ABSTRACT
In August 1896, the Home Office dispatched prisons inspector and former deputy governor of Millbank, Arthur Griffiths, to the fourth International Congress on Criminal Anthropology in Geneva. Interestingly, the lion's share of the report submitted by Griffiths on his return to London comprised a detailed discussion and evaluation of Lombrosian criminology. Griffiths had gone to Geneva a sceptic, and the five days of debates there evidently did not lead him to revise his opinions. ‘Criminal anthropology’, he wrote, ‘… has never seriously taken root in this country, the seeming extravagance of its momentous deductions and from such imperfect premises has tabooed it among men of real science, and its consideration has been left exclusively to those little qualified or competent to deal with it’ (Griffiths 1896, 12).
