La Scuola Lombrosiana and the beginning of criminology in Malta

Abstract

Joseph Semini, a police inspector, became Malta’s first criminologist when he published the first criminological text, Some Points on Criminology, in 1926. Although this text incorporates conceptual language borrowed from Lombroso, it would be wrong to dismiss it as an extension of the scuola positiva. Some Points on Criminology can really only be appreciated when framed within political affairs in Malta during the 1920s and 1930s. This article discusses Semini’s criminology in the context in which he wrote it; his perception of the problems that motivated his writing and the source of ideas that influenced his approach to them. Although the book appears to have had little influence at the time, it is significant because he pursues an alternative to colonial criminology. Colonial criminology relied on analogies with Great Britain to understand Maltese crime problems and sought to develop Maltese institutions of criminal justice from British models. In bringing what Semini took to be an international science of criminology to the Maltese context, he was able to conceive of a more authentic Maltese response