The Return of Lombroso? Ethical Aspects of (Visions of) Preventive Forensic Screening

Munthe, Christian; Radovic, Susanna

Stigma effects are about how the perception of I as possessing a negative feature will affect the close social surroundings of I (family, friends, school, neighbourhood and workplace). Negative stigma effects are typically of three kinds: overprotection (impeding I from developing), distancing (impoverishing I's social support) and preventive defence (treating I as an acute danger). Such effects may become embedded in the wider culture and societal institutions, creating widespread discriminatory effects, which barr I from social goods (Horstkötter and de Wert, 2013) . We hypothesize that such a development is particularly likely in the Lombrosian case, as crime and criminal offenders are already strongly viewed as undesirable phenomena warranting social exclusion.