Medicalization of the criminal law in the 19th century

Abstract

The modern school of criminal law particularly accentuated impact of science on the examination of criminality reasons in the second half of the 19th century. A perpetrator of a crime has been perceived as an object of investigation from the medical point of view. This study attempts to summarise positive as well as negative results of the process. Therefore the study points out not only the correlations between physical attributes of a person with inclination to criminality (biological-anthropological theories of criminality, phrenology), but also it attempts to point out the advancement in perception of punishment as social measure rather than a form of repression. Finally the study mentions the influence of medicine in relation to decriminalisation of certain sexual crimes.