Note 18 — Chapter III · OPPOSITION TO LOMBROSO’S VIEWS—WOMAN AS CRIMINAL—THE POLITICAL CRIMINAL—CRIMINAL PSYCHOLOGY

Aschaffenburg also writes: “I believe that in some instances we are entitled to regard the prostitute as the equivalent of the criminal; but, notwithstanding this, I believe that the complement to the prostitute is to be looked for, not in the thief, the pickpocket, or the forger, but rather in the beggar and the vagrant.”

Translator’s Note.—Lombroso’s views regarding the prostitute are disputed by many who accept the greater part of his teachings in the matter of criminal anthropology. Prostitution is largely a socially-caused phenomenon, and therefore prostitutes, in so far as they are the complements of criminals will be mainly complementary to socially-caused and occasional “criminals,” not to habitual and instinctive criminals. Thus, Bloch (“The Sexual Life of Our Time,” London, Rebman, Ltd., 1909, p. 401), while admitting that the world of crime is very near to that of prostitution—because the prostitute has need of a man to whom she is not simply a chattel, to whom she can be something from the personal point of view, and also because she shares with the criminal the life of the social pariah—goes on to say: “Lombroso’s doctrine that prostitution is throughout equivalent to criminality is certainly not justified. It is only by the outward circumstances of their life that the bulk of prostitutes are driven into intimate relations with criminality.” For a careful consideration of the pros and cons of this profoundly important question, with reference to leading authorities, see Havelock Ellis, “Sex in Relation to Society,” pp. 266–269.