The last semester, I could not find a course to fit with the two required ones, so I ended up taking an unexpected subject, criminology.

I learned about Cesare Lombroso’s theories that matched facial features to identify different kinds of criminals. Lombroso, considered by some as the father of criminology, believed that criminality was hereditary. He said that some people were born criminals, and they could be easily identified by physical, usually congenital, defects. These studies also confirmed what I had already learned in Chile in one of my courses at the School of Journalism, about psychological reasons to commit crimes.

I had deep doubts about these theories. However, for a long time after taking this criminology class I had a hard time repressing my tendency to look for criminal features in every person around me. Some of the facial features pointed out by Lombroso were: dark skin, big and protruding jaw, thick curly stiff hair, thick beard, oblique eyes, pointed skull, receding forehead, large ears, very long arms, flat feet and big space between the toes. He also believed that their tactile abilities, as well as senses, were not well developed. What I found rather humorous is that Lombroso also theorized that criminals do not distinguish very well between right and wrong. Really?

However the most interesting part of the criminology course was the visits to different kinds of jails in Georgia. Some were not used anymore and had been converted into museums.

I saw cells that were really cages where a person could not even stand. Jails that only had a current of water in the back of the cells which served as the latrines for the prisoners. I saw jails that did not have any roof or walls, to protect prisoners from the weather, just iron bars and huge locks.

Even the worse jails I had seen in Chile looked better than some of these in Georgia. However, the guide told us that most of those jails we visited had been for black slaves, not for white prisoners. That seemed to make all my American classmates quite satisfied.