Cultural Expertise in Italian Criminal Justice: From Criminal Anthropology to Anthropological Expert Witnessing
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
This manuscript draws a clear line from 19th century Italian criminology through the rise of fascist racial ideology in the 20th century and into today's Italian penal law in a thorough, clear and interesting way. I found it quite interesting to read, and have only a few suggestions:
Line 104 - This transition sentence needs more information to help wrap up the previous section and more clearly to connect what is to come.
Line 179 - define cretinism and pellagra
Given that most of the paper deals with historical information, I would suggest that almost all sentences should have some sort of citation (especially in the sections focused on Lombroso).
There does need to be some English language editing for word choice, tense and sentence structure, though overall I found it easy to read as a native English speaker.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer,
I appreciated Your comments and suggestions, and I provide point-by-point response as follows.
Point 1: Line 104 - This transition sentence needs more information to help wrap up the previous section and more clearly to connect what is to come.
Response: I agree with your suggestion. I partially eliminated that sentence in line 104 (“precisely on the history of this complex matter”) and I have rewritten that in this way: “The present article aims to reflect on the importance to engage social sciences within the Italian criminal court – as the Positive School of Criminal Law and criminal anthropology had already stressed in the late 19th century –, on the critical objectiveness on which forensic psychiatric evaluation is based, and on the need of cultural expertise as an essential tool for the understanding of cultural diversity”.
Point 2: Line 179 - define cretinism and pellagra.
Response: I defined cretinism and pellagra better in line 179 (now lines 183-185) in this way: “two very common pathologies in northern Italy in those years, both originated by nutritional deficiencies (cretinism by a lack of iodine and pellagra by a lack of b-group vitamins) and causing dementia and mental disease”.
Point 3: Given that most of the paper deals with historical information, I would suggest that almost all sentences should have some sort of citation (especially in the sections focused on Lombroso).
Response: I don’t know if I have understood correctly, but I’ve looked at the paper again and I’ve verified that every historical information would have the correct citation.
Point 4: There does need to be some English language editing for word choice, tense and sentence structure, though overall I found it easy to read as a native English speaker.
Response: A native English academic proofreader checked this paper.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
The paper deals with a topic only partially scrutinized up to now. Lombroso's works and the birth of forensic anthropology have been widely treated in the international legal literature. However, the exploration of "if and how" the Positive School might have laid the foundations of present involvemnt of cultural experts in Court, especially within the Italian context, is underdeveloped. The paper, in this sense, offers interesting food for thought.
My indications are to be regarded as suggestions that are aimed both at fulfilling few small gaps and at avoiding potential challenges by anthropologists.
1) I would suggest the author tries to better identify connections and disjunctions between anthropology of the XIX century (i.e the one embraced by the Positive School) and contemporary anthropology. During this wide timeframe the anthropological perspective (after a self-critical analysis) deeply changed, and anthropological definitions of "culture" and "cultural diversity" changed themselves. The step between the two historical periods cannot be acritically taken. What happened in between?
2) As regards interdisciplinary, before explainig their potential relation with forensic psychiatry, I suggest the author better describes the aims of "criminal anthropology" and "cultural anthropology" (the two do not exactly coincide and so cannot be used as almost equivalent).
3) As regards the present (non)collaboration between the above disciplines (also in relation to judiciary) the author may find some remarkable suggestions in the literature published by the Fanon Centre in Turin and especially by Roberto Beneduce and Simona Talliani [see, among other,
Taliani, S. (2014). Il perito, il giudice e la bambina che non morirà, Minorigiustizia 4, 158164].
On the risks of "culture medicalization" the author may also find an interesting contribution in
Saletti Salza, C. (2003). bambini del "campo nomadi". Romá Bosniaci a Torino. Roma: CISU
Saletti Salza, C. (2014). Famiglie amputate. Le adozioni dei minori dal punto di vista dei rom. CISU: Roma.
4) Finally, I suggest the author refers to Ciccozzi and Decarli in Holden 2019, when he/she mentions potential hindrances that affect the involvement of cultural experts in Italian courts [635 to 640]. Indeed, some tentative speculations have been already made with a view to widen the debate.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer,
I appreciated Your comments and suggestions, and I provide point-by-point response as follows.
Point 1: I would suggest the author tries to better identify connections and disjunctions between anthropology of the XIX century (i.e the one embraced by the Positive School) and contemporary anthropology. During this wide timeframe the anthropological perspective (after a self-critical analysis) deeply changed, and anthropological definitions of "culture" and "cultural diversity" changed themselves. The step between the two historical periods cannot be acritically taken. What happened in between?
Response: I believe that explaining more in detail “culture” in the anthropological perspective means opening a very great question, and that is not the central focus of my article. And the same goes for the development of cultural anthropology in Italy. I find that it would be ineffective to add a lot of “great” issues and then not have the space and the right conditions to explain them extensively. I preferred to focus my paper on the contributions of the past criminal anthropology and on the possibilities suggested by current (cultural) anthropology which can and have to study also crime, precisely about cultural expertise in legal cases and critical objectiveness of forensic psychiatric assessments.
Thanks to your suggestion, I think it better to add some bibliographic reference specifically on the history of Italian “cultural anthropology” and on the debate about “culture”. See lines 114-115 (Bernardi 1978; Clemente and Mugnaini 2001; Clemente et al. 1985; Grottanelli 1977; Lombardi Satriani 1980; Puccini 1991; Stocking 1968) and in bibliography (see lines 671, 686-687, 688-689, 722-723, 730-731, 800-801).
Point 2: As regards interdisciplinary, before explainig their potential relation with forensic psychiatry, I suggest the author better describes the aims of "criminal anthropology" and "cultural anthropology" (the two do not exactly coincide and so cannot be used as almost equivalent).
Response: I believe I stressed in many points the different aims of Lombroso’s criminal anthropology and cultural anthropology, even if in those years “biology” and “anthropology” had many common points (for example in lines 210-220) and actually “criminal anthropology” as independent discipline no longer exists in Italy. I naturally assumed that anthropology studying culture was not yet defined in the middle of 19th century in Italy (Tylor’s definition of “culture” dates back to 1871 and it came later in Italy). Although I did not explicitly specify the difference between “criminal” and “cultural” approach of cultural anthropology every time, I think I’ve so extensively explained the organicistic and bio-psychic basis of Lombroso’s criminal anthropology that the different aims of both become an obvious thing (for example in the lines 113-118, 181-182, 340-342, 378-381). Furthermore, I find it is redundant to reiterate the debate between “natural” and “cultural” (and therefore between “biological” approach and “cultural” one) because it is the basis of cultural anthropology as a discipline.
Point 3: As regards the present (non)collaboration between the above disciplines (also in relation to judiciary) the author may find some remarkable suggestions in the literature published by the Fanon Centre in Turin and especially by Roberto Beneduce and Simona Talliani [see, among other,
Taliani, S. (2014). Il perito, il giudice e la bambina che non morirà, Minorigiustizia 4, 158164].
On the risks of "culture medicalization" the author may also find an interesting contribution in
Saletti Salza, C. (2003). bambini del "campo nomadi". Romá Bosniaci a Torino. Roma: CISU
Saletti Salza, C. (2014). Famiglie amputate. Le adozioni dei minori dal punto di vista dei rom. CISU: Roma.
Response: I am very familiar with the literature published by the Fanon Centre and I know Beneduce and Taliani personally because of my educational path. The point is that I did not focus my paper on the link between cultural anthropology and psychiatry, but I tried to highlight the limits resulting by the faith in positive science (and so in the current tools offered by psychiatry involved in forensic expertise) and the need to engage the competences of social sciences to better understand and explain cultural diversities in the Italian criminal trials. So I prefered not to use ethno-psychiatry as an interpretative key, and I chose to not expose criminal cases or judgements. I think the article written by Ciccozzi and Decarli (2019) discusses that issue in depth and in a better way. So I’ll refer to it specifically, as you suggest in the point 4.
Point 4: Finally, I suggest the author refers to Ciccozzi and Decarli in Holden 2019, when he/she mentions potential hindrances that affect the involvement of cultural experts in Italian courts [635 to 640]. Indeed, some tentative speculations have been already made with a view to widen the debate.
Response: I agreed with your suggestion. I have mentioned Ciccozzi and Decarli 2019 (line 646) and I have added it to the bibliography (lines 684-685).
A native English academic proofreader checked this article.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
