Basic Problems of Criminology: By Olaf Kinberg. Copenhagen: Levin and Munksgaard, 1935. 436 pp.

We have here a scholarly though conventional reatment of the problems of criminology. The author considers at length the problem of imputation of responsibility to the criminal for the criminal act and rejects it as a serviceable legal convention. Much useful information on the psychiatric views of Greek and Roman jurisprudence is provided. Reference is made to findings with regard to criminology from anthropology, sociology, and "organic" psychiatry. So far as these disciplines permit a review of criminal problems, the author's approach is thorough and thoughtful. The nigger in the woodpile is, of course, that they do not alone permit an approach to the criminal and Professor Kinberg has no substitute to offer for the indispensable psychology of the individual life which is required. The life histories given are naïve in the extreme or, to say it another way, they are seen largely from the standpoint of identifiable organic events, such as brain injury, encephalitis, and body form. Psychoanalytic findings are briefly but pungently taken for the customary ride. The author plumps strongly for sterilization as a method of social hygiene in the case of many criminal offenders.