The rise and fall of the American Institute of Criminal Law and Criminology.

• Author: Devroye, Jennifer

1. INTRODUCTION

   On June 7th and 8th, 1909, one hundred and fifty delegates from throughout the United States met at the Northwestern University School of Law to attend the First National Conference on Criminal Law and Criminology (National Conference). Mirroring the nascent field of criminology, invitees ran the gamut of professional affiliations. There were alienists, sociologists, prison wardens, prison doctors, the superintendent of a women's reformatory, a statistician, an Episcopal bishop, and lots of lawyers. The conference's organizing committee, led by John H. Wigmore, Dean of the Northwestern University School of Law, included Roscoe Pound, Municipal Court Judge Harry Olson, (1) and Clarence Darrow. The National Conference was held to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the Northwestern University School of Law. Its purpose was to promote cooperation and the exchange of ideas between disciplines concerned with crime and criminals. Roscoe Pound, looking back on the event in 1941, described the National Conference as its organizer John H. Wigmore's "second great stroke" in modernizing criminal law and procedure, which was in "a most unhappy condition" at the time. (2)

   The National Conference voted into existence the American Institute of Criminal Law and Criminology (the Institute). The purpose of the Institute was to foster cooperation between lawyers and scientists to improve criminal laws and the administration of criminal justice. (3) Wigmore was elected its first president. Committees formed at the National Conference included one "to appeal at once to congress for the establishment of a bureau to collect criminal statistics" and another to study British criminal law. (4) Other committees were formed to study topics suggested by the three discussion sections of the National Conference. (5) At the top of a list of study topics suggested by the first section was that of "the complex factors combining to encourage and establish the persistent offender, particularly with reference to hereditary taint and disability." (6)

   One of the Institute's first projects was the publication of an official organ (7)--the Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology (8) (Journal). Other publishing projects included the publication of the Modern Criminal Science Series (Modern Series) of works by European criminologists in translation. The Institute lasted until the Depression. (9) The Journal, which was absorbed by Northwestern University in 1931, (10) celebrates its centennial this year. This Essay examines the history of the Institute itself, particularly its relationship to Italian positivism and to debates over the heritable nature of criminality.

   This Essay begins in Part II with a review of the Institute's first year of activities, followed, in Part III, by a consideration of its influential series of translated criminal science monographs in the context of criminological debates of the time. Special attention is paid to Italian positivism and its leading figures, Cesare Lombroso and Enrico Ferri, as well as to degeneracy theory--two highly influential movements during the early years of the Institute. Part IV gives a brief overview of the Institute's influential Modern Series of translations of works by European criminologists. Part V describes difficulties the Institute encountered in funding its projects. Part VI considers how the Institute grappled with questions of the role of biology and heredity in crime--paying particular attention to its special committees on criminal statistics and sterilization, as well as members' attractions to the idea of laboratory study of criminals. Part VII details the fiscal problems that plagued and eventually destroyed the Institute. Part VIII describes the Institute's eleventh-hour shift away from explorations of innate criminality in favor of examinations of sociological factors. The Essay concludes with a consideration of the Institute's legacy.

2. THE FOUNDING OF THE INSTITUTE

   The Institute held its first annual meeting in 1910 at the law school of George Washington University in Washington, D.C. (11) The meeting was scheduled to coincide with the International Prison Conference. (12) The Washington Post hailed the meetings with the headline "Penologists on Way." (13)

   The first meeting of the Institute was organized in much the same way the First National Conference had been, with topical committees appointed the preceding year making their reports and research projects for the upcoming year being discussed. Committees reported on systems of recording data on criminality, sentencing, court organization, reforms in criminal procedure, and British criminal procedure and practice. (14) Committees on "the insane offender" and the relationship between immigration and crime were appointed for the following year. (15) A new president of the Institute was elected. Though a new president would be elected most years, very little turnover took place within the core leadership of the Institute: John H. Wigmore served until at least 1925 as Chairman of the Executive Committee, (16) and Robert Gault served as editor of the Journal from 1911 until 1960. That both Wigmore and Gault were Chicagoans meant that the center of Institute and Journal operations would always be Chicago.

   In the year between the National Conference and the Institute's first meeting, (17) the Journal of the American Institute of Criminal Law and Criminology was begun. Wigmore described the publication of a journal as "an indispensible prerequisite of real fruition for the work of the Institute." (18) In 1910, he informed potential donors that "in criminal science there is hitherto absolutely not a single periodical in the English language devoted to that science [of criminology]." (19) Still, raising enough money to start the Journal proved to be a challenge. In a 1910 letter seeking aid from the Carnegie Institution, Wigmore explained that he "had a list made of the fifty richest lawyers of Chicago, and asked them for $100 each, but only nine gave." (20) "Most of the lawyers," Wigmore noted with dismay, were "impervious." (21) Even members of the Executive Board of the Institute (with two exceptions), whom Wigmore "called upon ... to be responsible for $300 each," refused to help fund the Journal. (22) Ultimately, the Journal received its funding from subscriptions and Northwestern University. Wigmore envisioned a subscriber base of "10,000 persons, including prosecuting attorneys, judges, police officials, prison officials, medical men, alienists, psychologists, sociologists, and philanthropists." (23)

   The other major project of the first year of the Institute was the organization of the publication of a series of English language translations (Modern Series) of works by Cesare Lombroso, Enrico Ferri, and other European criminologists. The importance of this series, as well as the debates and projects of the early years of the Institute, is best understood in the context of early criminological discourse. The theories of positivism and degeneracy were central. Both of these theories are described briefly in Part Ill.

3. INFLUENTIAL THEORIES: POSITIVISM AND DEGENERACY

   Early criminologists tended to divide self-consciously into two camps: positivist and determinist. Very generally, positivism asserts that crime is "a product or expression of the individual constitution," while determinism asserts that crime is "a product or expression of society." (24) Determinism is associated with Marxism, and positivism with Darwinism. (25) The positivists "claimed to take as their starting point observable facts" and sought to employ "the experimental and inductive methods used in the natural and social sciences, rather than in juristic and deductive reasoning." (26) Two views often associated with positivism were that (1) criminality is a heritable trait, and (2) the primary purpose of incarceration is the defense of society.

   The split between positivism and determinism was somewhat artificial, as few early criminologists denied that both heredity and environment played a role in criminality. Yet it seems to have been important for criminologists to identify either hereditary or environmental factors as precipitating, thereby aligning themselves with either the positivist or determinist perspective. (27) For example, William Hickson, head of the Psychopathic Laboratory of the Municipal Court of Chicago, wrote that the environment of delinquents should be studied because succumbing to environmental influences was "one of the greatest proofs of their inherent mental defectiveness." (28) Harry Olson wrote that delinquent boys and "fallen women" were "both the victims of a society too complex for their mentality to assimilate." (29) Michael Willrich has pointed out that, in the debate between hereditarian and environmentalist criminology, "[n]owhere were the lines of this disciplinary debate so clearly drawn as in Chicago." (30) Positivist ferment inspired national and international congresses in Europe. It was from these that Wigmore drew his inspiration for the National Conference that founded the Institute in 1909. (31) In 1924, Wigmore and other members of the Institute acknowledged the importance of Italian positivism for the founding of their organization in an article titled "The Progress of Penal Law in the United States of America." (32) They revealed that "the inspiration of Italy's criminalists was strongly influential in the founding of the 'Journal of the Institute' in 1909." (33) The "criminalists" to which they referred were Cesare Lombroso and Enrico Ferri.

   Cesare Lombroso (1835-1909) is considered the founder of the positivist school of criminology and the father of criminal anthropology. (34) Lombroso, a physician, published his influential book, Criminal Man, in 1876, (35) in which he promoted his theory of atavism that claims that criminals were "throwbacks" to earlier evolutionary...