Recent years have witnessed a resurgence of biological research into the causes of crime, but the origins of this kind of research date back to the late nineteenth century. Here, Richard Wetzell presents the first history of German criminology from Imperial Germany through the Weimar Republic to the end of the Third Reich, a period that provided a unique test case for the perils associated with biological explanations of crime.Drawing on a wealth of primary sources from criminological, legal, and psychiatric literature, Wetzell shows that German biomedical research on crime predominated over sociological research and thus contributed to the rise of the eugenics movement and the eventual targeting of criminals for eugenic measures by the Nazi regime. However, he also demonstrates that the development of German criminology was characterized by a constant tension between the criminologists' hereditarian biases and an increasing methodological sophistication that prevented many of them from endorsing the crude genetic determinism and racism that characterized so much of Hitler's regime. As a result, proposals for the sterilization of criminals remained highly controversial during the Nazi years, suggesting that Nazi biological politics left more room for contention than has often been assumed.
Author(s): Richard F. Wetzell
Series: Studies in legal history
Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
Year: 2000
Language: English
Pages: 365
Tags: Юридические дисциплины;Криминология;Криминология зарубежных стран;
Acknowledgments......Page 12
Abbreviations......Page 14
Introduction......Page 18
1: The Origins of Modern Criminology......Page 32
Medical Explanations of Crime......Page 34
Moral Statistics......Page 38
Studies of the ‘‘Criminal Classes’’......Page 42
Lombroso’s Theory of the ‘‘Born Criminal’’......Page 45
The German Penal Reform Movement......Page 48
2: From Criminal Anthropology to Criminal Psychology, 1880-1914......Page 56
Psychiatrists, Prison Doctors, and the Reception of Lombroso......Page 57
Degeneration Theory and Lombroso’s German Critics......Page 63
The ‘‘Born Criminal’’ Redefined......Page 69
Combining Biological and Social Explanations of Crime......Page 77
Conclusion......Page 85
Criminal Justice, Criminology, and the Question of Legal Responsibility......Page 90
The Question of Diminished Legal Responsibility......Page 96
The IKV Debate over the Treatment of Minderwertige......Page 100
The Juristentag Debate over the Treatment of Minderwertige......Page 107
Proposals for the Surveillance and Preventive Internment of Minderwertige......Page 113
Proposals for Sterilization......Page 117
4: Criminal Sociology in the Weimar Years......Page 124
‘‘A Giant Experiment’’: Studies of Crime during the First World War......Page 125
Franz Exner’s Criminal Sociology......Page 132
Criminology and Criminal Justice in the Weimar Years......Page 137
5: Varieties of Criminal Biology in the Weimar Years......Page 142
The Creation of Bavaria’s Criminal-Biological Service......Page 145
Criticisms of the Criminal-Biological Service......Page 154
Psychoanalysis and Somatotyping......Page 159
The Search for Abnormal Character Traits: From Minderwertige to ‘‘Psychopathic Personalities’’......Page 161
The Search for Genetic Factors......Page 171
The First Twin Study......Page 178
Criminal Psychology......Page 185
Assessing the Different Trends in Weimar Criminal Biology......Page 191
Criminology and Nazism......Page 196
Anti-Semitism......Page 203
The Search for Genetic Factors Continued......Page 207
Friedrich Stumpfl’s Family Study......Page 208
Stumpfl’s Twin Study......Page 211
The Search for Genetic Factors Criticized......Page 218
Psychopathy: A Problematic Concept......Page 220
Challenging the Evidence for the Inheritance of Criminogenic Traits......Page 222
The Complex Connection between Character and Criminal Behavior......Page 224
Edmund Mezger’s Survey......Page 225
Franz Exner’s Synthesis......Page 231
Research on ‘‘Asocials’’......Page 237
Conclusion......Page 247
7: Criminology and Eugenics, 1919-1945......Page 250
Sterilization Debates among Weimar Psychiatrists, 1923–1933......Page 254
Weimar Bureaucrats and Politicians Respond, 1923–1933......Page 263
The Nazi Sterilization Law of July 1933......Page 271
Expanding the Definition of Feeblemindedness......Page 277
Feeblemindedness and Crime in the Sterilization Courts......Page 283
The Treatment of Criminals under the Marriage Health Law......Page 289
Debates about Expanding the Sterilization Law to Include Criminals......Page 293
Radical Schemes and the Murder of Criminals in the ‘‘Euthanasia’’ Operation, 1939–1945......Page 297
Conclusion......Page 306
Conclusion......Page 312
Bibliography......Page 324
Index......Page 362
