing his criminological concepts.

Enrico Ferri’s concept of criminology

Introduction Criminology as a discipline is devoted to unraveling the mysteries of crime—its origins, its effects, and the best ways to address it. Enrico Ferri, an Italian criminologist and one of the founding figures of the positivist school of criminology, argued that criminal behavior could not be solely explained by the idea of free will….

A historical depiction of Cesare Lombroso studying a skull in a 19th-century laboratory, surrounded by books, anatomical models, and criminal sketches, symbolizing the Positivist School's scientific and anthropological approach to criminology.

The Positivist School and the Anthropological Interpretatio

Introduction The emergence of the Positivist School marked a revolutionary phase in criminology, steering the discipline towards a more scientific approach to understanding criminal behavior. By focusing on empirical evidence, the Positivist School challenged earlier philosophical and moralistic interpretations of crime, offering a framework rooted in observable and measurable phenomena. Central to this movement was…