Criminal Typologies
... Beginning in 1876, a highly respected Italian physician named Cesare Lombroso published a work called The Criminal Man. In it Lombroso detailed his study of 383 Italian prisoners and developed one of the first criminal typologies grouping all individuals exhibiting criminal behavior into one of three characteristic types. ... However helpful, in the attempt to classify criminals, many aspects of individuality are ultimately lost and classification systems are sometimes too heavily relied upon in the investigation process when typologies are made hastily. ... Similarly, criminal behavior also encompasses vast differences determined by a plethora of personal experience combinations. ... In a presentation given in 1999 at the American Academy of Forensic Sciences annual meeting, Brent Turvey, MS, asserted that criminal typologies as they are used today are “assessment[s] of… behavior at a particular moment, in a particular setting, with a particular victim.