Criminal crowds: Responsibility attribution and social control in Sighele and Le Bon

Pioneering studies on crowd violence between criminal anthropology and collective psychology

Social control and responsibility attribution as fundamental concepts for a comparative analysis between the "Psychology of Crowds" (1895) by Gustave Le Bon and "The Criminal Crowd" (1891) by Scipio Sighele. The present study attempts to demonstrate the limitation of the distancing of the French thinker from the work of the Italian criminologist. Pioneering examples of psychology of crowds in a sociological/philosophical (for Le Bon) and criminological/forensic (for Sighele) interpretation, the texts follow some common reflections, overshadowed by the different background of the two authors and a different authorial purpose. In fact, for the eminent theoretician of positive law of Lombrosian inspiration the objective is to establish a criminal responsibility commensurate with the crimes of the members of the crowd, through the criterion of the temibility of the offender, for Le Bon instead (at least according to certain points of view) it is about providing the tools of control to the individual who does not want to be overwhelmed by the power of the crowd, while not neglecting even the latter some interesting suggestions of criminal law. This different perspective makes it easier for the reader to see the differences in thought and less easy to glimpse moments of conceptual harmony. At the same time, it will be attempted to demonstrate how it is not possible, even in spite of the title attributed by Sighele to his own work, to limit the reflection of the criminologist to the crimes of the crowds and not even flatten it on the controversial theories of criminal anthropology.