Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 5.djvu/145

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NOTES AND ABSTRACTS
131

its numerous homicides in Calabria, Sicily, and Sardinia, while where the Germanic races are predominant homicide is least frequent. Sicily offers a striking example of ethnic influence upon homicide. The Greek provinces of Messina, Catania, and Syracuse have a less amount of homicide, while those provinces which contain much Arabian blood show the greatest amount. Sardinia surpasses Sicily in the number of crimes against property, probably owing to its preponderance of Semitic blood. In France also we see ethnic influence upon crime. Assassination, rape, and crime against property all show a different ratio in the Gallic, Iberian, Cimbrian, Belgian, and Ligurian races, which make up the French population. The Ligurian peoples in France furnish the maximum of revolutionary leaders and of geniuses, while the Cimbrian and Iberian races furnish the minimum of both. Again, in France and Italy everywhere there is observed a preponderance of crime in the provinces where dolichocephaly is the rule. Also the blonde-haired element in the population seems to furnish in general fewer criminals than the brown- and black-haired elements. The influence of race upon criminality appears in all its evidence in the study of Jews and Gipsies, but for each of these in a quite different sense. In nearly every country the Jews show a smaller ratio of criminals in proportion to their number than the remaining elements of the population. In certain crimes, however, they have the largest ratio, such as smuggling and counterfeiting. Especially in those countries where Jews have been given their political rights the tendency is for crime to diminish among them. The Gipsies, on the other hand, are an example of an entire race of criminals, and reproduce all their passions and vices. They have the improvidence of the savage and the criminal; they have a horror of the least exertion and undergo hunger and poverty rather than submit to the slightest sustained labor. They are superstitious, and are addicted to orgies ; they are ferocious and assassinate without remorse in order to steal ; their women are very clever at theft, and are addicted to prostitution. In whatever condition the Gipsy is, he preserves always his habitual impassiveness ; he seems never to be preoccupied with the future, and lives from day to day in an absolute immobility of thought, while to him authority, laws, rules, principles, precepts, and duties are notions insupportable.—Cesare Lombroso, “La Race dans l’étiologie du crime,” in L’Humanité nouvelle, April, 1899.

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