Criminological Museums and the Visualization of Evil

Abstract

Criminological museums were established in the late nineteenth century, and they were a product of the positivist criminology at that time. The article describes this special form of museum and its function, trophyization, and to be a sort of visual training program. The examples of Cesare Lombrosos museum in Turin and the criminal museum in Hamburg are able to give a glimpse into contemporary ideas about what a criminological museum was to archive and how it was perceived. The objects are connected with anthropological ideas about criminals, they came to be regarded as important indicators. The article deals with a pre-history of the so-called profiling, and focuses the ideas of visualization of being criminal.

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