ABSTRACT
Ferri begins by countering charges that his Positivist school denies free will. All crimes are the outcome of free will, he explains, but free will “has no scientific value” and so cannot form the basis of “a scientific explanation of crime.” Instead, he and his school view crime as the product of three factors: organic or physical (those on which Lombroso concentrated); “psychical” (mental and psychological); and social, including the physical environment of the social group. How these three combine to produce crime in varying combinations is the subject matter of criminology.
